ben carson dining room set
amna nawaz: president trump's proposed budgetwould cut funding for the department of housing and urban development by 18 percent, includingcuts to public housing programs. yamiche alcindor takes a closer look now atsome of the challenges the department is facing and solutions its leadership is considering. yamiche alcindor: through federal rental programs,hud assists more than five million families to have a home. for the past two years, decisions about howto spend the department's $50 billion budget have been made by dr. ben carson. secretary carson joins me now.
thank you so much for being on the programtonight. i first want to talk to you about presidenttrump. he recently suggested that white supremacistgroups are -- quote -- "a small group of people." experts in organizations that study whitesupremacists say that they're actually a growing group and that they're leading to a rise inhate crimes across the country. do you agree with the president's stance onwhite supremacists? ben carson, secretary of housing and urbandevelopment: well, i don't know that anything useful comes from talking about what sizethey are. they're a despicable group of individuals,as any group that hates others and purports
themselves to be superior. yamiche alcindor: but the president said thatthey're still a small group. do you see them as a rising issue? should the government be dealing with themin some way? ben carson: well, i think we should all, regardlessof what our political prospects are, condemn anybody who is a hate group, no matter whattheir size, whether they're getting smaller, whether they're getting larger. yamiche alcindor: but the problem is gettingworse, you think, or... ben carson: i personally have not seen evidenceof it.
but, again, if there is even one, it's a problem. yamiche alcindor: and you said recently thatyou're open to serving a second term as hud secretary, but you also said that you mightleave after first term. are you concerned -- as the only black cabinetmember for president trump, are you concerned that the lack of diversity in the cabinetand in the administration might impact the president's rhetoric and policies? ben carson: well, first of all, i indicatedthat, you know, i would prefer to be in the private sector. i would prefer to be in the private sectornow.
this is sacrificial work. however, it's very important work, because,for an extremely long period of time, you know, the poor people in our country havebeen taken for granted. and, you know, we have concentrated, bothadministrations, democrats and republicans, on getting people under roof and getting theminto programs. we haven't concentrated on, how do you getthem out of those programs in an economically viable way? yamiche alcindor: are you worried about thelack of diversity, though, that the administration would have if you left?
ben carson: i am not concerned about whathappens if i leave. but i do believe that there needs to be arepresentative sampling of our society. yamiche alcindor: you have said that povertyis a state of mind. do you still believe that? ben carson: again, let me correct the record. what i said is, largely, a part of the mind-set,because -- i give it as an example, if a rookie playing baseball comes up and, you know, hisfirst time at bat and there's nolan ryan out there, he says, nolan ryan, oh, no, he's gota 95-mile-an-hour fastball. i'm probably not even going to see it.
yamiche alcindor: but you have said that it'sstill largely a state of mind. ben carson: well, let me finish. and then another rookie comes up and says,nolan ryan? he's an old man. i'm going to knock the cover off this ball. a lot depends on how you look at it. that doesn't mean that you don't sympathizewith people who are poor and that you don't understand why they're in that situation. many people grow up in a situation where theydon't have an opportunity to see any other
way of life. so, naturally, they feel that way. you couple that with some of the things thatare in the way -- for instance, if you're getting assisted housing, you're told that,if you make any more money, you have to report that, so your rent can go up. if you bring another person into the householdwho is making money, you have to report that, so your rent can go up. don't even think about getting married. not only your will rent go up.
you may lose your subsidy altogether. these are not useful things. yamiche alcindor: well, you're talking aboutrent going up. you have called for tripling the rents onpeople living in public housing. what do you say to people who think you'remaking life harder for poor people? ben carson: well, i'm glad you brought thatup, because what we're talking about are the people who pay the minimum rent of $25 to$50 who are able-bodied. we're not talking about disabled people. we're not talking about elderly people.
we're talking about people who are perfectlycapable of working, who are paying $25 to $50 a month. we need to get those people stimulated. they need to get out there. this is a perfect time. there's actually more jobs out there thanthere are people to do them. and, you know, we need not to couch and coddlethese people, but we need to develop them. it'll be for their own good. yamiche alcindor: and you have said that youcame to hud to fix the rats, the roaches,
the lead, the violence. but hud records show that, last year, morefamilies lived in hud housing that failed health and space -- and safety inspectionsthan before, as compared to 2016. it was a rise of 30 percent. what do you say to people who think, underyour leadership, under your tenure, public housing has become more dangerous to livein? ben carson: i think they should find out whatthe real facts are. the real facts, i have been very concernedabout this. so we have stepped up the inspection process,andwe put more controls on it.
so, obviously, you're finding things thatwere glossed over before. that's going to be the case. and we're doing something about it. we decreased the number of days to 14 foran inspection, so you don't have time to cover over all the things. and we're training the inspectors the rightway. we're bringing i.t. systems in, so that weget consistency. these are things that take time. and you can spend them any way you want, dependingon what your political perspective is.
but we're concerned about the people. yamiche alcindor: your administration haschampioned opportunity zones, and your signature program is envision centers. but some of these centers and some of theseopportunity zones, experts say, have failed to garner financial backing from the whitehouse and from the private sector. can you point to one tangible achievementthat envision centers have achieved since you have been at hud? ben carson: i'm glad you asked that question,actually. you know, in chicago, the envision centerthere is having a system where they take addicts
and they give them medically assisted treatment,programs that will actually get them out of addiction. in detroit, they're actually teaching youngpeople some skills, like how to run a pizza shop. you know, what people don't recognize is that,when you create a new program, you don't just declare it and it pops up. yamiche alcindor: just to be sure, those areall open envision centers? because i was reading some -- that there wasa soft opening in washington state. are the other ones that you're talking aboutopen already?
ben carson: yes, they're already functioning. and there are more, several more, that aregoing to be opening before the summer is over. yamiche alcindor: and i want to ask you aboutthe group, the watchdog group american oversight. they got ahold of some of your schedules. they said that you went to florida dozensof time -- dozens of time. they also say that you and your wife... (crosstalk) ben carson: actually, they said i went a dozentimes. yamiche alcindor: they said that you wentseveral times or a dozen times.
they also had e-mails that showed that youand your wife were directly involved in purchasing a $31,000 dining room set for your office. what do you say to people who think that thatschedule and... ben carson: i'm glad you brought that up. yamiche alcindor: ... and that also -- andthat dining set, that they are really not aligning with the mission of hud? ben carson: i'm glad you brought that up,because, as you know, in washington, d.c., most of the members of congress go home frequentlyon the weekend. it wouldn't be any different for a cabinetmember, quite frankly, and many of them go
home on thursdays. they're complaining about the fact that ileft on friday afternoon. if that's all they have got to complain about,i think we're in pretty good shape. yamiche alcindor: what about the dining roomset and how that aligns with hud's mission? ben carson: i find that kind of hilarious,because you would have to look long and hard to find anybody who cares less about furniturethan i do. yamiche alcindor: but you were directly involved,along with your wife? ben carson: and even harder to find somebodywho's more thrifty than my wife. we were involved only in the sense that theysaid, you need to look at these catalogs and
tell us what you want to pick, because thishas to be done. they said, the furniture that's in there isno longer repairable. we have tried to repair. it's there for 50 years. and then they try to say it's a table thatcost $31,000. it was 17 pieces of furniture. and anybody who knows anything about solidfurniture knows that that's not an exorbitant price. and that was the government catalog that theyask you to choose from.
so what was really going on is, there werepeople who wanted to say, you're cutting the budget on poor people, and you're buying expensivefurniture. that's the only narrative they wanted. they didn't want the truth. yamiche alcindor: and those people would bewrong? ben carson: they would be extraordinarilywrong. and it would be wonderful if people wouldactually look for the real news and not try to create these narratives. yamiche alcindor: well, thank you, secretarycarson.
i really appreciate you coming on tonight. ben carson: absolutely. a pleasure.