David Vitter

I think that is really inappropriate.

Everyone wants to learn the lessons of Katrina. Everyone wants to strengthen engineering and design guidelines in an appropriate way.

I certainly share the Chair's concerns about all the issues she mentioned, and I will bring up some more.

This hearing is another clear, bold statement that this entire committee, in a very bipartisan way, is committed to a new WRDA bill.

Thank you, Madam President. With that I close and thank, again, my colleague from Tennessee. The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Tennessee.

How can we double exports when I can't load what we have today?

The funds are, frankly, going to make it look like we have a stockpile of $6 billion somewhere, which, as Senator Vitter points out, is illusory.

Well, again, this is a big fiction, and I think the first important part of this conversation is to get beyond the fiction.

Lower Mississippi River, biggest waterway in the Country, one of the biggest in the world, reduced in some cases to one-way traffic.

This is something you can tell, I hope, we are communicating that we care passionately about and it is thoroughly bipartisan.

I have to look for a catastrophe to put a supplemental on there to get funding.

Is the task force focused on our central question today, which is ensuring that all of the revenue into the Trust Fund is spent for authorized uses under statute?

What it really means is that the other money is stolen and spent on other completely unrelated purposes.

I appreciate Chairman Boxer including this provision in the current WRDA draft again, but I am disappointed that it has not been funded.

The lower Mississippi River, which is at vital as anything to our commerce, our waterborne commerce, is traditionally underfunded.

I requested that we focus on this issue because it is so vital, including in the context of a new WRDA.

I want to particularly thank Mike for his very concrete, persuasive testimony.

I think it is a commonsense nonstarter to even have that discussion if half of the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund is being diverted for unrelated purposes.

Every time a vessel's draft is decreased by one foot on the lower Mississippi because of under-maintained waterways, this costs shippers about $1 million against the value of their cargo.

I am very excited to be here. I am very excited to be Ranking Member, and I am very excited about our partnership on infrastructure issues.

The Administration only spends roughly half that amount for harbor maintenance.

This was a clear commitment made as part of the New START treaty passage through the Senate discussions, and it just hasn't been kept.

A Christian chaplain ending a prayer, 'In Christ's name'?

Things like: not quashing active proselytizing, but telling somebody they can't have a Bible on their desk;

I am really concerned that this committee vote and this entire nomination is being rushed.