HUD targeted as budget pressures grow
nike shoes store Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney was overheard earlier this week saying he might eliminate the Housing and Urban Development Department.President Obama’s advisers say he is trying to preserve HUD’s support for housing aid, but advocates for the poor say his budget plans would raise rents on very-low-income Americans and could cause some families to lose assistance.In this age of austerity, whoever wins the presidential election will have to make tough decisions about where to find budget savings, and housing advocates worry that HUD could be a top target, at a time when the agency is already under stress.The agency’s difficulty in meeting needs has grown only tougher with the onset five years ago of a national housing downturn, which pushed unemployment sharply higher. Rents also increased, as more people lost their homes to foreclosure or were shut out of buying a home and sought rental housing instead.In 2009, 4.6 million poor people received aid while 14.3 million still needed it, according to HUD and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, citing the most recent statistics available. Obama and Romney face pressure to target budget savings to tame the nation’s debt. The president and Congress agreed last summer to set historically tight caps on domestic spending.
jordan sports shoes In addition, deep cuts will take effect next year unless lawmakers agree to raise taxes or find other savings. Some elements of the safety-net will be spared — Medicaid and food stamps — but not HUD. “HUD is in a much more precarious, dangerous place than many other programs,” said Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan told Congress last month that the administration had been forced to make decisions it did not want to make and urged lawmakers to increase revenues to avoid burdening the poorest families even more.“Protecting current families required us to make choices we would not have made in a different environment,” he said.Still, there are profound differences between how Obama and Romney are likely to deal with the budget pressures.Romney may seek to abolish HUD, and though he hasn’t given many details, he has signaled support for the domestic spending approach embraced by House Republicans. That approach dramatically reduces spending on programs such as housing assistance, which would likely mean that far fewer low-income people have access to rental aid.“Gov. Romney is committed to finding areas in the federal government where he can increase efficiency and reduce spending. He is also interested in returning to the states responsibility and resources for programs that they can more efficiently and effectively administer,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said. When Romney was overheard by reporters at a private fundraiser saying he’d eliminate HUD, Obama’s campaign pounced. “In order to fund his $5 trillion tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, he would make deep cuts in programs essential to the middle class like .?.?. housing,” spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement. Obama’s a
nike Air Max LeBronpproach is to try to keep providing aid to everyone currently receiving assistance, officials say, avoiding cuts in rental aid next year. But housing advocates say the approach is inadequate, in part because it would require poor families to come up with more rent money.The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which is close to the White House, said the president’s plan has features that are “harmful to low-income families.” The National Low Income Housing Coalition said it relies on “lowest income Americans to bear part of the burden of deficit reduction.”Advocates of additional rental aid say the president tried to protect the housing safety net. But they say it doesn’t provide enough money to continue aid to all people whose rent is subsidized by the government. As many as 55,000 low-income families could lose aid, according to CBPP. The White House disputes this conclusion.Part of the way the administration tries to make up for the funding gap is by increasing the minimum monthly rent that must be paid by recipients of aid to $75. But critics say that could require $25 or $50 more in monthly rental costs, a huge burden on people earning just a few hundred dollars a month.“The great majority of them would see a rent increase of 50 percent or more per month,” said Douglas Rice, senior policy analyst at CBPP. “It’s increased hardship for families.
nike Zoom LeBronIt’s less money for food and transportation.”Adrianne Todman, executive director of the D.C. Housing Authority, said the agency houses more than 50,000 District residents with funds that overwhelmingly come from the federal government. She said any further cuts in funding would be “detrimental to the folks that we serve,” particularly because organizations like hers have been wrestling with growing demand and shrinking resources for years. “We’ve learned to adapt,” Todman said. “But you can only adapt so much, then you begin to have to shut down services and shut down your capacity to be a landlord.”Todman said she has no doubt that leaders at HUD, in the Obama administration and many lawmakers on Capitol Hill care about the mission of public housing. Still, she said, “The issue that they face is the economic situation. Right now, there’s a push to preserve what we have.” Though the deadline for the April 17 special election is history, King County Elections officials continue to reach out to voters to resolve signature issues on ballots from the all-mail contest.Staffers compare the signatures on returned ballot envelopes against the signature on file in voter registrations. If the elections office receives unsigned ballots, officials attempt to contact the affected voters to resolve the problem. Signature problems must be resolved before the election is certified April 27.“
wholesale nike training shoesSo far, voter turnout has been a little higher than we anticipated, which is very positive,” King County Elections Director Sherril Huff said in a statement.Officials said more than 54,000 voters returned ballots for the special election by April 12 — more than the average at the same point in other special elections.The elections office mailed 236,000 ballots to voters in the districts participating in special elections. Officials expect a 34 percent return rate, or about 80,000 ballots for the half-dozen government entities involved in the election.The elections office started to receive marked ballots days after the office mailed blank forms to voters in late March.The agency started processing ballots upon receipt, but law prohibits elections staffers from tabulating results before 8 p.m. Election Day. In the run-up to the deadline, staffers open ballots and check voters’ signatures in a secure location at the elections headquarters in Renton.In the Issaquah School District, the electorate faced a choice on a $219 million school construction bond in the election. (The school district stretches from Preston to Newcastle, and from Sammamish to Renton.)In order to pass, the measure needs to receive a 60 percent yes vote from a minimum turnout of 12,229 voters.Issaquah School District officials opted not to pay to include a voters’ pamphlet alongside ballots.The bond measure attracted broad support from community and government leaders. City Council members in Issaquah and Sammamish endorsed the proposal. So did the Issaquah Chamber of Commerce.
discount nike running shoesThe last measures the school district put before voters, a 2010 levy package, garnered more than 60 percent of the vote — 66 percent for a maintenance and operations levy, 64 percent for a transportation item, and 66 percent for a technology and repairs levy. Turnout reached 40 percent in the February 2010 special election.In addition to the Issaquah School District, school districts in Mercer Island and Renton also put bond measures before voters on the April 17 ballot. Enumclaw, South King Fire & Rescue and the Auburn Transportation Benefit District sent measures to voters as well.But Republican strategists hope that if their party can be seen as sympathetic and solution-oriented on this emotional issue, Latinos can get to the rest of their message.“Hispanics are concerned with the economy first and foremost, but if they perceive a party and its candidates to be hostile to an issue like immigration reform, it disallows the conversation to move forward in any meaningful way,” Danny Diaz, an aide to McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, told The Hill newspaper last month. “Republicans have been hurt by the tone and tenor of the conversation.
air jordan retro shoesThere’s no disputing that.”As the lead advocate for a GOP-sponsored DREAM Act, Rubio could help Romney overcome Hispanic resistance to his candidacy, Republicans say.In Romney’s remarks Sunday night at a fundraiser in Palm Beach, Fla., the presumptive GOP nominee said he and other Republicans will make the case that theirs is the party of “opportunity,” according to The Wall Street Journal.Romney typically has been adamant about vetoing the existing version of the DREAM Act, but in January he showed a willingness to compromise. At a Republican debate, he said he would support legislation that provided legal status to some undocumented immigrants who join the US military.Republicans don’t need to win a majority of the Latino vote to win the presidency, they just need to hit 40 percent – a benchmark that the second President Bush reached in both of his campaigns. Large swaths of the Latino vote, the largest minority voting bloc, are located in states that are already solidly red or blue (Texas, California, and New York). But several key battleground states have large Hispanic populations, starting with Florida and including Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and Virginia.
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