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Floor Speech
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Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I want to begin by offering my sincere thanks to the chairman of the Finance Committee, my friend Senator Wyden of Oregon. I am honored to be on the floor with him today to talk about these housing issues and this really important bill, the Workforce Housing Tax Credit Act, which, as he already mentioned, is bipartisan and bicameral.
As Senator Wyden already mentioned, our country is facing a lot of challenges right now: inflation, fentanyl coming through our borders, national security threats all over the place overseas. But it is very obvious, and anyone reading the paper knows, that we are also experiencing in rural and urban America a severe housing crisis. Everywhere I travel in the great State of Alaska, I hear from Alaskans reeling from the scarcity of housing, and it is everywhere--Anchorage, Fairbanks, Sitka, Ketchikan, Kodiak--every single small rural village in my State. It is everywhere.
I know it is a big challenge in Oregon, but it is a big challenge all over the country, and it is a challenge that impacts low- and middle- income families. It stands as a stark obstacle to getting and keeping jobs, to having a family, to building communities. This is really foundational stuff in terms of what matters in communities--housing.
So solving this challenge has been one of my top priorities, and I really want to thank Senator Wyden and his team for being so patient in working with us--a really good partner here. This is going to take all kinds of solutions. There is no silver bullet here. It is going to take everybody pulling on the same oar--the Feds, State, private sector, Tribes, nonprofits--but this is an important start.
I actually hosted the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Marcia Fudge, in Alaska this past August. We held a roundtable and some meetings on urban housing issues and on rural housing issues. It was very well attended. I want to thank all of the Alaskans who took part. They weren't shy with Secretary Fudge--she got an earful--and there is a whole host of things we are going to follow up on with her: challenges dealing with overregulation from HUD, homelessness definitions, housing formulas for cities. But it was progress our getting her up to Alaska.
So this is progress. This is progress. What Senator Wyden and I have introduced is an exciting and creative bill that will broaden a tried- and-true Federal tax incentive program--the low-income housing tax credit.
This all started during the 1980s, during the Reagan administration. It is market-based. It is private sector-focused. It is a proven, successful formula that will help catalyze the private sector to build more housing in urban and rural areas for working families. That is why we actually named it the Workforce Housing Tax Credit Act. Teachers, law enforcement, first responders, nurses, healthcare officials, electricians--the backbone of so many communities--are, right now, priced out of the market to buy a home. Expanding the low-income housing credit will help address the core issues of not just homelessness and overcrowding in many places in Alaska, particularly in rural Alaska, but it will empower hard-working Alaskans to stay in our communities and build a more robust workforce.
Now, sometimes, when you bring legislation down on the Senate floor, you are not sure who is going to support it. Well, I am very proud to say that, back home in Alaska, this bill has enormous support-- liberals; conservatives; mayors; our Governor; the mayor of Anchorage, our biggest city; the chair of the Anchorage Assembly. I know these guys really well. They don't really get along on much, but they support this bill. We have Tribal groups. We have private sector groups. We have home builder groups. It is a super big list.
I think that is the signal for Senator Wyden and me that we are on to something here. We are on to something here. If there aren't homes in communities for hard-working families, then entire communities are shut off for growth. Housing is a catalyst for community and economic development and good jobs and pride in where you live.
This bill offers one solution that will actually lead to the construction of these kinds of housing developments. How do I know that? How can I say that? Because, as the chairman of the Finance Committee already said, we know this works. The low-income tax credit already works. We know that, and we are building on that program in the best way to ensure that the private sector will actually use this program to break open other bottlenecks for economic development.
Importantly, this bill provides flexibilities to States and developers to decide what is best for their communities. It is not a one-size-fits-all Washington mandate. We don't like those in Alaska. As I mentioned, it has broad support--bipartisan, bicameral.
Once again, to my friend from Oregon, I really want to thank Senator Wyden. He was very patient with me and my team as we had a number of edits. We were trying to make sure that this would work for America and Alaska. Sometimes, my State has some really unique challenges, and he accommodated so much and was very patient with us. You can tell, again, from the reaction of this broad-based group of stakeholders back home in my State, that this has a lot of support.
So I thank Senator Wyden again. I look forward to working with him and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in getting this over the goal line and addressing one of the big challenges in America that, I think, impacts every State in the country. This is one of the many tools we will use to try to address it.
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