Marshall Sanford: “I rise because too often here at the Federal level we find ourselves rewarding or occasionally funding corporations that…”

“I rise because too often here at the Federal level we find ourselves rewarding or occasionally funding corporations that would do what they do irregardless of what we did at the Federal level. It has been a point of contention with Democratic colleagues. Too often we continue to pay for programs that have outlived their original purpose. I think that too often we find ourselves looking the other way at programs that don't work and/or have wasted tens upon tens of millions of dollars. It is for those different reasons that I rise to offer this amendment, which would indeed defund the Department of Energy's failed Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program. Quite simply, it would just do two things: one, it would eliminate the $6 million in funding that would go to this program, and, two, it would prevent any further lending from this program's unused lending capacity. The reason I think doing those two things are awfully important is, one, this is, indeed, a case of paying corporations to do what they would already do. Again, this has been a point in the budget debate that we had earlier today from both Republican and Democratic colleagues alike, saying we shouldn't be paying corporations to do things they would already do. Two, this is, indeed, a stimulus era program. However well intended in 2009, it has outlived its purpose, and we are not in the economic situation that we found ourselves in 2009.…”