Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to thank the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Issa, for his staunch support of this bill, and I also want to thank my good friend Mr. Chaffetz for working so closely with us to craft this bipartisan bill and in working to get it to the floor today. Finally, I want to thank the ranking member of the full committee, Mr. Cummings, for working with me on this important bill. There could not be a better time to move a measure like this one through the Congress. We are facing an unsustainable budget deficit, and we must get our fiscal house in order. One of the best ways to achieve much-needed reductions in spending is to create efficiencies and cut waste. This is exactly what this bipartisan measure accomplishes. {time} 1230 The Federal Government is the largest property owner in the world, with an inventory of over 900,000 buildings and structures and 41 million acres of land. Yet we waste billions of tax dollars each year in maintaining properties we no longer need. The Federal Government currently maintains 14,000 buildings and structures deemed ``excess'' and over 76,000 properties identified as ``underutilized.'' In fiscal year 2009, these underutilized buildings cost us $1.7 billion to operate annually. The GAO has continuously found that many properties are no longer relevant to their Agencies' missions and that Agencies could do a better job of identifying and disposing of unneeded properties. H.R.…”