Susan Collins

I think that Senator McCaskill has raised an important point, and it is a point that I had intended to raise as well.

We intend to very closely and aggressively monitor spending of stimulus money ourselves.

In the American Recovery Act, otherwise known as the stimulus bill, there is some very good language and good provisions to put us in a position to protect the taxpayers in the spending of this money.

It is critical to do so in a responsible and transparent way.

The more eyes that we have on this spending, the better.

Right now I believe that they are hopeful, but they are also skeptical, of whether we can spend this much needed money wisely.

Waste or fraud in the spending of the $500 billion of stimulus funds will only further erode the American people's confidence in their government.

We were pleased that OMB and the Vice President adopted our recommendation, and they are going to clarify that.

The Recovery Act also creates several important oversight mechanisms that the Chairman and I worked hard to ensure were included.

The Senate was determined to make sure that the final version of the bill had a quicker impact on the economy by having a faster spend-out rate than the House bill had.

We have to make sure that we do what the President said we are going to do, which is that we are going to watch every dime.

We remain determined to protect this critical spending from waste, fraud, and mismanagement.

I think it is extremely unfortunate that the omnibus bill has not been revised to take into account the recently appropriated funds in the stimulus bill.

I think there ought to be some flexibility to maybe shift some of the time frames for when the money is spent.

It is essential to effectively achieving the objective of the President's March 4, 2009 memo to have the capacity and ability to develop, manage, and oversee acquisitions appropriately.

The acquisition workforce... is the number-one problem, over and over again.

I think you've brought forth a bill that will really make a difference.

It's imperative that we build up the Afghan army as quickly as possible so that the Afghans are taking a lead

The United States is going to have to take a bigger role, that the United States is going to have to take a stronger leadership position

My related concern is that we're putting an American face on the effort.

One of the reasons that we are seeing some success in Iraq is not just the addition of more troops, but rather a change in strategy that accompanied the addition of more troops.

That is the most powerful component in this bill to create jobs.

That is the most powerful component in this bill, to create jobs.

If the bill comes back from the conference committee with a lot of wasteful spending reinserted or if it comes back in excess of the $800 billion, it will not have my support.

Some of these programs, while they're worthy of an increase in funding, simply do not belong in an economic stimulus bill.