Byron Dorgan

I would guess the consensus of this subcommittee will be to re-prioritize the funding in the series of accounts in order to avoid a one-half-billion-dollar cut in water infrastructure funding.

It just seems to me that a reduction of nearly one-half a billion dollars in fiscal year 2011 in investment in Corps water projects is not going to be able to do what we need to do to invest in these infrastructure projects.

I introduced a bill earlier this year to investigate the feasibility of developing 50 megawatts of hydropower from the Diamond Fork Project at the existing dam.

I think the consensus of this subcommittee will not be to support cutting a half a billion dollars out of the Corps of Engineers' funding at this time.

In my judgment, those are the wrong agencies to be cutting in the current economic situation.

The more you can get contractors involved in competition, the lower you're going to experience pricing on these major contracts.

It's a great privilege, but there are other things I wish to do.

I'm pleased to see, in this budget request, a clear commitment in increasing NNSA's ability to assess the safety, security and reliability of nuclear weapons.

Except as a scientist, you know that that which seems far into the future becomes nearer and nearer the more work is done.

Senator Alexander and I and others are putting together an electric vehicles piece of legislation.

But in a broader sense, do you feel like the reduction in funds in the fossil energy account reflects less attention to and less interest in that area of energy?

We have a significant need to do the research to try to evaluate how we build electric generating plants that are going to capture carbon.

We are going to have a challenge of reconciling the overall budget request to the subcommittee because we are not going to have a half-a-billion-dollar cut for water projects when this subcommittee completes its work.

I will be leaving in about an hour, but we will have someone take the chair at that point.

But that is true of almost everything we invent. It migrates very quickly.

Nobody's been stronger in the Senate than Senator Lautenberg.

I really want you to succeed. We need to find a way to get enough capital into this rail passenger system.

I think the construction of the bridge was around $60 million.

It's time for all the parties to decide, what part of this do they need to help pay for?

I'm a big supporter of Amtrak. I think rail passenger service is an important part of the transportation network.

I applaud what you are trying to do to establish accountability.

I am becoming more and more nervous about the July 2011 date by which the President talked about bringing troops out.

This will happen more slowly than we originally anticipated.

The cost has just climbed way beyond that which is reasonable.

This country can't continue to do that. Its fiscal policy is absurd. We know better than this.