Rodney Frelinghuysen: “We are here to follow through on our pledge to right-size the government, and I appreciate my colleague's amendment for…”

“We are here to follow through on our pledge to right-size the government, and I appreciate my colleague's amendment for that reason. However, in addition to enacting historic reductions in spending in the CR, we are also committed to an unprecedented level of oversight to ensure that every dollar spent by the Federal Government is, indeed, well spent. My colleague's amendment would virtually eliminate the Advanced Research Projects Agency--Energy, or ARPA-E, as we call it. This relatively new program is getting positive early results for its strong management, for its ability to execute, and for its focus on American competitiveness. We certainly can and must debate which programs are the most worthy of taxpayers' dollars and which we should terminate, but the debate to end a potentially promising initiative to increase funds for another Federal program, as this amendment does, must be thoroughly considered in more than 5 or 10 minutes. I and the committee would be happy to work with my colleague in the fiscal year 2012 process to ensure the proper and thorough oversight and evaluation of this program. However, I must regretfully oppose her amendment.”