Leading Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee and Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) urging her to find a permanent solution for American renters.
In the letter, U.S. Reps. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) and Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA) also criticized President Biden’s extension of the eviction moratorium. Further, they demand that Pelosi bring the House back to work to pass H.R. 3913, the Renter Protection Act, which seeks to get funds to struggling renters and landlords to pay off back-owed rents.
“Last week, House Democrats failed to provide a permanent solution for Americans who are now at risk of being evicted from their homes due to unpaid rent stemming from the pandemic. Instead of taking action to provide renters with the financial relief they need, Democrats sought to delay rather than solve the problem through another temporary and flawed federal eviction moratorium extension. To be clear, such an approach is both unlawful and unwise and only adds new uncertainty to already struggling renters who missed payments due to COVID-19,” the Republican legislators wrote to Pelosi.
The Republicans said that the Eviction Moratorium, which expired on Aug. 1, should not have been extended.
“The decision by House Democrats to forgo action and lobby for an extended CDC moratorium is especially egregious because the flaws of such an approach were a knowable and foreseeable problem,” the legislators wrote. “As early as March 2021, at least two Federal courts declared that the CDC’s Eviction Moratorium was unconstitutional and required legislative action. This point was further confirmed when the Supreme Court declined to take up the case and Justice Kavanaugh wrote, ‘In my view, clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be necessary for the CDC to extend the moratorium past July 31.’ Despite Justice Kavanaugh’s clear instructions, Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee held no hearings or discussions with Committee Republicans on whether it was appropriate to give the CDC this expansive authority, given their clear abuse of power,” they wrote.