Feel the bulls-eye painted on your chest yet?
Yesterday I suggested that the President’s FY 06 budget might be very painful for housing. Today that’s no longer in doubt:
The White House will seek to drastically shrink the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s $8 billion community branch, purging dozens of economic development projects, scrapping a rural housing program and folding high-profile anti-poverty efforts into the Labor and Commerce departments, administration officials said yesterday.
But, protests the Administration, it’s not really a cut, just …
… a consolidation:
“The purpose of the exercise has nothing to do with achieving or not achieving savings,” said one administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
For the programs in question would not be dismantled, merely shifted to other Cabinet departments:
Under the plan, the CDBG program — which provides multipurpose development grants to state and local governments — would be sent to the Commerce Department. The Urban Empowerment Zones and the Renewal Community programs — both of which offer tax incentives for development in urban or other troubled areas — would also go to Commerce, as would the Brownfields Economic Development Initiative, designed to revitalize abandoned industrial sites.
Ranking House Banking Committee Democrat Barney Frank, a long-time housing advocate and acknowledged housing legislation expert, called it “just appalling”:
“I’m always willing to look at consolidation, but clearly they’re using consolidation as a shield for substantial budget reductions.”
Shifting supervisory venue also shifts the reporting allegiances. Commerce, which promotes business activities, is spiritually more kin to Republican values; HUD, which promotes low-income affordability, draws most of its support from traditionally Democratic constituencies.
Undoubtedly politics has played no role whatsoever in this proposal.
