John W. Olver: “I am hopeful that the gentleman will withdraw his amendment here, and I would be happy to work with him because in…”

“I am hopeful that the gentleman will withdraw his amendment here, and I would be happy to work with him because in substantial measure I support the intent of the amendment, but I have concerns about the offset, even though it is a relatively small offset. But I do want to use this time to point out what has happened here on the brownfields program. The President, in the 2007 budget process, ended up recommending that we zero out this program in the 2007 budget, and he actually recommended rescinding the 2006 moneys, which were exactly the same amount of money that has been put in the 2007 finally and had been put in the 2006 budget. And under those circumstances, when they are making recommendations to rescind, their approach is not to give out any grants under the program until after the budget process for the following year is complete, and, therefore, those moneys just don't get put out until very late. There is a real big gap in it. That is what has happened previously. This year the President did not propose to rescind the 2007 budget moneys for the simple reason that the 2007 budget moneys were not settled in this until the CR was adopted after the budget was submitted. If that had been done prior to when the budget was submitted, my guess is that the President would have proposed rescinding the 2007 moneys as well as zeroing out the 2008 moneys, which is what has happened in his recommendations for this year's bill.”