Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Chairman Shuster, Ranking Member DeFazio, and so many of the other Members who worked on this bill. I think it is important that we get the Water Resources Development Act back on a 2-year cycle. We got off to where there were 7 years that passed on, in many cases, critical projects that needed authorization that needed to move forward to construction. I also want to echo a couple of things that the ranking member said. Number one, on the harbor maintenance trust fund, I couldn't agree more. We need to come up with a solution here. I think it is disingenuous that we are charging users the tax under the auspices of using it for dredging, yet diverting those resources. I will say it again. I think it is disingenuous, and I look forward to working together with Congressman DeFazio in addressing this. Number two, my friend from Oregon also noted the backlog in Corps of Engineers projects. The reason we have a backlog in projects is because this project delivery mechanism, development and delivery mechanism used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, you can look at it, project after project; it takes 40 years to get a project delivered. These are projects for flood protection, for ecological restoration, for hurricane protection. We don't have time to wait 40 years for this project, and this bill moves in a direction of streamlining that process.…”