On the recordJuly 10, 2013
I am rising to express sympathy with the authors of this amendment, Congressman Scalise and Congressman Richmond. And you're eloquent spokesmen for your districts and your regions. I hope that you and the membership understand that one of the reasons that we reluctantly opposed your amendment is because the mark we were given in our bill is so far below what we need to meet all national needs. Your proposal is actually a new start, if we were using the classification system that we use. And as much as we want to fund it, we simply don't have the funds in the bill to do it. The Corps has over $60 billion worth, $60 billion of backed up projects that they are not able to complete. It would be the biggest job creator in this country if we could move off the dime and fund those projects. But to take and prioritize Louisiana as a new start over, for example, Sacramento, that has major challenges with their levee system, or St. Louis, how does one choose? Or the Great Lakes, where we can't dredge ports. And I often tell the story that, without the dredging in the Great Lakes, pretty soon, rather than having a channel that's like this--they keep narrowing the channel because we have less and less money--pretty soon it's going to silt up. We won't be able to get anything through. So we have a problem in our bill in trying to fund everything that is necessary for the sake of the Nation.…
