Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman and Members, I rise to oppose the amendment because it doesn't make any sense to me to make it harder for the Corps to do its job when we know they have backlogs in projects of over $60 billion. We are increasing funding for the Corps to try to meet the needs of States like Arizona--and the other 49 States as well--and there seems to be no shortage of complaints about the Corps' response time on project issues because they can't get their work done because they don't have enough money to complete their projects. This gentleman may be unaware that oversight funding has already been cut by $4 million from the current year. We are giving the Corps more project money to try to deal with their backlog; but then if we don't have proper oversight, we are going to dig the hole deeper. We need to have the resources in order to complete the projects. The amendment, in a way, is penny-wise and pound-foolish because it reduces Federal oversight of more than $5 billion. The problem with the Corps historically has been that every Member has projects that they want completed, but we don't have the money to do it. If you are going to cut the legs out of staff that are there to do the job, it is going to make it much more difficult to manage the money. It is like trying to send an army into battle and not giving them the weapons to do it or creating all these barriers to completion.…”