Political Quotes

“why do we not just do the right thing when it comes to this issue, just do the right thing, help all the workers who need help? I appreciate the effort of the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp) to improve this program, but I cannot support his amendment. Unfortunately, DOE's management of this program has been a miserable failure. After spending millions of dollars, they can only point to one claim having been paid through March of 2004. Not only is DOE's claims processing moving at a snail's pace, but by the Department's own admission, as many as 50 percent of the claimants may not have a willing payer. This means that regardless of how quickly DOE processes a claim, many sick workers will get nothing but an IOU. The gentleman from Tennessee's (Mr. Wamp) amendment does nothing to address this larger problem of a willing payer, which affects my constituents in Ohio and other nuclear workers in Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Nevada, and New Mexico, and we do not fully understand the magnitude of this problem as GAO acknowledges that it is not possible to effectively audit DOE's databases.”