John Bel Edwards: “while I cannot support this amendment, I want to thank Mr. Blumenauer and Mr. Farr for having led the fight in Congress…”

“while I cannot support this amendment, I want to thank Mr. Blumenauer and Mr. Farr for having led the fight in Congress to bring to every Member's attention the terribly important need to better fund the cleanup of past military sites that have been closed as a result of base realignment and closing process. There is a $3.5 billion backlog for the BRAC 1990 round 17 years ago. For those communities that have been a partner in defending our Nation, we owe it to them morally to see that we provide the adequate funds to allow those sites to be cleaned up so they can be utilized in a productive manner on behalf of their communities. The reason I can't support the amendment and will oppose it is because of the outlay technicalities, the gentleman actually has to cut $200 million from the BRAC 2005 account in order to fund additional $50 million for the BRAC 1990 account. So that outlay problem could create great problems by cutting funding for BRAC 2005 in order to help the cleanup of BRAC 1990. We could inadvertently make it more difficult to have barracks ready for troops coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan to their homes here in the United States. It might be more difficult to have military training facilities, necessary at new Army bases, built. So, I oppose this. But even as I oppose this amendment, I want to thank the gentleman. He has done every community in this country a service, along with Mr. Farr.”