SB 8608: National Housing Trust Fund Expansion Act (Passed)

[YE]

Some background info:

https://nlihc.org/issues/nhtf

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/hr3221

https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/HFSC_NLIHC_Testimony_12_21_2018.pdf

From the testimony linked above...,

You must be logged in to read this quote.

(I can't quote more to avoid copyvio)

My take is this may not be corporate welfare in the worst sense but I'm weary of attempts to block grant stuff to the states when a Republican IRL proposed such after Bill Clinton being the jerk that he was signed a bill in 1996 to do block grant welfare to the states, considering Republicans control most state governments and thus in a position to do whatever their donors want. But in this game, it may not be as bad of an idea since no one here takes corporate PAC money to play a fake election game (although in this case we'd give money to the regions).

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Some background info:

https://nlihc.org/issues/nhtf

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/hr3221

https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/HFSC_NLIHC_Testimony_12_21_2018.pdf

From the testimony linked above...,

You must be logged in to read this quote.

(I can't quote more to avoid copyvio)

My take is this may not be corporate welfare in the worst sense but I'm weary of attempts to block grant stuff to the states when a Republican IRL proposed such after Bill Clinton being the jerk that he was signed a bill in 1996 to do block grant welfare to the states, considering Republicans control most state governments and thus in a position to do whatever their donors want. But in this game, it may not be as bad of an idea since no one here takes corporate PAC money to play a fake election game (although in this case we'd give money to the regions).

I actually agree with you to a large extent and yes we don't have to rely on the difficulties of money in politics or radical anti-government types bought and paid for by special interests running state governments for the sole purpose of strip mining wealth and redistributing it to the same special interests.

As for block grants, I have not really been fond of block grants and speaking as a federalist, this is where the empowering of the individual comes into play. For instance on health care we let the Regions have a lot of say in the number of variety of provider options on the exchanges but the money followed the individuals and thus these regionally designed alternatives to Atlascare had to compete for those subsidy dollars one by one.

I would not be sure how best to handle that with housing since you have to spend the money up front to build it, but I think in general terms having the money follow the individual and then letting the regions handle some other aspect is the best means to empower both the individuals and the regions and not one at the expense of the other.

But definitely to make a long story short, I am not fond of block grants either.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Also as to the recession, while I would agree that Clinton played by far the largest role in sowing the seeds for the 2008 recession (even while claiming credit for the 1990's economy and using it to pass himself off to the media as an economic expert in the early 2010's), it should be noted that his role in doing so was far more multi-faceted than just giving out loans to people who could not afford them.

He also deregulated derivatives leading to the proliferation of mortgage backed securities and prior to that signed Grahm-Leach-Bliley opening the door to the consolidation of banking firms. These two together are what turned the housing crisis itself into a global financial crisis as over exposed firms loaded up with MBS (throw in Credit Default Swaps and you have multiples of exposure), firms which are also fueling an economic expansion that was completely backed by debt. So when they tighten up lending in reaction to the housing collapse you have the credit crunch in summer 2007, you have the recession starting in December 2007 and finally the investment banks themselves becoming insolvent as early as Spring 2008.

Getting back to the whole debt fueled economic expansion, overlooked in all of this is the role played by outsourcing and gutting of American manufacturing and related jobs that were in turn supported by it. This didn't just effect rust belt, but also meant that a lot of sunbelt economies were through rural manufacturing, reductions in vacations, tourism, retirement and moving south etc. So you aren't just giving people loans they cannot afford, you are also sending their jobs to Mexico and China. At the same time the jobs are flowing out, there is massive flood of low skilled labor coming in as well reducing the few remaining manufacturing jobs from the high teens to just barely above minimum wage and flooding many of the construction fields as well.

These cannot be considered in isolation from each other as all of them played a role and both parties were involved in virtually all of these occurring as well.

[YE]

^Yea, I know, don't get me started on outsourcing and Grahm-Leach-Bliley, ect but I didn't include it in the original post because I didn't want to get off on a tangent too much especially since it is late at night and I need to head to bed. I'll rant about those when we get to bills to address those issues

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

^Yea, I know, don't get me started on outsourcing and Grahm-Leach-Bliley, ect but I didn't include it in the original post because I didn't want to get off on a tangent too much especially since it is late at night and I need to head to bed. I'll rant about those when we get to bills to address those issues

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=262631.msg5623064#msg5623064

While Glass-Steagal has been restored there is more work to be done as outlined at the time in that debate, linked above.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You know it says something when I have to debate the VP in the Senate. You know what means? It means there are five people not doing their jobs.

[wxtransit]

Where is the House and the Senate?

[Sestak]

I am still waiting for the sponsor to provide further evidence that this program can scale and why it's the best use of federal dollars even just related to housing.

[YE]

So, just to be sure here, are we okay with block granting money to the regions?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

What is the status/progress on this one, Pericles?

Like with the other one where I asked the same of Lech, I would prefer to have regular posted updates so we can see the progress and thereby judge estimated completion and assist with completion. Also could thus allow for us to determine if we need to proceed with this at a later time.

[YE]

What is the status/progress on this one, Pericles?

Like with the other one where I asked the same of Lech, I would prefer to have regular posted updates so we can see the progress and thereby judge estimated completion and assist with completion. Also could thus allow for us to determine if we need to proceed with this at a later time.

This bill I haven’t heard anyone discuss outside of this thread so AFAIK there haven’t been any efforts to modify this.

[Pericles]

What modifications were you expecting? I think we probably should wait for an analysis on this as to whether it passes Paygo, but I wasn't planning on changing the text of the bill.

[YE]

What modifications were you expecting? I think we probably should wait for an analysis on this as to whether it passes Paygo, but I wasn't planning on changing the text of the bill.

I wasn't expecting anything per se, but Yankee seemed to imply he was. Honestly, this bill is pretty simple and we just need to decide whether it's worth the money or not.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I

What modifications were you expecting? I think we probably should wait for an analysis on this as to whether it passes Paygo, but I wasn't planning on changing the text of the bill.

When in this case a status update would be whether or not the GM team has been contacted, how long that was ago and how long we can expect to wait to get a report.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Something I've noticed is that the practice of contacting the GM team via PM seems to have fallen by the wayside. I can't speak for Mr. R, but I have not once received an official request for a cost estimate, either by PM or via the GM office thread, and yet I am constantly seeing threads where legislators are 'waiting for a cost analysis.' I have been providing analyses when I can, such as the analyses I gave for the GAIN act and the Wage Insurance Act.

I'll just say here that any cost analyses involving tax code changes are going to be very rough until Mr. R and I receive more information about how corporate tax returns were calculated last year and in Truman's sketches from this fall.

However, a simple calculation shows that this doesn't pass paygo.

Last year, corporate tax revenues were 340 billion dollars. Let's assume that the entirety of this revenue came from the top marginal tax bracket.

Multiply 340 billion dollars by 1.005 (100.5%) and we get 341.7 billion dollars, or an increase of 1.7 billion dollars, which is less than the 5 billion dollars required in the bill.

Of course, the actual amount of money raised by a 0.5% increase in the top marginal corporate tax rate is much smaller than this, since 1) it is a marginal tax rate, 2) the lower brackets are not affected, and 3) the amount of revenue generated by the top bracket is less than the total corporate tax revenue. This exercise was simply to show that the revenue generated still falls far short even if such outrageously generous assumptions are made.

[Pericles]

Thank you for that info Encke. So it's clear we need alternative funding options, input from other Senators on this would be appreciated. I would also be open to reducing the expansion from $5 billion to $3.75 billion as per the irl proposal, if necessary.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

How about dropping it to the $1.7 billion that has funding present in the bill, at least for now. And then raising it to $3.75 billion once said funding in addition is found?

[Pericles]

How about dropping it to the $1.7 billion that has funding present in the bill, at least for now. And then raising it to $3.75 billion once said funding in addition is found?

I'm not sure if I'd be comfortable with the funding being that low. Sorry I should have gotten onto this earlier, I'd forgotten about this.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

How about dropping it to the $1.7 billion that has funding present in the bill, at least for now. And then raising it to $3.75 billion once said funding in addition is found?

I'm not sure if I'd be comfortable with the funding being that low. Sorry I should have gotten onto this earlier, I'd forgotten about this.

At this stage, you should be thinking in terms of what can I achieve in this moment. Because judging by the interest so far, this bill is likely to die once you leave office.

[Fmr. Representative Encke]

Sorry for being an idiot guys, I realize now that I made a really stupid error that only became apparent upon creation of a spreadsheet where I could manipulate the tax rates at will.

I was applying the 0.5% to corporate tax revenue numbers, when I should have been applying the increase to the income subject to tax, so the revenue multiplier should have been (0.285/0.28= 1.017), not 1.005 (i.e. a tax increase of 0.5% should produce a revenue increase of 1.7%).

With these changes made, and with the official corporate tax revenue numbers calculated (see the GM office), a 0.5% increase in the top bracket actually generates an increase of 5.9 billion in revenue, so this bill does in fact pass Paygo.

[Pericles]

Oh wow, thank you very much for that analysis and no worries about the error. So does the Senate have any further comments? Otherwise I plan to motion for a final vote.

[MAINEiac4434]

Oh wow, thank you very much for that analysis and no worries about the error. So does the Senate have any further comments? Otherwise I plan to motion for a final vote.

I think we should vote on this, and pass it.

[Pericles]

Very well I motion for a final vote.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Very well I motion for a final vote.

Senators have 24 hours to object to waiving cloture and proceeding immediately to  final vote.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

A Final vote is now open on the legislation, Senators Please vote Aye, Nay or Abstain.