Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I want to briefly preview an amendment, Vitter amendment No. 178, which I will formally call up this afternoon about 2:45. This is a spending amendment to get back to what I believe is the central challenge we face as a country right now, this unsustainable path we are on with regard to Federal spending and debt. This is a very simple, straightforward amendment which I think deserves and will hopefully get strong bipartisan support. It requires the Federal Government to get rid of its billions of dollars of inventory-- literally billions and billions of dollars of unutilized or underutilized real property. The Federal Real Property Council reports that the Federal Government owned or operated more than 1.1 million assets worldwide in 2007. It was worth an estimated $1.5 trillion. But a lot of those assets, real property buildings, land, are unused or underused. According to OMB, there are about 47,000 underutilized properties, almost 19,000 completely unutilized properties. That is over 65,000 properties with an estimated value of $83 billion that would better be diminished, sold, or demolished. This is a commonsense way to save money in the Federal budget, to move us forward in terms of a more sustainable path on spending and debt. Obviously we need many more larger steps, but this is brought in that spirit. I look forward to returning to the floor around 2:45 to make it formally pending and to offer some brief additional comments. I yield the floor.…”