Tag Archives: Speaker Paul Ryan

Coming To A Neighborhood Near You

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Paul Mirengoff posted an article at Power Line today about the Gosar Amendment.

This is a Press Release from Congressman Paul Gosar from June 2015 regarding the Gosar Amendment:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Congressman Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ-04) released the following statement after his amendment preventing the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from implementing the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation passed the House by a vote of 229-193 and was attached to the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2016:

“As the president reaches the end of his second term, he has made it clear that his top priorities during his waning days are furthering his far-left political agenda by forcing big government programs on the American people.  His new AFFH regulation is one of the most far-reaching attempts yet to punish communities that don’t submit to the president’s liberal ideology. American citizens and communities should be free to choose where they would like to live and not be subject to federal neighborhood engineering at the behest of an overreaching federal government.

“Furthermore, HUD officials shouldn’t be holding hostage grant monies aimed at community improvement based on its unrealistic utopian ideas of what every community should resemble. Local zoning decisions have traditionally been, and should always be, made by local communities, not bureaucrats in Washington DC. I am extremely pleased to see the House put a stop to this attempt by the Obama Administration to control a fundamental aspect of the American dream.”

Additional:

Congressman Gosar’s amendment is endorsed by Americans for Limited Government, Freedom Works, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, Taxpayers for Common Sense and Eagle Forum.

Americans for Limited Government supported the Gosar amendment stating, “Housing discrimination based on race has been illegal since the 1960s, and people should be allowed to choose for themselves where they live without D.C. bureaucrats nationalizing zoning decisions for political reasons.”

An amendment to this same appropriations bill blocking funds from going to this misguided rule successfully passed in the 113th Congress. More information on that amendment can be found HERE. Congressman Gosar appeared on Fox Business Network to discuss the issue.

In addition, Congressman Gosar’s bill, the Local Zoning and Property Rights Protection Act, H.R. 1995, rejects this overreaching rule is currently cosponsored by 20 members in the House.  

The AFFH regulation will increase local taxes, depress property values, and cause further harm to impoverished communities that are actually in need of these funds. According to reports, in 2012, this rule would have negatively impacted more than 1,200 municipalities throughout the country, costing these communities to forfeit millions that are meant help the neediest families. 

A trial run of the AFFH rule already took place in New York state. The rule was a failure and a local county was initially forced to forego $12 million in funds that would have benefited the community due to the impractical and unrealistic requirements associated with misguided agency regulation. The county had intended to use a large portion of these block grant funds to establish public housing for individuals in need.

Unfortunately, Paul Ryan abandoned the Gosar Amendment during the negotiations over the Omnibus spending bill.

Power Line explains how to fight the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation:

What, then, is the next move against AFFH. Stanley Kurtz, who has led the charge against it from the beginning ( and before) urges a nationwide campaign to insist that local governments turn down money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Only those localities that accept HUD money are subject to the AFFH rule. Thus, by turning that money down, they preserve their right to exercise the traditional role of local governments. In other words, citizens remain free, through their elected officials, to make most the important decisions about how they will live (though the feds still can be expected to attack that right through Fair Housing suits). Otherwise, they cede that right to the feds.

This is another illustration of the fact that government money does not come without strings. We also need to remember that the government has no money other than the money they take from the American people.

As Americans we are used to being able to choose where we will live. The AFFH will begin to take that right away from us. This needs to be an issue in the coming election–both in Congress and the presidential election. Paul Ryan gave our right to choose where we live away, we need a Speaker of the House that will take it back.

About That Transparency Thing…

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As anyone who regularly reads this blog is aware, I am involved in the fight against Common Core in North Carolina. There is a better plan, the North Carolina Education Plan, that would better suit the students of North Carolina–it will encourage critical thinking and improve both their reading and mathematics skills. Common Core is a one-size-fits-all group of standards that is heavily funded by the Bill Gates Foundation and supported by the political class in Washington, D.C. Bill Gates himself has stated, “It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.”  The father of Common Core is the “No Child Left Behind” Law which moved a large part of education in America under the control of the federal government. Just for the record, the federal government does not have the Constitutional right to control local education. Well, No Child Left Behind has morphed into the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, now before Congress.

On Thursday, Truth In American Education posted an article about the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

The article stated:

Because the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (No Child Left Behind) will be the largest piece of federal education legislation Congress will pass in over a decade, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) should allow the bill to be made publicly available for at least 60 days before the House considers it.

The bill is not scheduled to be made publicly available until November 30th. Thus, a vote should not be scheduled until late January. Currently, it is scheduled for December 2; two days is clearly not sufficient. House members will be forced to vote on a bill they haven’t read.

The American people expected a new style of leadership under Speaker Ryan, not more of the same. If he allows a bill of this magnitude to become law without adequately vetting its merits and faults, it will affirm that the same ills that plagued Congress under Speaker Boehner remain fully intact.

Transparency is obviously an issue here, but there are other issues.

The article further states:

What we have heard, but can’t confirm:

The new bill is hundreds of pages longer than either prior version.

It contains new programs that weren’t in either prior version.

There is a new competitive grant for pre-schools- think Race to the Top for Tots

Very complex language that is unclear. This means the US Depart of Education will have tremendous leeway to interpret it to the advantage of the federal government. Because it has discretion over how to administer the law, unclear language makes it easier for the US Department of Education to justify and make decisions to place requirements on the states through its rule-making authority.

Education needs to be under local control. Admittedly, every student in America needs to learn basic English and Mathematics, but different areas of the country have different educational needs beyond that. Americans are individuals, we need to have an education system that educates individuals. One size does not fit all.

One thing that could really help the federal budget would be to get rid of the Department of Education on the federal level. In 1953, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare became a cabinet-level agency of the U.S. government. In 1979, Jimmy Carter created the cabinet-level Department of Education. In 1979, the Office of Education had 3,000 employees and an annual budget of $12 billion. When the Department of Education was created, it had an annual budget of $14.2 billion and 17,000 employees. According to the government Budget Office, the U. S. Department of Education currently administers a budget of $67.1 billion in discretionary appropriations. I truly think it is time for them to go away.

I also think it is time for Speaker Paul Ryan to live up to his promises about transparency.