Joel Hefley: “I will give you the four-letter word that the EDA stands for, and that is pork. That is pork, my friends. The reason…”

“I will give you the four-letter word that the EDA stands for, and that is pork. That is pork, my friends. The reason that there is such support for it, there is no other program we fund that gives you the opportunity to take home to your constituents the pork that can show them what a great job you are doing for them than the EDA. In 1991 the Economic Development Administration received $209 million. In the years that have followed the EDA has averaged about double that amount. This year the Committee on Appropriations is scaling down the EDA by giving it only $348 million. Is this what Congress calls balancing the budget? Is promulgating a wasteful and mismanaged agency like the EDA considered fiscally responsible? Surely this was not what was intended when the EDA was created to assist the most economically distressed communities in the Nation. By cutting the EDA by 30 percent, it will be forced to focus its attention on the truly needy areas of the country. Okay, so the complete cutout of it was not acceptable to this body, but certainly the 30 percent cut in this climate of trying to balance the budget is reasonable. I encourage Members to support the Goss amendment.”