In their effort to cut spending by $5 trillion, House Republicans intend to effectively eliminate one housing program and transfer the funds to another housing program to avoid shuttering both of them altogether. We want to maintain some vague idea that we care about people, right?
The Republican-controlled House Subcommittee for Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development has advanced a bill that would remove funds from the National Housing Trust Fund and transfer them to the HOME program which is also being cut.
In December, money started flowing into the fund for the first time from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But the House bill directs money reserved for the fund to cover a congressionally created deficit in funding for another affordable housing program, the HOME program. [...]
The National Housing Trust Fund was kept out of the budget appropriations process so that it wouldn’t be subject to political pressure and a complicated process, which don’t provide enough money for affordable housing as it is.
The trust fund may have been kept out of the appropriations process in the past but, when you're scrambling to figure out how you're going to take a chainsaw to the federal budget while pretending to give a shit about the people you hurt, all options are on the table.
The Republican fantasy budget framework dictates spending levels that are advanced through House committees and each committee has to find creative ways to meet their targets.
The good news is the president will never sign any of this into law. The bad news is we'll be facing another government shutdown at the end of this Summer and, more than likely, another continuing resolution that will carry on the status quo for the foreseeable future.
Speaker of the House John Boehner and House leadership have set a goal of completing the entire appropriations process for the first time in years, and they may succeed in doing so inside the House of Representative, but it will be all for naught. Their process will see the passage of deplorable policy that will not be signed into law.
The political press may hand out tugjobs to congressional Republicans for demonstrating their Very Serious bona fides, but Democrats will have a very detailed record of exactly what Republicans would do if they were to win in 2016.
In our current situation where none of it has a chance of becoming law, the glorious appropriations process Speaker Boehner and GOP leadership envision is tantamount to performing opposition research against themselves.