Eleanor Holmes Norton

If we end up getting a lot built and a lot rehabilitated, and we are not able to show a large number of jobs for it, we will all be held accountable.

We are not going to get another large stimulus package, but that is no excuse for letting the transportation bill lie fallow while jobs, not to mention highways, and transit, and improvements in great need, go by the way.

These are people who don't understand why life hasn't been given to them as it was given to others immediately before them.

I am certainly willing to talk to the appropriators as we go through this prospect.

Our goal, though, is not only to distribute the funds quickly and to spark short-term job creation, but to ensure that these investments will lead to long-term, higher-skill, and higher-wage jobs.

This administration understands return to the government.

It is totally unacceptable and where we find it, we have to stop it and call the agency to account.

Are you prepared to deal with preapprenticeship programs as well as with apprentices, already qualified apprentices?

The Recovery Act's primary purpose is to stimulate economic recovery through investments that preserve and create jobs.

That is the kind of thing I am talking about, somebody who is kind of like them and has succeeded.

for us not to maximize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity--we are never going back.

If this money does not reach a small business contract, then the funds over which we have oversight will have been a partial failure.

You should have and we need to know in 30 days whether or not there is a small business plan for the spending of these stimulus dollars.

Because we are the authorizers and the taxpayers tell us that wherever it is, it has to be the best deal for the taxpayers.

The permission was granted by the Congress of the United States for the GSA to use 412 authority.

I am trying to figure out how much trouble we are in as we lease more and more space.

This isn't testimony. Testimony has to do with agency policy. This is a policy of the Congress of the United States.

This recovery tracking hearing number 3 is open for business.

I can't hold you responsible. I do want your commitment that on your watch you will never simply supercede language from this Committee without informing this Committee.

This administration, given the circumstances that have forced it into raising sky high deficit, needs to be leveraging every authority it can to drive down the deficit.

Federal law does not keep a contractor from looking on a case-by-case basis.

Imagine how you are going to be watched like no contractor has ever been watched before in a period such as this.

Some developer somewhere has been able to get the government to plop down money to rent his building for 15 years and he did not have to compete anywhere else in the region.

You ought to tell OMB that we know how to operate when an agency doesn't do what we urgently believe must be done.

Well, some of this is quite reassuring.