Eleanor Holmes Norton

I think the Subcommittee is going to need to look into how we can make sure.

I have a feeling that in understanding the value one would have to get beyond the jobs created at that moment.

We are very pleased with this Agency. We know what it has done. We know why we continue to focus on infrastructure.

I have a hard time fathoming how areas like this go through recessions except with horrible suffering--that is the only word I can use for it.

How do you intend? What kinds of projects? What methodology are you going to use for choosing how you will spend that money?

Thank you very much, Ms. Walters.

I don't think anybody on the floor in another debate knew what they were talking about.

We are anxious to begin the reauthorization process and are pleased to have your testimony.

I think 25 percent of the project is being paid for by an EDA grant, much to the great joy and delight of the community.

There has to be something in this to make people understand it.

But the bill had at its major focus for the kinds of spending you concentrate on, which is public infrastructure, creating jobs.

I will alert you of this. We have held this reauthorization hearing, and I don't know when this bill will be marked up or moved forward, and reauthorization occurs once in a blue moon.

If we are going to reauthorize what amounts to a public works agency, we have to understand it.

The EDA grant was very important, Mr. Chairman, because when a historic structure burns you just can't slap some bricks back up there.

The GSA provision for energy efficiency repairs and construction of Federal buildings is a classic example of stimulus spending.

So there are projects that we have already approved?

I want to identify myself with the remarks of the Chairman and others concerning the necessity to acquire an Administrator who knows how to settle disputes with the labor force, which is stunting all we have to do in this Agency.

I also want to say for the record that the green sections of this bill to save taxpayers' money... must be a part of this bill.

The most important part of what we do on GSA in my 18 years here has been the objective nature of it.

We know you have to give you time to do that, but, by the way, not much time.

We are not in the project business. We are not trying to decide who gets a project business.

We believe that when you are retrofitting a building plus making it green, you are using construction workers plus a set of workers, many of them with special skills.

This job creation bill will revive the construction sector of our economy.

after we have had the candidates, who themselves rose above race and rose above gender, to have surrogates insert gender and race into a historic election is such a disservice and such a tragedy, at that.

I do, but I don't think -- I think it's a passing phenomenon.