Steve Largent: “regretfully I would not be wiling to accept that friendly amendment, and let me just say a couple of things, reasons…”

“regretfully I would not be wiling to accept that friendly amendment, and let me just say a couple of things, reasons why. Currently the present funding for the State revolving fund is $1.2 billion. Under this amendment we increase that funding over a billion dollars, where it would be $2.25 billion. Currently the State revolving fund has the flexibility to address nonpoint-source problems, and on top of that I have a letter to the chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure from the Cattlemen's Association, the Council of Farmer Cooperatives, the sheep industry and pork producers, the very people that are concerned about nonpoint-source problems, and they say in this letter that the increased funding that we are authorizing under this amendment, that we believe that this provides adequate authority for States to reorient appropriate portions of the existing, the existing, State revolving fund creatively and aggressively and assisting those who must address nonpoint-source runoff, including provisions that allow modifications to reflect economic need. And so the reason that I would object to this is that it is running 180 degrees opposite of what I feel like that we are trying to do in the 104th Congress, and that is try to reduce the amount of bureaucracy and creating any structures within the Clean Water Act.”