Russ Feingold: “I thank my colleagues. The Mississippi River is a critical artery for Wisconsin and national commerce, and many other…”

“I thank my colleagues. The Mississippi River is a critical artery for Wisconsin and national commerce, and many other rivers serve the same role. However, I do take issue with the process that uses broadly applied criteria that will obviously only be met by a small subset of projects at the expense of other valuable project types that fall within the mission area of the Corps of Engineers. Lastly, if any of my colleagues are tempted to vote for the Inhofe- Bond alternative, I encourage them to take a close look at it. It is clearly designed to look more substantial than it really is because in a nine-page amendment, four pages are dedicated to simply reinserting the same language on a fiscal transparency report that the amendment initially deleted. Unfortunately, the existing inadequate, opaque funding process is better than the prioritization process created by the Inhofe-Bond amendment. A deliberately flawed and skewed prioritization system would be more harmful than the current ineffective one. As such, whatever one's position may be on the McCain-Feingold-Lieberman-Feinstein amendment, I strongly encourage my colleagues to oppose the Inhofe-Bond prioritization amendment. I certainly thank my colleagues for the additional time, and I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?”