Norman D. Dicks: “I want to commend Chairman Simpson for opposing this amendment. This is an amendment that goes way too far. This bill is…”

“I want to commend Chairman Simpson for opposing this amendment. This is an amendment that goes way too far. This bill is $3.8 billion, almost $4 billion below what the President requested. It's $2 billion below the FY11 level, which we just passed a few months ago, and it would have a devastating effect on our environment. When I hear people talk about growing the economy by cutting the budget, I wonder what school of economics they attended. In fact, there was an outstanding article just a few weeks ago in The New York Times that really laid out the basic problem we have in this economy, and that is that consumer spending has dropped by 7 percent. Normally, in previous recessions, it only went down 3 percent. So then when you cut State and local government funding, when you cut Federal funding, you make a bad situation worse in terms of consumption. And that is why the economy has slowed down, and that's why it's not going to go up as a result of these kinds of reckless cuts being offered by the other side. Let me give you one example. The former EPA administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, from New Jersey, did a study of what the backlog on wastewater treatment facilities was. And it was $688 billion, and this was in 2002. It's definitely gone up. And yet we're slashing, and would slash again, the amount of money for the Clean Water Revolving Fund and the Safe Drinking Water Revolving Fund and the State and Tribal Assistance Grants.…”