Political Quotes

“This is an amendment some people do not like, I will grant you that. But I have some specific examples that are going on in New Jersey right now on why this amendment is needed. We have multiple contracts that were available that could have been utilized in New Jersey for debris removal. The company that got the contract actually is going to charge in excess of 20 percent more to the Federal Government for doing the same thing another competitive bid would have done. So we are going to spend at least 20 percent more on the contract for debris removal in New Jersey than we need to. That is because competitive bidding was not a requirement of Federal funds. Here is some history. During Katrina, we know that $11 billion of U.S. taxpayer money was either defrauded or wasted. Let me say that again--$11 billion. Let me give the prime example of that. The Corps of Engineers was paid $62 per cubic yard to manage debris removal in Katrina. Through five layers of contracting, the people who actually did the debris removal in Katrina were paid $9 a cubic yard. So we paid six times what it actually cost to get the debris removal done because we did not have competitive bidding and we had multiple layers coming from the Corps of Engineers to national contractors, to regional contractors, to local contractors, to the actual guy with a backhoe and with a scoop and a dump truck. So we paid five to six times what it should have cost to actually get the debris removal taken care of.…”