Senator Mike Lee explained why he is offering an amendment defunding President Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation, in a speech on the Senate floor yesterday. (Video and transcript here.) Lee also explained why, despite appearances, the Collins amendment will do nothing to block AFFH.
Democratic and Republican senators who believe they can give themselves cover by voting for the deceptive Collins amendment had best think twice. AFFH is not an obscure regulation that will go on the books and be forgotten. It is a sweepingly transformative regulation that will stir up a major national controversy when it’s finally enforced by HUD. Once that happens, it will be impossible to take shelter in a recorded vote for the bogus Collins amendment. By that time, it will have become perfectly clear that Collins does nothing to restrict the abuses of AFFH.
AFFH is destined to be a voting issue in suburbs, small towns, and even mid-sized cities across America. Once that happens, senators who failed to stop it when they had the chance to do so by voting for the Lee amendment will pay the price.
— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He can be reached at comments.kurtz@nationalreview.com