Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise in strong support of this amendment offered by the gentleman from Michigan. We have enormous infrastructure needs here in our own country. And, in fact, the Federal Highway Administration estimates that we have $106 billion of work to be done to our Nation's deteriorating bridges. As a country, it is absolutely critical that we make investments in repairing our own Nation's infrastructure. Instead, we continue to invest taxpayer money in the Afghanistan Infrastructure Fund. To make matters worse, the Afghanistan Infrastructure Fund is notorious for inefficiencies and shortfalls. Several government watchdog groups have said that projects under this account have lagged significantly behind schedule, have lacked proper oversight, and have been poorly administered. There has been documented serious waste and fraud in this program. When this program was established in 2011, it was intended to identify a handful of infrastructure projects that were shovel-ready and able to be completed by the middle of 2013. According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, projects funded under this account have been consistently over budget and behind schedule. Since 2003, the taxpayers of the United States have spent $1.3 billion rebuilding Afghanistan. As of April of this year, the Department of Defense has yet to disburse nearly $500 million for this program.…”