Kendrick Meek: “I will tell you the reason why I was a little delayed here, Mr. Ryan, is we had two individuals, one from General…”

“I will tell you the reason why I was a little delayed here, Mr. Ryan, is we had two individuals, one from General Services and another from the Department of Homeland Security. We are about to move into what we call this American Shield Initiative, which is along our borders using technology to protect America from illegal immigration. We set out with an initial program, Mr. Speaker, similar to the one that is about to start now. In that program, there was a quarter of a billion dollars wasted because of incompetence. A quarter of a billion dollars. Now, let me tell you, a quarter of a billion dollars, Mr. Ryan, it is not even in some sort of program that was at some university and someone was to work on some sort of research project and it went south. This is protecting the borders of the United States of America, a quarter of a billion dollars. The four individuals that were involved, Mr. Speaker, only received a demotion. A demotion. Mr. Speaker, let me tell you, I used to be a State trooper. If you have a trooper that damaged equipment, let us just say $1 million, they are gone, period, dot. It is not anything to where you say, oh, well, Tom, I know it was rough and all, and you made a mistake. Guess what, it's just a quarter of a billion dollars, just the taxpayers' money. Don't worry about it. Forget about it.”