Political Quotes

“I thank Chairman Fleischmann and Ranking Member Kaptur for their cooperation here. Mr. Chair, dating back to the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, there was funding that provided important advancement of projects known as the Comite project, which is north of my hometown of Baton Rouge, as well as the West Shore project in the River Parishes. Mr. Chairman, these projects date back, in the case of Comite, date back all the way to the early 1980s, one of these awful Army Corps of Engineer projects that has been stalled for so long. We had a record flood in 2016, by some measure a 1,000-year flood that would have been tempered or mitigated if this project had been constructed, and thankfully in BBA 2018, the project was fully funded. The folks were excited and believed that we were going to be moving forward on this project. Similarly, Mr. Chairman, the West Shore project actually started before I was born, literally, 1970, 1971. That project had been stalled and had not advanced at all until we were able to get the authorization passed through Congress in 2016 and we were able to get the project what we believed was also fully funded in BBA 2018. Mr. Chairman, what we found today is that these project costs have skyrocketed. In the case of the West Shore project, it is approximately $1.3 billion short now and in the case of the Comite project, it is about $447 million short.…”