Political Quotes

“The point of this amendment is to bring transparency and accountability to the process of awarding TIGER grants. Now, TIGER grants were created in 2009 with money from the stimulus bill to provide competitive grants that were to fund infrastructure projects and supposedly on a merit-based criteria. There has been about $3.6 billion in TIGER grants awarded since 2009 going to States, local governments, and other entities for highway, transit, rail, and port authorities. DOT is currently reviewing grant applications to award $600 million for a sixth round of TIGER grant funding, applications due April 28, 2014. Last month, the GAO reported numerous problems with the awarding of TIGER grants. The findings found in the report that DOT continued to accept specific applications for 30 days after the notice of funding availability deadline and did not notify the public. The DOT policy office did not follow its own guidelines and advanced projects with lower technical ratings instead of more highly-rated projects, providing no documentation or evidence of the factors that led to these decisions. This leads me to why we are offering this amendment, again to bring transparency and accountability to the process of awarding TIGER grants. In 2011, GAO recommended that DOT should develop a strategy to document decisions and work with Congress to disclose how it makes its decisions.…”