Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I think the Senator from Nebraska has proposed a very sound and sensible sense-of-the-Senate resolution and points out the fact that we have had a chaotic situation in our Federal building program. Last year, I requested that the Governmental Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, on which I serve as ranking minority member, hold a hearing on this subject. The findings were troubling. We found that the Federal Government was leasing a number of buildings that we would have been better off buying. Furthermore, the Government was constructing new buildings when in fact existing buildings could have been purchased to meet the Government's needs at a significant savings over new construction. For this reason, I asked the then-designee General Services Administrator Roger Johnson to temporarily suspend the construction and leasing program for new Federal office space and courthouses. This was to provide the new Administrator, with an opportunity to review all of the projects for cost effectiveness and to ensure that these projects were in the best economic interest of the taxpayer. By agreeing to my request the new Administrator, who I think has done an outstanding job, stated this morning, that the Government will save about $1.2 billion.”