Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner testified before a Senate Appropriations Committee panel on Trump‘s fiscal 2027 budget request, with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand growingly increasingly frustrated when Turner kept pathetically pivoting to Joe Biden. Turner played the role of a guy who couldn't get off-script, but Gillibrand repeatedly called him out.
Turner immediately defaulted right back to "During the Biden administration—" like a broken record with only one track.
"And what I will say, and I offer this, is number one, the point in time report in the Biden administration HUD said that we had 770,000 people in America that were homeless at one given time," Turner said. "And this is with record funding. So we have record funding, but yet we have an increase in street homelessness."
"So what is your record?" Gillibrand asked. "You've had this job for well over a year. I just want to know, did you get the number down? Do we have 700,000 homeless still, or is it a million or a million point five?"
"So I get you want to do things differently, and this committee will support you as long as the goals are good, but where are the results?" she continued. "The report is delayed over a year, over a year, and I just don't want to hear about what you don't like about the Biden administration. You're in charge. You have a vision. Let's see it. Let's see the results."
"And you know, I do," Turner said. "And I thank God I'm in charge so we can do stuff different because the plays that were ran before I got here, they failed. You said I have been here a little bit over a year, but you all had during the Biden administration four years."
"Stop talking about Biden!, Gillibrand said. "Talk about your record. This is so, this is so, this is so inaccurate, unhelpful, and doesn't let this committee do our job."
"If I may, the point in time report would be out by now if we did not have an unprecedented government shutdown. It would be out by now," Turner said. "If we went in constant litigation, it will be out by now. HUD has a great form. We have a great team, and we move very expeditiously."
"In what way does litigation, Mr. Secretary, I think you're obfuscating," Gillibrand shot back.
"I'm not obfuscating," Turner insisted. "The point-in-time report would be out right now if we did not have a government shutdown. Irregardless of all of that, during the Biden administration, record funding, oh my God, if you talk about it, it's like record funding, it's like children saying, I didn't do it. My brother did it."
Sure, Scott, so maybe Trump Republicans shouldn't have shut the government down. Democrats sought to avoid government shutdowns by demanding the protection of key social programs, particularly extending Obamacare subsidies, and now, a huge percentage of Americans are going without health care because of that, or getting second or third jobs. Eviction moratoriums during the pandemic were a contribution to homelessness while Biden was at the helm, after he inherited a hot mess due to Trump's bungling of COVID. See, we can play this game, too?
