Political Quotes

“I appreciate the gentleman from Michigan permitting me to speak on this. My friend from West Virginia made a very important point, that under this bill, if it is approved, we are going to extend the backlog to something like $72 million. There are many people who support these various projects, and that is part of the problem. Simply authorizing is not somehow free. It costs money to be able to move them into the production stage. We have billions of dollars that are ready for construction that are languishing, and because we are not adequately funding year in and year out, we have an amazing number of projects with a shelf life that has expired. I commend what the gentleman from Pennsylvania and the gentleman from West Virginia have done with the committee, trying to do a deeper dive, trying to fine-tune, trying to make some real progress here. The problem is we have a legacy where, for decades, that same care and consideration was not exercised, where there are a lot of projects that really are not cost effective, that really are no longer state of the art. I think by moving forward to clear the decks of a little more of the backlog, not diverting--because the Corps and Congress have to contend with people that think just because it has been authorized they are entitled to have the project go forward. I can understand that if it stays on the books, but that is a distortion of where we are now. We are not adequately funding what this bill needs to do.…”