BALTIMORE — It’s 8 a.m. on Thursday morning and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson stands in the living room of a century-old home in northwest Baltimore.
A combination of federal and state funding covered the $19,000 cost to strip the house of lead-based paint to make it safe for the three young girls who live there, improvements Carson is highlighting on his tour of Baltimore housing.
“I wish we had unlimited money so we could do this for all of these houses,” Carson said, as the girls’ mother expressed gratitude for the federal assistance that made her home livable.
That’s where the tension lies for Carson, the former GOP presidential candidate whose ideas about the scope of government worry the left.
Carson believes government assistance should be short-term, limited and designed to prod recipients to achieve something greater. He’s called poverty a “state of mind” and argued that “a comfortable setting” might be an incentive for people to stay on welfare. ..
Read more at:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/340182-ben-carson-grapples-with-proposed-hud-budget-cuts
