Political Quotes

“I come to the Senate floor to talk about important and bipartisan legislation that I am introducing today, along with Senator Bill Nelson of Florida. It is about the Corps of Engineers, and it is intended, and will once passed, to make a real impact in terms of lessening the delays, the bureaucracy, and the hurdles all of us must go through in terms of seeing important Corps of Engineers projects through to fruition. It is called the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Flood Control and Navigation Project Pilot Program. Let us get right to the heart of the matter. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is a broken bureaucracy. In several significant respects, it is simply a badly broken bureaucracy. Let me say upfront that there are many smart, qualified people who work there. They are dedicated. They work long, hard hours in so many cases, and I applaud their efforts. But the overall structure and the overall bureaucracy within which we all must work to get important Corps of Engineers work done is simply broken. It takes, on average, about 6 years--6 years--for the Corps not to do a project but to perform a preliminary study that might lead to an important flood control or navigation project. Then, when we actually talk about the engineering work, the construction work, it takes at least 20 years, on average, to accomplish any meaningful project. That is simply too long.…”