Mr. ASHLEY. Mr. Chairman, I want to point out that on the basis of a Federal investment of $735 million to date of action grant funds over $4.5 billion of private capital has been generated-and this goes to the colloquy that took place before I came to the well-where none otherwise would have taken place. Despite what the General Accounting Office either says or does not quite say, there have been over 170,000 new permanent jobs created where none existed before. More than 78,000 jobs will be retained as a consequence of the applications approved to date. Over $160 million in annual local tax resources will be generated where none otherwise would have been raised. These are the reasons, Mr. Chairman, that I am urging support of the committee approach and the rejection of the amendment of the gentleman from Pennsylvania. Let me conclude by saying I have a brief that I would like to present had I time, against the so-called study by the General Accounting Office. A more concise mish-mash of misinformation I have seldom seen. With regard to the action grant program in Toledo, the General Accounting Office says, just to give you an illustration of GAO misinformation, that Owens-Illinois is Toledo's major employer and the Toledo Trust Co.'s major customer wrong on both counts. Absolutely wrong on both counts. It is not our largest employer and it is by nomeans the principal customer of the bank in question. The General Accounting Office says that Owens-Illinois did not consider any alternative sites before deciding on investing $100 million in Toledo. Wrong again. All kinds of alternatives were explored in depth, and I have the backup data at the desk to prove it. Who is wrong? The General Accounting Office is wrong, absolutely inaccurate in that assertion. The GAO also asserts Owens-Illinois planned to developed the site prior to the granting of the UDAG grant. Wrong again. One hundred percent wrong on the facts. Mr. Chairman, if this is the kind of example that is illustrative of the General Accounting Office study, I can then understand why the gentleman from North Carolina would take the well and express the concern that he did. This is slipshod workmanship on the part of a respected arm of the Congress, and frankly, I resent it. The program we have put in place should not be subject to this kind of shabby workmanship in terms of the analysis provided by the General Accounting Office. Mr. Chairman, I would urge that the amendment of the gentleman from Pennsylvania be rejected, that we move forward with a program that has won the plaudits of communities across the country, a program that, in fact, has achieved precisely what it set out to do, which is to promote the investment of private capital in our cities which are most desperately in need of assistance. Mr. ROUSSELOT. Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman yield? Mr. ROUSSELOT. I appreciate my distinguished colleague yielding. Mr. ROUSSELOT. Because I know on previous occasions he has usually utilized some of their material. But, did the gentleman have any oversight hearings in his committee to disprove what they said? Mr. ASHLEY. No, we did not have time. Mr. ROUSSELOT. Then, how does the gentleman know they are not right? Mr. ASHLEY. Because we have gone to the Department involved and I have asked for the workpapers of the General Accounting Office. Mr. ROUSSELOT. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield further? Mr. ASHLEY. Yes, I will yield to the gentleman. Mr. ROUSSELOT. I appreciate my colleague's yielding. I never have seen him quite so excited. As I understand it, the General Accounting Office went out to visit several UDAG projects, well over 100? Mr. ASHLEY. NO. Mr. ROUSSELOT. Seventeen projects. Excuse me. Mr. ASHLEY. Seventeen. The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman has expired. (At the request of Mr. ROUSSELOT, and by unanimous consent, Mr. ASHLEY was allowed to proceed for 3 additional minutes.) Mr. ROUSSELOT. If the gentleman will yield further, can the gentleman tell us, did he review those projects that were investigated by the General Accounting Office? Mr. ASHLEY. I have had an opportunity to go over their findings, and that is all. I think that this information came to us in the last 48 hours or so. What I have had an opportunity to do is to review the findings with respect to the city of Toledo, get at the methodology used by the General Accounting Office, and on the basis of that example, I am putting in question the accuracy and the validity of the findings in the other 16. Mr. VENTO. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield? Mr. ASHLEY. I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota. Mr. VENTO. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I want to associate myself with the remarks of the chairman in the well. I think he has done an excellent job in terms of laying out the fundamental difference between the UDAG program and the community development program, the difference in terms of leveraging. One of the criticisms in this GAO special document was the amount of dollars that were spent on a per capita basis in varied UDAG grants. In other words, this program can provide substantial assistance on a one-shot initiative, based upon the conditions in a business commitment to attract business and industry into a community. It was just such criticism that the General Accounting Office revealed in terms of this report; was it not? Mr. ASHLEY. Yes. Mr. VENTO. And there is no relationship. The precision of this program is to be able to inject a large amount of money, a larger amount of private capital, industry, and jobs into a community where they would not qualify, for instance, on an entitlement basis under the community development program, where the gentleman from Pennsylvania wants to shift some $200 million. What he is suggesting basically is to put $4 billion into community development and to leave somewhat less than a half billion dolars in the UDAG program, that we think is one of the only current Federal initiatives, the only basis that we have, to stimulate some economic development. Is that not right? Mr. ASHLEY. The gentleman is entirely right. If we were to take the logic of the gentleman from Pennsylvania-and this has been suggested by others-and we were to transfer the UDAG funds into the community development program, all it would mean is that those cities that are eligible for automatic allocation of funds would receive slightly more money for community development, but in no instance would there then be sufficient funds in any community to undertake the kind of economic development that is possible under the UDAG program. That is why these are complementary, mutually supportive programs. Mr. VENTO. Is that not a program where we have a competitivegrant basis, where we can look at these projects, analyze them, and make some decisions? The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman has expired. (At the request of Mr. VENTO, and by unanimous consent, Mr. ASHLEY was allowed to proceed for 4 additional minutes.) Mr. ASHLEY. The gentleman is right, and here I think it can be said that the quality of review of the UDAG applications has improved very substantially since the beginning of the program. One would expect so, but the fact is at the present time there is a most intensive kind of review procedure. What causes me anguish is the fact that the General Accounting Office has taken the view that if it is in balance as to whether or not a corporation would have located in a community in any event, they assume that that corporation would have located there in any event and, therefore, they conclude that few, if any, jobs are created or retained. It is almost as if they had set out to discredit the program. Mr. VENTO. If the gentleman will yield further, the community development program was one that brought together many different categorical initiatives that permitted some Federal discretion at the national level, and the community development program provided funds on an entitlement basis on a noncompetitive basis to assure continuity of community development in various segments of our urban communities and rural communities. Mr. ASHLEY. The gentleman is right. Mr. VENTO. This program is one of the last programs that we have which permit HUD to provide some opportunity for oversight, some competitive basis in terms of the merits of various programs, plus the necessity and the urgency of establishing that industrial base, establishing that productive base in our urban communities. Many communities, of course, qualify; others do not. In fact, it is very conceivable, is it not, in the purview of this program, and looking over the criteria, that there may be additional communities in the future that may or may not qualify for this program? So we are really not talking about a static base but really a very dynamic one in which communities may be coming in, with the opportunity to participate in UDAG based upon where they are relative to economic development criteria. So I think it would really be taking away from many communities that have not had the benefits of this program to cut it back at this time; would it not? Mr. ASHLEY. The gentleman is right. There has been a question as to the capacity of the Department and of the UDAG program to absorb modestly greater funding at this time. Anybody with those ideas should be disabused of them because the program is limited in its resources and its ability to provide meaningful assistance to many of our severely distressed communities. Apropos of the gentleman's question, the program is limited to severely distressed communities, and in our efforts to date we have scratched the surface, but we have by no means come to grips or really been responsive on a broad basis to the needs of hundreds upon hundreds of severely distressed communities that so badly need business and commerce and industry. Mr. VENTO. If the gentleman will yield further, less resources rather than inequitable resources can mean we are going to be able to do less for them; is that right? Mr. ASHLEY. The gentleman is entirely right. Mr. VENTO. I thank the gentleman. Mr. STANTON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I rise in support of the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I think it is appropriate that we take a minute to put ourselves in proper perspective. I think the colloquy we have had in the last 5 or 10 minutes has been outstanding. It has made me think more of the problems of UDAG than I have ever thought about before, because there has been the general consensus in our committee that this report had just come out and we had promised to have oversight on UDAG. But what does the pending amendment do? To listen to the advocates here in the last 10 or 15 minutes, one would think somebody was out to kill the UDAG program. Believe me, I have in front of me an amendment that does exactly that: On page 3, strike out line 20 and all thereafter. And I am sitting over here on this side of the aisle discouraging people from offering this amendment, saying, gosh, give this program a try. What do we mean by "give it a try?" What we simply do is take a program that is funded at $400 million and we increase that by 19 percent. What the gentleman's amendment does is decrease it from a 70-percent increase in this program down to 19percent increase, the most modest approach that I can possibly think of under a program that is especially so under attack by members of a different committee, and which our committee has agreed it is going to take a look at. I have never heard the author of the amendment say anything strongly against UDAG. I see my neighbor and friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. SEIBERLING), will speak on the amendment. It is a very good and excellent program in Akron, Ohio, that has helped the city greatly. All we are asking in this amendment is to take a look at it, give us time, and slow down the program, not to the same level but a 19percent increase, a most modest approach. Before I leave the well, let me assure the Members that there are strong emotions that are carried out of this committee. When we stop Mr. ASHLEY. Mr. Chairman, I want to point out that on the basis of a Federal investment of $735 million to date of action grant funds over $4.5 billion of private capital has been generated-and this goes to the colloquy that took place before I came to the well-where none otherwise would have taken place. Despite what the General Accounting Office either says or does not quite say, there have been over 170,000 new permanent jobs created where none existed before. More than 78,000 jobs will be retained as a consequence of the applications approved to date. Over $160 million in annual local tax resources will be generated where none otherwise would have been raised. These are the reasons, Mr. Chairman, that I am urging support of the committee approach and the rejection of the amendment of the gentleman from Pennsylvania. Let me conclude by saying I have a brief that I would like to present had I time, against the so-called study by the General Accounting Office. A more concise mish-mash of misinformation I have seldom seen. With regard to the action grant program in Toledo, the General Accounting Office says, just to give you an illustration of GAO misinformation, that Owens-Illinois is Toledo's major employer and the Toledo Trust Co.'s major customer wrong on both counts. Absolutely wrong on both counts. It is not our largest employer and it is by no means the principal customer of the bank in question. The General Accounting Office says that Owens-Illinois did not consider any alternative sites before deciding on investing $100 million in Toledo. Wrong again. All kinds of alternatives were explored in depth, and I have the backup data at the desk to prove it. Who is wrong? The General Accounting Office is wrong, absolutely inaccurate in that assertion. The GAO also asserts Owens-Illinois planned to developed the site prior to the granting of the UDAG grant. Wrong again. One hundred percent wrong on the facts. Mr. Chairman, if this is the kind of example that is illustrative of the General Accounting Office study, I can then understand why the gentleman from North Carolina would take the well and express the concern that he did. This is slipshod workmanship on the part of a respected arm of the Congress, and frankly, I resent it. The program we have put in place should not be subject to this kind of shabby workmanship in terms of the analysis provided by the General Accounting Office. Mr. Chairman, I would urge that the amendment of the gentleman from Pennsylvania be rejected, that we move forward with a program that has won the plaudits of communities across the country, a program that, in fact, has achieved precisely what it set out to do, which is to promote the investment of private capital in our cities which are most desperately in need of assistance. Mr. ROUSSELOT. Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman yield? Mr. ROUSSELOT. I appreciate my distinguished colleague yielding. |