Earl Blumenauer: “I appreciate what my friend from Florida said, and I have no interest in robbing Peter to pay Paul. But let's take it…”

“I appreciate what my friend from Florida said, and I have no interest in robbing Peter to pay Paul. But let's take it down to a very specific example that you are familiar with in Jacksonville. You had a base closed, Cecil Naval Air Station, in a prior round. Under the current schedule, this facility is not scheduled to be cleaned up until 2026, another 19 years. Now, you are right, we have put a significant amount of money into the 2005 round of BRAC closures. We put $5 billion in the supplemental. And you have put in this bill which I appreciate, almost $8.2 billion. But where I take modest exception with the gentleman is that you can't spend it. The payout rate is about 10 percent. I am seeking to transfer 2 percent away from areas that you can't spend this year or next year or the year after that. But I will distribute a list of people who have been waiting in some cases since 1988. They have plans ready to go. They are ready to clean up. If you talk to the companies that are the ordnance contractors, they are ready to go. They will clean this up. But we have got to stop the fits and the starts, where we don't follow through on our commitments. With all due respect, if I had a facility in the 2005 BRAC cycle, I would like this Congress to start meeting its commitments from 1988 and 1990 and 1992 and 1995, because if we don't, subsequent Congresses are going to play the same game.”