Political Quotes

“I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy. Mr. Chairman, I feel like I am just a member of the T&I Alumni Association. I deeply cherish the time that I spent on the committee, on the Water Resources Subcommittee, and I appreciate the hard work that the committee has moving forward, trying to find some areas of agreement in a sometimes fractured House and focus on the big picture: What is going to put America in the best position going forward? I am going to have an amendment coming forward talking a little bit about some of the backlog and some of the NEPA efforts, but one of the fundamental problems we have now is that we are not providing the resources to move the projects forward. There is a backlog of $60 billion, and there are opportunities here to add to it. The point we want to focus on is being able to deal meaningfully with it so we don't have projects that go stale, that are outmoded, that are past their shelf life. Another thing that I hope to be able to work with the committee on in the future deals with the principles and guidelines for the Corps that were established in 1983. This was a project of mine for years on the committee. We finally updated them, but they have been stalled by some hold, I think, through the appropriations process that have stymied them, so they are not going forward. These principles and guidelines, if they were adopted in 1983, were clearly in the process in the mid-seventies.…”