Mike Conaway: “This amendment is a pretty straightforward amendment. It does two things. One, it saves and conserves valuable taxpayer…”

“This amendment is a pretty straightforward amendment. It does two things. One, it saves and conserves valuable taxpayer dollars to be used on higher priority issues, and it holds the Department of Defense accountable for current law. Mr. Chairman, we currently have in place a variety of agreements with folks who buy biofuels at costs ranging up to $28 a gallon. The Army actually bought some at $40 a gallon. At a time when you have heard, for over an hour now, the need for conserving resources, for reprioritizing resources, having those kind of contracts, new contracts come in existence makes no sense whatsoever. This amendment would simply say that while sequestration is going on, while we are under the draconian measures of sequestration, the Army, Department of Defense, Navy, Air Force will not enter into new contracts. Existing contracts, wherever they may be, however costly they might be, would continue forward, we would honor those and the amendments made in that regard. But as long as we are under sequestration and we are under this budgeting process that you have heard ad nauseam over the last hour or so, these would prevent this problem from going forward.…”