Political Quotes

“I thank the ranking member. I know he has a series of meetings and he is off to those, but I again thank him. I know he may look at reducing this authority. It is his right to do so. My own opinion is, if there were ever a time to support programs that leverage dollars the way this one does, this is one of them. But I respect whatever he feels he needs to do to feel better about the bill. He talked about one of the important amendments he wrote which would eliminate duplication. There are other reforms that allow private parties to buy out the Federal Government investment. There is much we have done to update this program, but it is very important today. The one word I have come to use--perhaps overuse--is ``leverage.'' Leverage is crucial. We know we are facing deficits and debts. We know we have to do something about spending, so we want to be wise, we want to see that when we do spend $1 of Federal money, it really has a punch behind it. This is one example, again, of that occurring. There is $7, on average, for every dollar invested, and in the case of Oklahoma, in this one example, $10. There are others where it is even higher than that. I think it is very clear. I am not sure this is the up-to-date list, but we have many supporters of EDA. I am going to show some of them here. The U.S.…”