Robert Dornan: “this is a cost-saving measure that would be on page 88 at the very end of the bill. It would simply say that in creating…”

“this is a cost-saving measure that would be on page 88 at the very end of the bill. It would simply say that in creating a new section 509 that none of the funds under this act shall be used for the Senior Environmental Employment Program. This is a program that is not offered, that will be removed in the authorization process. Again, we have the appropriating process without authorization. It is $55 million, and, when I became aware of it, it was breathtaking to see that six groups of senior citizens, and only six, selected in a very partisan way. It is a disguised form of patronage, that six senior citizen groups, and only six, would get grants, dozens of grants, totaling up to over $54 million, to be hired with taxpayers' money as so-called volunteers, all at the call of the Environmental Protection Agency to put them wherever they want and to spend these grants in any way they want without any oversight. So I think it is time, in a reduction of taxpayers' spending in our Government, that we take out these $55 million of funds now by just merely denying that any of these funds shall be spent under the act to fund the Senior Environmental Employment Program.”