Political Quotes

“I appreciate the gentleman, and what he said is correct in terms of a situation here. Mr. Chairman, streamlining provisions in this bill provide nothing but an empty promise that projects will be built faster. The empty promise comes with real costs: it will lead to more damaging and costly projects, and it will prevent States, local governments and other stakeholders from making realistic plans for the future. The Corps currently has an estimated backlog of over 1,000 authorized activities that will take about $60 billion. The bill before us adds to the backlog. Both the Corps, itself, and the administration have pointed out that these proposed streamlining guidelines may actually slow project development and do not adequately protect communities, taxpayers, and the environment. The real cause of delay is limited funding, competition for funding amongst the extensive study and project construction backlog, poor project planning that does not focus on national priorities or on identifying the least possible damaging solution to water resource problems. Project studies take the longest when the Corps and Congress insist on pushing outdated, damaging, and extremely costly projects that inconvenience or even harm communities instead of adopting low- impact, modern solutions that could more easily gain broad-based support. I am all for getting projects done faster, but our infrastructure deficit slows the economy and puts people in physical danger at worst.…”