John W. Olver: “I would oppose the amendment, both as the gentleman has described it and also as it is written. As the amendment is…”

“I would oppose the amendment, both as the gentleman has described it and also as it is written. As the amendment is written and in our hands, it is a straight across-the-board amendment of a couple of billion dollars difference from the one that was offered by Mr. Culberson earlier and has been defeated by roll call vote in the last round of roll calls. As described by the gentleman, he is dealing with monies that are not yet expended in the Recovery Act. And those monies in the Recovery Act are ones that are, in the Recovery Act, those are monies, some of which are under high-speed rail or TIGER Grants, those monies have not yet been fully obligated, but they were not expected ever to have expended out in this first couple of years of the Recovery Act's life. They were expected to be expended within the next 2 or 3 years at our given time until the end of fiscal 2012 to be expended. Others are being expended and really going into jobs right now, day after day after day. Every day, more of the monies that spend out more rapidly get used and get counted as having been expended at the end of every month. But the amendment that is in our hands is specifically merely a sum of money taken off the bottom line of the bill on all appropriated funds, which is all of the discretionary $67 billion, and $10 billion off $67 billion would be about 16 or so, 15 or 16 percent of that appropriated money that the bill involved.”