At Carson Hearing, Waters Condemns Trump Administration’s Problematic Housing Proposals
Waters also addresses Chairman Hensarling’s comments on civility; highlights Trump’s past remarks promoting violence

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Financial Services, gave the following statement at a full committee hearing entitled, “Oversight of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.” This hearing follows Waters’ introduction of legislation to restore fair housing protections eliminated by Secretary Carson: 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman

Mr. Chairman, since Secretary Carson was last before this Committee, he has taken actions and issued proposals that are deeply problematic and harmful for vulnerable families and hardworking Americans.

He has released an outrageous plan that would triple rents for the lowest income households and put 1.7 million Americans at risk of eviction and homelessness.

He has also embraced steep budget cuts to important programs. The Trump Administration’s latest budget request to Congress would cut HUD’s budget by 21.5 percent compared to current levels, and would eliminate the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and the HOME Investment Partnerships (HOME) program.

I am also very concerned about the actions Secretary Carson has taken to undermine fair housing in this country.

Secretary Carson has stopped the implementation of HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which requires that federal agencies and recipients of federal housing funds take proactive steps to affirmatively further fair housing.

According to news reports, he has brought a halt to fair housing investigations and enforcement actions. He even proposed taking the phrase “inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination” out of HUD’s mission statement.

To address these harmful actions, I have introduced legislation to restore the fair housing protections that Secretary Carson and the Trump Administration have eliminated.

H.R. 6220, the Restoring Fair Housing Protections Eliminated by HUD Act of 2018, responds directly to each action that Secretary Carson has taken to undermine fair housing. Congress should not stand by while the agency charged with ensuring fair housing turns its back on its mission and takes actions that roll back critical protections that ensure that all Americans have fair access to housing.

So I thank the Secretary for coming today and I look forward to hearing his testimony on these important issues.

And, as to the Chairman’s comments about civility and about what he would do if he owned a restaurant, let me just say that I think every reasonable person has concluded that the President of the United States of America has advocated violence.

He has been divisive and he has been the one that has caused what we see happening today where people are trying to push back on his policies and where people are trying to have peaceful protests instead of violence, but he continues to call names and he continues to challenge people in very violent ways.

I’ll quote to you some of his sayings.

During his campaign, I quote, he said, “I’d like to knock the crap out of him.”

Further, he said, “You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out in a stretcher, folks.”

In addition to that, he also talked about the fact that if someone was hurt while they were being assaulted as he was encouraging them to do, he said this "So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them. “Seriously,” Trump said. “Just knock the hell out of them. I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise.”

So, Mr. Chairman, if you want to talk about civility, you start with the President of the United States and implore him not to continue to promote violence and not to continue to promote divisiveness and then I think he would be a better example and people would follow a better example rather than get trapped into what he’s advocating which is pure violence.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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