Horowitz: Why is the House GOP continuing to fund bloated and woke HUD programs?

There simply should be no Department of Housing and Urban Development at the federal level. Yet the GOP’s much-vaunted budget, which is touted as the deepest cuts in American history, will continue record spending on this decrepit department, miles beyond the spending levels under Obama and even pre-COVID.

If Republicans can’t significantly cut a department like HUD, there is quite literally no lower-hanging fruit they will find. Housing is a function that should never move beyond state-level government, given its local nature. The housing programs under HUD are designed to socially transform neighborhoods and empower third-party left-wing organizations to agitate for the same policies that have perpetuated crime, social unrest, and poverty in America’s inner cities. HUD is the ultimate grift of government.

Earlier this week, the House Appropriations Committee posted its draft of the fiscal year 2024 Transportation-HUD appropriations bill, which funds both the Department of Transportation and HUD. The transportation portion of the bill is pretty decent, as it cuts $7.2 billion from FY 2023 enacted levels and terminates some of the green energy programs under the infrastructure bill signed by Biden. It also prohibits the Federal Highway Administration from implementing a greenhouse gas performance rule for the national highway system. But the HUD portion is a problem.

The draft would provide $68.2 billion in net discretionary funding to HUD, essentially preserving the record high baseline of spending on a department that shouldn’t exist. HUD spending was as low as $38.8 billion in FY 2017, Obama’s final year in office. Even in FY 2020, pre-COVID, it was $49 billion, which is $57.7 billion in today’s dollars.

There is no reason we should be preserving the massive post-COVID spending so that left-wing agitation groups can use that funding to transform America. Republicans, pursuant to the McCarthy debt ceiling deal, are using dishonest “clawbacks” of the massive IRS funding years down the road that was never going to be spent to offset the massive budget authority given to HUD.

Most shockingly, the draft would provide $31.1 billion to Section 8 (known as “tenant rental vouchers”), and the subsidies tied to specific units would also be fully renewed with $15.8 billion, a record. That is a 6% increase of last year’s record levels. Section 8 is a tool for social transformation, increased crime, reducing property values, and promotion of implementing the left’s gerrymandering of the suburbs.

In defending the preservation of biblical levels of Section 8 spending, committee Republicans cited the inflation in rent and diminished revenue coming into the Federal Housing Administration from mortgage insurance. But it is HUD’s involvement in housing to begin with that has created the housing bubble, and it is the debt (fueled by this very spending) that has caused interest rates to rise and dampened these revenues. We throw so much money at Section 8 that, together with some local government incentives, many landlords find it more profitable to turn over to Section 8 rather than rent in the free market. Not only does this bring in crime, but it also puts more pressure on rental prices. Much as with the endless government subsidization of health care and student loans, if you create unfathomable sums of money to fund a service, the providers will continue charging those higher rates.

This draft also keeps funding for the Community Development Block Grant program at this year’s level of $3.3 billion. This is a program that indiscriminately shells out funding for “community development” to places that don’t need it for things they don’t need. It is the quintessential function of local government, and to the extent one believes federal tax funding should support it, the funding should just be devolved to the states. As of now, the federal government uses the CDBG program as a carrot to promote the woke agenda on numerous fronts.

Furthermore, I don’t see policy riders in the bill to defund the social engineering offices, such as the Mortgage Counseling program. That program gives grants to groups like UnidosUS, which promotes illegal immigration and shakes down localities for not providing their desired levels of low-income housing.

The bill also maintains roughly the same level of spending for the Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity program, which again is tantamount to a Democrat Party campaign contribution. The draft keeps $3.3 billion for the Continuum of Care Program, which funds radical gender ideology and transgender “care” under the guise of sheltering victims of sexual assault.

The bottom line is that Republicans only negotiate down from the position they begin with in the chamber they control. To begin negotiations with this sort of bill is a betrayal of their election promise. To that end, the Freedom Caucus penned a letter to Speaker McCarthy promising to vote against any bill that doesn’t achieve even the modest trim-back to FY 2022 levels without the gimmick of using rescissions from unspent funds. They also call upon McCarthy to reject any other funding bill until the House passes each individual appropriations bill and also rules out any omnibuses or supplemental bills for Ukraine.

Contrary to media reports, inflation is still out of control, and it is because of the insane levels of debt. We need relief from the debt and also the weaponized government it funds right now. This is the moment of truth for the GOP-controlled House.