Dan Coats: “the concept behind this, of course, is to be as careful as we can with the taxpayers' money and make sure that each…”

“the concept behind this, of course, is to be as careful as we can with the taxpayers' money and make sure that each dollar spent is spent on something that has been thoroughly examined, looked at, vetted, scrubbed, and determined to be necessary going forward. We have to determine the share, the cost share for the State and local communities; what that percentage ought to be that comes from the State and the local communities as opposed to the Federal Government. We have to determine how to best go forward with the best project that can, hopefully, prevent future damage should a second storm or subsequent storm occur. We have to look at a whole number of factors and make judgments. That is what we are elected to do. When the taxpayers send their money into the Federal Government, they don't want us to just throw up a number and throw some wish list out and throw out money at unsubstantiated and unscrubbed projects that are proposed. So I am not suggesting that everything in the proposal, the $60.4 billion, is not necessary. I am simply saying give us some time, at least these 3 months through March 27, to have our committees and have the experts look at these proposals and make sure it is substantiated. So we remove the unsubstantiated, the mitigated, the non-Sandy related. We have removed all that from this program, and that is how we arrived at this number.…”