Joel Hefley: “I apologize for interrupting the progress here. I know all of us want to move forward and conclude as early as possible…”

“I apologize for interrupting the progress here. I know all of us want to move forward and conclude as early as possible today. I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to Mr. Walsh for working with the authorizing committee so well. For years we have established, I think, an example for this House in how the authorizers and appropriators should work together, and the gentleman has followed in that tradition. If Members remember, when we first began to look at this early in the year, we had those early meetings together, and we thought the outcome, because of the reorganization, might be very, very different than what we have today. The outcome, I think, is a good outcome. I think we are taking care of infrastructure needs that need to be taken care of in an area where so often these kinds of things become billpayers for other things. Particularly when we are in the midst of a war and there are all kinds of demands, it is awfully easy to say with military construction and these feel-good things for our soldiers that we just put those off another year. We can put them off another year, and then we will do it, and next year maybe we do it and maybe we do not. In this case all of the way around you have done an excellent job. We have provided for the soldier. We have provided for the infrastructure needs, and I am very, very pleased with the kind of relationship we have had in working with this. Your staff has been just terrific.…”