Marshall Sanford: “This is a bipartisan amendment that I wrote with Members Delaney, Duncan, and others, and I think it simply makes common…”

“This is a bipartisan amendment that I wrote with Members Delaney, Duncan, and others, and I think it simply makes common sense. What it does is that it ensures the timely payback of advanced funds to a non-Federal sponsor. What does that mean in English? What that means is that we have a program called the advanced project agreements wherein you have a Federal actor and a local actor, and it can be that the local actor advances funds to speed the project's completion. What this amendment says is, if you have advanced beyond more than your share, then you, on a timely basis, would be paid back for more than your share. Now, why is that important? If we are going to be competitive as a country, what we need to recognize is that, indeed, time is money. One of the things most critical to improving our water resources is timely completion of these projects. So this is ultimately about recognizing that time is money; recognizing that, to be competitive, we have got to speed the progress that we see on these kinds of projects; and, in fact, it ties to what we all know about competitiveness. I mean, getting things done means a bias for action; it means not waiting on others; it means showing initiative; it means, if you go the extra mile, you get rewarded for it. Let me give one quick example. In the port in Charleston, it is a $558 million project. The Federal share is $287 million; the non-Federal share is $271 million.…”