Political Quotes

“I thank the very distinguished gentleman from New Jersey for his leadership overall on this bill, but particularly for thinking to waive the non-Federal match, and I'll explain why. I'm sure the gentleman from Michigan's effort is well-intentioned, but many of the buildings damaged by Hurricane Sandy were historic structures, and their repair will be very expensive. Now, your amendment would make it cost prohibitive, Mr. Benishek, to repair or rebuild these historic structures. The Interior Department has told us that if the Benishek amendment passes, the historic preservation funds will be almost impossible to spend in the 2-year timeframe. The regular historic preservation matching requirement is 60 Federal/ 40 non-Federal. If there is a 60/40 match requirement for the States affected by Hurricane Sandy, the State Preservation Offices will not be able to meet the matching requirement. These offices are already struggling financially, and have challenges meeting the match under normal circumstances. If they got the money without the waiver, the $50 million that we provide in this bill would sit in an administrative morass while we tried and then likely failed to spend it. So we would be funding nothing but Federal overhead for 2 years. The language in the Frelinghuysen amendment, like the Senate bill, limits Historic Preservation Grant funding to those 10 States that received the Stafford Act Major Disaster declaration.…”