Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, first, to the gentleman from Georgia, let me just say that the Water Resources Development Act, which passed this House, has in it the same streamlining provisions of the permitting processes for the projects that it would fund that are based on the ideas in this bill. Why? Because we know that, just because we come up with the funds for something, those funds can be churned and churned and churned year after year after year in the permitting process and never ever get to a permit so the underlying construction can take place in Texas or Savannah, Georgia, or Virginia, or all of the other places where infrastructure projects are needed. Part of the enormous cost of it is the enormous process that we go through and the length of that process and the review and review and review that never gets to a decision. During the debate over this bill this term and last, we have heard several false alarms from my friends on the other side of the aisle. For example, we have heard that the bill does not allow enough time for environmental reviews to be completed. But, with all due respect, the bill, when necessary, allows as much time for the completion of an environmental impact statement as it took our Nation to win World War II. Surely that is time enough.…”