Bud Shuster: “Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this legislation, and I would like to emphasize particularly to my fiscally…”

“Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this legislation, and I would like to emphasize particularly to my fiscally conservative brothers and sisters that when this legislation first came before the committee, it called for over $400 million a year in spending for EDA and about $250 million a year for ARC. Through negotiation and through compromise, we have been able to take $100 million a year out of the EDA spending and reduce the ARC funding from $249 million to $215 million, or about a 15-percent cut. So we have been able to negotiate a compromise here which very significantly reduces these expenditures. Beyond that, I would particularly like to focus on the Appalachian Regional Commission and some independent studies relating to the effectiveness of ARC. First of all, ARC is the kind of a program that is effective because it is not a Washington-driven program but, rather, a program which has the decisionmaking power in the hands of local people, so the decisions as to how to spend the money in localities is made by local groups rather than by Washington dictating expenditures. That is a very significant point, it seems to me.”