Nothing on immigration except executive orders. Nothing on infrastructure even oh the democrats followed the four corners of his proposal. 1 trillion over four years put into paper and no written real plan which includes public transport, highways and bridges and water and sewer and housing and airports and all the courts and things we do and doing it right on infrastructure and public works. We are still all waiting and the president has made a lot of speeches. Last night he was not as combat tv combative and we are applaud that. Repeal and replace the Affordable Care act . What does that mean . He hasnt given anything specific. They are voting on reveal and replace for more than half a decade and dont have a plan. They said listen to the governor of my home state, the state where the presiding officer grew up. They said listen to that republican governor who admires his colleagues dont repeal the Affordable Care act unless you have a way to take care of 700,000 ohioans. Not to mention a hundred thousand who will lose insurance on their Parents Health care plan and not to mention the 100,000 on the exchanges and the 100,000 seniors who are saving on their prescription drugs. Not to mention a million ohio seniors who get free diabetes screenings and physicals. They have no proposals to replace any of those surfaces. They talk about state lines and Health Savings accounts and talk about tort reform and that is like this many people compared to this many people. They know that. Yet, i still hear this talk of obstructionism. Give us stuff. Give us legislative proposal. The system majority leader started off by talking about, i guess a slow walk of this. I am on the Banking Committee last year with the committee and last year it was more than two dozen, 27 . 28 . 2530 nominees came from the president , some were very significant export import bank. Some were inspector generals. All nominees, more than two dozen of them, one of them was confirmed by the senate last year. One of 28 or so of our committee. He was confirmed in december on the 24th month of the twoyear term. So, dont lecture us about people slow walking and obstructionism. More than 25 nominees and one confirmed. Sec, didnt move. Federal reserve, didnt move. Transportation Public Transit administrat administrator, didnt move. One thing after another. The under second for terrorism in financial crimes didnt move even though he was originally a bush nominee and promoted in the obama years. He would not even come to a vote because of whatever reason that the Banking Committee didnt move. We dont need that lecture. More important, mr. President , on these nominees. We all know the history. When i look at criticism and why arent these nominees all passed look about sixeight months ago. Every president ial candidate until the last election puts together a Transition Team in august. Candidate trump began to do that but not with much serioar seriousness. He fired the person doing this Transition Team in november and had to start again. He had no people ready to go on these nominations. What in fact he was going to do with all these cabinet positions. Then, after that he really didnt vet, analyze, look at the background of these nominees. So if they didnt do it, usually the president s people look at these nominees and analyze and see how corrupt they are, if they have conflicts of interest, qualified they are. They didnt do that in this administration because apparently they didnt have time. They nominate these people and we have never seen this many conflicts of interest and this kind of wealth and this many billionaires appointed to a cabinet. Just out of the finance committee the secretary of health and Human Services he bought and sold Health Care Stocks for the company he was working on with the floor of the house representatives. He is working on bills and amendments yet he bought and sold hundreds of thousands of Health Care Stock and didnt tell the committee the full story. Secretary of treasury, he had a hundred Million Investment he forgot to report. Maybe, maybe somebody out there would forget if they had a hundred Million Investment they might forget they had it but most americans wouldnt forget. He lied to the committee about robo signings and this is directly related to this nomination hundreds of ohioans, maybe thousands, lost their homes, including in the presiding officers city lost homes because of these signings. Many of these nominees are unqualified for the job, many have conflicts of interest, many have complex portfolios that take a long time to sort through. That is the reason for the delay and accusing of anything else is playing politics. I am there nominate for the conformation of dr. Carson. I vote for a number of nominees when i think they can offer s e something to the country and i voted against the out of step, far right, radical nominees and that list is much longer with this president than any president in history. Dr. Carson had a distinguished career as a pediatric neuro surgeon. We know his life story is well known. But he is not the nominee i would have chosen to lead hud. He is not the nominee, in fact, probably any president in my lifetime would have chosen because he has nee experience with the housing and Community Development field, made troubling statements on Public Policy issues prior to nomination. My colleagues in the Banking Committee asked dr. Carson direct questions ability his views now he is the nominee for secretary of hud. I will give dr. Carson the benefit of the doubt and that is why i am voting for him because he made commitments to me in person sitting in my office and commitments in the banking housing and urban Affairs Committee in his testimony and written responses. These include his promise to address the lead hazards that threaten ohio and other state, he pledged to uphold the housing rights and acts of lgbtq individuals. That wasnt what his past has been. He has said comments i find offensive or worse about gay people in this country but he made the commitment under oath to our committee he would fight any discrimination against people because of their sexual orientation. He as pledged to advocate for rental assistance and invest in homelessness and pledged to push for housing in the president s infrastructure plans. Those are commitments he made under oath and commitments i will hold him true in spite of his prior philosophy of government and someone of the comments he might have made in the past. My job is to hold him accountable for this. The job of everybody in the senate and both parties is to hold him accountable. Mr. President , i want to have it printed in the record his written responses to questions i asked him to clarify and signupment i would emphasize while it has been called banking the last two years, but the full committees name is banking, housing and urban affairs. It is important to remember that. It is responsible for housing policy. I see how important it is for the people in ohio and kroos the country. Hud is charged with enforcing fair housing laws and have been a partner in efforts to ple prevent homelessness for the veterans, chronically homeless and the elderly and people with disabilities. It helps people find a place to call home and it is something that should be a right. Hud helps cities and towns revitalize neighborhoods, promotes lead safe healthy housing for children. There is still a great challenge in states like mine with lead paint in old homes threaten so many children. In my hometown of cleveland and where i grew up in mansfield in city after city and community after community in my state there are lots and lots of older homes. In the city of cleveland, well over half the homes are at least 60 years old. I asked someone from the Cleveland Health department what percentage of those homes have toxic levels of lead and he said 99 . Understand old homes in this country, homes that are 6080 years in many homes fall in that category, they overwhelming have t toxic levels of led. My support for dr. Carson centers around the fact he may not know much about housing policy yet and i am hopeful in the tour tee he takes to might state he will learn more. But as a brain surgeon, he knows what lead does to small children. 77 counties where as many as 13 children are poisoned because of the age and condition of the housing stock. 13 children has her or his physical and emotional and Mental Development sometimes arrested or slowed because of lead poisoning. To the federal housing administration, led works with lenders to help credit buyers help establish a mortgage and buy a home. Fha played a counter cycle role in helping during the crisis. It has since receded to the typical share but essential for many first time home buyers. Housing and Communities Development have grown and the need for affording housing has grown. The demand for rental units increased and wages stagnated. The market alone is not producing sufficient housing for families and those on fixed income. The studies demonstrated people who perform essential work, childcare teachers, school bus drivers, retail workers, people working fulltime and just as hard as the staff in front of me, people working just as hard as people that have titles like i do, many of them simply cant afford to rent in the communities they serve. Half of all renters in this country, half of the people that rent pay more than 30 of their income for housing. A quarter of all renters, 25 , 11 Million People in this country pay more than half their income for rent. If you are paying 55 of your income in rent and one bad thing happens a sick child, your plant lays off for two weeks any number of things, your roof leaks, any number of things can happen and when you are living on the edge when half your income is for housing. You lose your home and get evicted. These burdens are more severe at the bottom of the income spectrum. Among low pinup come income. Many end up on years long waiting lists. Government extends a hand to some of these families but not enough. That needs to change. Despite the growing need for Affordable Housing we risk loosing the affordable resources we have to due to physical decline or the end of longterm affordable contracts with property owners. Families burdens by how high housing cost and fewer Resources Available to meet other needs like transportation to work and food and medicine and even face eviction and homelessness. 500,000 people are homelessness on any given night in january 2016. 550,000 people are homeless on any night in january 2016. Education data which includes families double up for economic reas reasons indicate 1. 4 Million School children and families were homeless during the 20132014 school year. Think about that. These kids, some exposed to lead and have learning disabilities, others eat breakfast and School Lunches because they dont eat well on the weekends and at night and in addition 1. 4 million are homeless. Matthew desmond wrote a book called evicted. He signed his book to me. It is a book from milwaukee in a poor, white neighborhood and a poor black neighborhood and he wrote about people he got to know and spent enough time he got to know people. When he signed the book he wrote home equals life. If you dont have a decent place to live and none of this in this camber have that challenge. When you get evicted your kids have to move to it is troubling for them. One last point, mr. President , i look forward to working with colleagues in the administration. The president proposed one trillion investment in infrastructure including housing to jump start the conversation about the president s proposed infrastructure package my colleagues and i announced a blueprint to rebuild americas infrastructure. I find it interesting the system, democrats are obinstr t obinstruct obstructionism when the republicans havent put anything on housing or health care. We dont even know what he is talking about than saying democrats put our tenyear plan forward hoping the president s within plan can match up and we can together. We can invest in american infrastructure to improve water and housing and creating thousands of good paying union jobs in construction and manufacture. Even though the president in his prior life is a business man, served suits and sold tablewear and glassware. The president now he is president the issues is not his own priefs business. If there is ohio in iron or aluminum or concrete or any kind of product it should be made by American Workers if puerto ri s ricos taxpayers are playing for it. Our blue print includes hundred million to rebuild mainstream. It will bring down property values. I will vote for ben carson for secretary of hud. It was not my choice but he is someone who is on accomplished man and i count on him to help us address this lead problem and count on him to stand with us as he pledged to deal with the lead issue and i count on him to uphold the fair housing right and i count on him to push to include housing in the president s infrastructure plan. If the president is going to increase defense by 50 billion and cut a whole host of housing and urban problems i count on this nominee, he promised our committee and he said it in private meetings and Public Meetings we will hold them accountable. I plan to vote yes. Coming up tonight, members of congress on the challenges of funding infrastructure projects. Tonight, we join the Washington PressFoundation Annual dinner with remarks from tim scott and louisiana congressman cedrick wilson. And later, we hear from the president trumps choice for director of