Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, my amendment is an amendment that I brought up in previous appropriation cycles. What it does is defunds and eliminates the Davis-Bacon federally mandated wage scale components in the construction of MILCON on this underlying bill. It recognizes a whole series of history that has been built since the early thirties on the Davis-Bacon Act. I have spent my life in the construction business, Mr. Chairman. I started a construction business in 1975. We are celebrating our 40th year in business, and, almost every one of those 40 years, we have dealt with Davis-Bacon wage scales. I have made out, personally, that payroll over and over again. I have also seen the inefficiencies that are created. The net effect is a de facto union scale. It is not a prevailing wage, but a de facto union scale. The net effect is it creates inefficiencies, and it increases and inflates the cost of our construction projects. Our records, over the years that I have been in business, show that Davis-Bacon wage scales--the federally mandated wage scales--range between an additional 8 percent up to 38 percent; so I just bring that back to a bit of a moderate, careful average, and we have a 20 percent increase. The bottom line on this is that, if you want to build 5 miles of road, repeal Davis-Bacon. If you are willing to accept 4 miles of road, accept a federally mandated union scale. That is true with whatever else we might be doing in all of our military construction and everything else.…”