James T. Callahan: “I appreciate where the gentleman is coming from, but this appropriations process is long and involved. We invited every…”

“I appreciate where the gentleman is coming from, but this appropriations process is long and involved. We invited every Member of Congress to submit their suggestions to us as to how we could best formulate this bill. The sponsor of this amendment did not choose to bring this to our attention, nor did he even request that we consider this during our regular process. But what he is doing in his amendment is taking $9.9 million for this project specifically, and he is taking it out of the Corps' operating budget. We went through a long deliberative process trying to establish how much money the Corps needed to operate, and in our deliberations we finally decided this was the amount of money that we need. This is not the time to accept this without any hearings or any indication as to what is best for the Corps or what is best for its program. Maybe he does have a good program. But we cannot go through this process, and then everyone who has a specific project they would like funded comes to us and says let us take it out of the hide of the Corps of Engineers. I think the committee has done the responsible job in determining what the needs of the Corps of Engineers are going to be in the next fiscal year, and I would urge my colleagues to reject the gentleman's amendment.”