Dan Coats: “this is No. 40 of ``Waste of the Week.'' For the 40 weeks the Senate has been in session this cycle, I have come down to…”

“this is No. 40 of ``Waste of the Week.'' For the 40 weeks the Senate has been in session this cycle, I have come down to the Floor to talk about a waste of taxpayers' dollars through waste, fraud, and abuse. This week I am going to talk about yet another Federal program which has, at best, a questionable track record. I filed an amendment to the Energy and Water appropriations bill currently in the Senate, which is related to this program, and hopefully we will be voting on the amendment I will be offering in a few moments to address this issue. This amendment, which I offered with Senators Fischer, Toomey, and Flake, would finally wind down the Department of Energy's failed Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program. Remember the stimulus? Remember how we were throwing all kinds of taxpayers' money out there? We talked about advanced vehicle programs, and many of these distributions of funds have been misused or simply have not come to fruition, and a great deal of money has been wasted. The ATVM Loan Program continues to sit on billions of dollars of unused funds that could be put to better use. I am glad there are some unused funds there because it means that when we look at the history of this program, perhaps we will have an opportunity to better use those unused funds or to help return it back to the Treasury so the taxpayer isn't on the hook for this kind of thing going forward. Let me explain this program.…”