Judd Gregg: “I am a great admirer of the Senator from Connecticut. He is obviously a significant force within the Senate. He has a…”

“I am a great admirer of the Senator from Connecticut. He is obviously a significant force within the Senate. He has a lot of good ideas. He thinks big. This amendment is another example of that in some ways in that this amendment would cost $16.5 billion. The bill we brought forward to the floor for Homeland Security is a $32 billion bill. What he is suggesting is that we increase the authorized amount in this bill by half. It is for accounts which already have a large amount of money headed in their direction, first responder accounts. We have spent, since we began this effort, over $14 billion on first responders. Of that $14 billion, however, that was authorized to be spent, only $6 billion has actually been spent. In other words, the States and localities, which have the right to this money, have put in place plans to spend money for first responders, but they have only been able to plan in a wa that was appropriate to the point where they have been able to use $6 billion. So we actually still have $8 billion in the pipeline before this bill is passed. When this bill is passed, we are going to add another $2.4 billion to the pipeline. So that instead of having $8 billion available to be spent, we will be up to approximately $10.5 billion that will be available and it has not been spent.…”