SEATTLE, WA - At a Habitat for Humanity ceremony today at which 50 mayors helped build a home for two Seattle families, Housing and Urban Development Deputy Secretary Saul Ramirez made the following comment about $2.5 billion in cuts approved on Wednesday by the House Appropriations Committee to HUD's proposed Fiscal Year 2001 budget:

"Once again some members of Congress are engaged in a full, frontal budgetary assault on programs to produce more housing, spark economic and community development and rebuild our nation's neighborhoods. Fewer families will be able to buy homes and more families will face housing crises. Indeed, at the very same time they are cutting programs vital to the poorest and most vulnerable Americans, these same members are proposing tax relief for the wealthiest Americans. The people and places in America left behind by our current economic boom will be left even further behind as a result of the Committee's action. Cuts, not compassion. That's their mantra."

Ramirez joined the mayors for the homebuild as part of the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting being held in Seattle.

The Committee's action on Wednesday included elimination of 120,000 new rental assistance vouchers; a $270 million cut in funds for public housing; a $400 million cut in Community Development Block Grants that invest in a broad range of community projects; a $37 million cut for the American Private Investment Corporation intended to spark economic development here at home; a $22 million cut in programs for the Mississippi Delta; a $30 million cut to reclaim polluted industrial sites called brownfields; a $7 million cut for housing and community development in rural communities; a $20 million cut in funds for faith-based and community organizations trying to produce affordable housing; a $65 million cut in the HOME homeownership expansion program; a $180 million cut in homeless assisstance programs; a $28 million cut in housing for people with AIDS;. a $35 million cut in drug elimination and gun violence reduction programs.