Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. H.R. 665, the Excess Federal Building and Property Disposal Act of 2012, was favorably reported by voice vote by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in November of last year. I'm proud to be one of the sponsors of this bill. There are 39 cosponsors of this bill, and, in particular, I want to thank my colleague, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Quigley) for his great and passionate work on this, Mr. Connolly, and Ms. Norton. There are a number of people on both sides of the aisle that have passionately worked on this issue. I'm proud to report, Mr. Speaker, that this is very bipartisan in its nature. I also want to thank our chairman, Chairman Issa, who was very instrumental in passing it out of committee to the floor, as well as Ranking Member Cummings and certainly our majority leader, Mr. Cantor, for allowing and encouraging this bill to come to the floor. So I appreciate the bipartisan nature. These are the types of things that we should be doing as a body to make sure that we're improving the process and streamlining the disposal of real property that happens in this country. Most are somewhat amazed to understand that our Federal Government has roughly 900,000 buildings and structures under its ownership. The GAO in 2011 estimated that the Federal Government holds 45,000 underutilized properties that cost nearly $1.7 billion annually in order to operate. And, again, these are underutilized.…”