Ben Carson kicks off Ohio tour
U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson endorsed his agency’s mission on Wednesday, but declined to say whether it would suffer under $6 billion in budget cuts proposed by President Donald Trump.
Carson, a one-time contender for the Republican presidential nomination, spent the day in Columbus, touring low-income housing and meeting with local officials, as he started a three-day visit to Ohio.
Carson toured the Commons at Livingston, a 100-bed facility on the East Side that links veterans to federal housing services, calling its residents “absolutely thrilled” with their accommodations.
Earlier in the day before the Ohio Housing Council, Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, spoke passionately about the duty to coordinate federal services to help the disadvantaged. He said he wanted programs “that look at the whole person rather than just putting them in a house.”
HUD finances public housing for the poor, subsidizes rent for lowand moderate-income families and provides assistance to purchase homes. The agency also provides funding to state and local governments for improvement projects in poor neighborhoods and programs such as Meals on Wheels and summer school for the children of working parents.
Carson was asked whether those services would be undermined if agency funding was cut by 13 percent, as Trump proposed in his first budget.
“I’m going to fight for the people who benefit from the programs,” he said. “I’m not fixated on any particular number.”
Carson said the administration is conducting an analysis of duplicate services offered by the government that would save an “enormous” amount of money. He added that cuts in government regulation would save even more.
However, the secretary did not specify any duplications or regulations that would be eliminated, nor did he say how much would be saved.
Asked what impact Trump’s tax plan would have on people served by his agency, Carson said, “I haven’t seen what was released today, so I can’t go into depth” on it.
The HUD secretary is scheduled today to tour more Columbus housing developments that receive agency funding. On Friday, he’ll tour facilities in Lancaster and Chillicothe.
Carson, 65, was born in Detroit to a single mother with a thirdgrade education and credits his education for his success.
Since entering the political arena, he’s made a number of controversial statements. Among them: that the Egyptian pyramids were built as granaries, that the Affordable Care Act is the worst thing since slavery and that Americans are living in a “Gestapo age.”