Vote Explanation

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I wish to state for the record that, though the difficulties of traveling across the country in the midst of the current coronavirus pandemic made it impossible for me to present in the Capitol to vote on the nomination Brian D. Montgomery, of Texas, to be Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, I would have voted `nay' had I been present.

Few things create a stronger foundation for a thriving, successful families than affordable housing. Study after study has shown that children who grow up in a stable home do better in school and are more successful over the course of their lives. Stable affordable housing builds strong neighborhoods and communities because the members of that community are invested in its success. For generations of Americans, homeownership has been a driving force behind the building of a strong middle class, helping families build wealth through the equity generated through homeownership.

As the son of a union mechanic, I experienced this throughout my own life. My father's wages were enough to afford a modest ranch home in a blue collar Oregon community. And because of that house and that community, I was given all kinds of opportunities. I was allowed to explore my interests, whether it was taking machines apart and putting them back together again in my dad's garage or exploring the great outdoors as a Boy Scout. I was able to receive a good public education and go on to be the first in my family to graduate from college.

But far too many Americans don't have those same opportunities today. That is because the goal of affordable housing, whether buying a house or renting a decent apartment, is out of reach for too many working and middle-class families and falling further out of reach with every day that passes. Prior to this pandemic, we saw rents and home prices rising twice as fast as worker's incomes. Today, the cost of a typical single-family home is four times greater than the median household income.

We need a Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development who will make it a priority to reverse the trajectory that we have been on and to actually make housing more affordable in America. This position is responsible for management of all day-to-day operations within HUD, including roughly 7,700 employees. They oversee a budget of approximately $50 billion that funds a number of programs meant to provide quality, affordable housing for lower income Americans, provides rental assistance for low-income families, and distributes grants to states and communities for various housing-related purposes and also enforces the Fair Housing Act.

Brian Montgomery is not the person for the job.

In his current role as the FHA Commissioner, Mr. Montgomery has supported policies from the Trump administration that would increase the cost of FHA loans and include risk-based pricing, continuing to make homeownership even less affordable for those who can least afford it. He was also part of the senior leadership team that published a rule that would help undermine enforcement of the Fair Housing Act through the Disparate Impact Study. The disparate impact standard is a longstanding tool used to root out policies and practices that may not be openly discriminatory on their face, but disproportionally harm a protected class under the Fair Housing Act. The proposed rule that Mr. Montgomery helped create--and which is vigorously opposed by a coalition of fair housing, civil rights, and consumer groups--rigs the system to make it nearly impossible for a victim of discrimination to win a disparate impact claim.

A person who has used his current position to make it harder for low- and middle-income Americans to afford to buy a home should not serve in a top-tier position as the equivalent of the Department of Housing and Urban Development's chief financial officer. We need individuals in these positions fighting to get families into homes, not pushing that dream further and further out of reach. Therefore, I oppose Mr. Montgomery's nomination to serve as the Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and would have voted nay, had I been able to be present.

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