Remarks of U.S. Senator Feingold
On the Water Resources Development Act
From the Senate Floor
As Prepared for Delivery
September 24, 2007
Mr. President, I will oppose the conference report on the Water Resources
Development Act. For seven years I have worked with Senator McCain and
many of our colleagues on essential reforms of the Corps of Engineers,
and have long anticipated the day that the Congress enacts meaningful
reforms. Unfortunately, today is not that day, and this is not the reform
bill the country needs.
After a decade of government and independent reports calling for reforming
the Corps, and pointing out stunning flaws in Corps projects and project
studies, and after the tragic failures of New Orleans’ levees
during Hurricane Katrina, the American people deserve meaningful reforms
to ensure that the projects the Corps builds are safe, appropriate,
environmentally responsible, and fiscally sound. The urgency and necessity
could not be clearer.
Unfortunately, the conference report includes weak reforms. The Senate
twice voted in support of strong reform language – when it passed
WRDA bills earlier this year and last Congress. But the conference report
we are about to vote on has been stripped of important safeguards that
would ensure accountability and prevent the Corps from manipulating
the process. We have compromised enough over the years. We can no longer
afford a system that favors wasteful projects over the needs of the
American people.
The bill brought back from conference is particularly disappointing
because a few months ago, on May 15th, Senators Reid, Boxer, and I entered
into a colloquy in which we agreed the Senate Environment and Public
Works Committee would ensure that the strong Senate reforms would be
the minimum reforms coming out of conference and enacted into law. That
agreement apparently counted for little.
I am particularly troubled by the changes made to the bill’s
independent review provision during negotiations between the House and
the Senate. The Senate version of the bill included a strong independent
review provision, which I successfully offered as an amendment to last
year’s bill and which was again included in this year’s
WRDA. Subjecting Corps of Engineers project studies to a review by an
independent panel of experts will help ensure future Corps projects
do not waste taxpayer money or endanger public safety, and that environmental
impacts are avoided or minimized.
Unfortunately, the independent review provision included in the conference
report was significantly weakened in several respects:
First, it does not ensure independence of the review process. Under
the conference report, the supposedly “independent” review
is not independent. The review process is run by the Corps rather than
outside the agency as required by the Senate bill. The Corps’
Chief of Engineers is given significant authority to decide the timing
of review, the projects to be reviewed, and whether to implement a review
panel’s recommendations, and apparently even has the ability to
control the flow of information received by the review panel. The Corps
was not given the authority to determine the scope of the review, but
in these other respects it was given far too much authority –
all of which will compromise the independence of the review that is
performed.
Second, it terminates the independent review provision seven years
after enactment. It is reasonable for Congress to continually evaluate
how the program is working, but to presume there is not a long-term
need for review and set a sunset date is irresponsible. Independent
review should be permanently integrated into the Corps’ planning
process. The burden should be on the Corps to demonstrate why it does
not need a congressionally mandated review process, rather than on Congress
to wage another battle to extend the requirement in seven years.
Third, it allows the Corps to exempt projects. The Senate’s provision
established mandatory review when clear triggers are met. However, the
conference report gives the Corps fairly broad discretion to decide
what projects get reviewed. It expands the House’s loophole allowing
the Corps to exempt projects that exceed the “mandatory”
$45 million cost trigger. The Corps can exempt Continuing Authority
Program projects, certain rehabilitation projects, and, most egregiously,
projects that it determines are not controversial and only require an
Environmental Assessment rather than a full-blown Environmental Impact
Statement. It is this very decision – whether to do an EA or and
EIS – that is often in need of review. Furthermore, a project’s
economic justification, engineering analysis, and formulation of project
alternatives are critical elements that should be looked at for all
major projects, not just those with significant environmental impacts.
The conference report also prevents review of most ongoing studies.
Though the conference report allows the Corps to exempt projects from
review, it does not give the Corps equal authority to include projects.
The bill includes restrictive language that prevents the Corps from
reviewing studies that were initiated more than two years ago or that
were initiated in the last two years but already have an “array
of alternatives” identified, which occurs early in the process.
The Senate language would have allowed the Corps to initiate a review
for any project that does not have a draft feasibility report.
The conference report also eliminates the requirement that a review
is mandatory if requested by a federal agency. The Senate bill would
have made a project review mandatory if requested by a federal agency
with the authority to review Corps projects. Instead, the conference
report gives the Corps the authority to reject the request, and requires
the federal agency to appeal the decision to the Council on Environmental
Quality. The Corps should be required to conduct the review made by
the head of another agency that is charged with reviewing Corps projects
or, at a minimum, to justify to the Council on Environmental Quality
why it wants to deny such a request.
The final problem I want to highlight is that the conference report
does not make sure that the Corps is accountable. The conference report
eliminated a key provision in the Senate bill that ensured accountability.
Specifically, the provision would have required that if a project ends
up in court, the same weight is given to the panel and the Corps’
opinion if the Corps cannot provide a good explanation for why it ignored
the panel’s recommendations. By dropping this accountability requirement,
the conference report allows the Corps to ignore the panel’s recommendations,
as the Corps is currently doing with its own internal review process.
I would love to be able to join my colleagues in claiming this is an
“historic moment.” And I am pleased that some of the other
reforms I have fought for are included in this bill. We have come a
long way in the last seven years, as evidenced by the overwhelming,
bipartisan majority of my colleagues who supported the Senate’s
reforms last year and again earlier this year. But we haven’t
come far enough, and that is truly regrettable. Why should the taxpayers
of this country have to continue wondering if their dollars are being
spent on projects that lack merit, hurt the environment, or just aren’t
entirely reliable? Isn’t Congress finally willing to put an end
to the longtime practice of doling out projects to members regardless
of those projects’ merits? How many more flawed projects or wasted
dollars will it take before we say “enough”?
I am pleased that the conference report contains some modest reforms,
but we can do much better than that. In fact, we did much better than
that when we passed the Senate bill not long ago. Congress needs to
get this right—the stakes are too high.
Unfortunately, for the reasons I have explained, the conference report
fails to do enough. It contains severely compromised language that doesn’t
fix the status quo under which Congress uses the Corps to fund pet projects
that are not justified or adequately reviewed.
I also want to express my concerns with the cost of the bill, which
has ballooned to $23.2 billion according to the Congressional Budget
Office and is a significant increase from the approximately $14 to 15
billion cost of the House and Senate versions. Nearly $1 billion of
the additional costs is for nineteen projects that were added during
conference – neither the Senate nor the House has previously reviewed
these projects. My colleagues have previously stood on the Senate floor
and said the cost of bill does not matter because WRDA is merely an
authorizing bill and not an appropriations bill. We will sort out priorities
later, they say. I think the American taxpayers would join me in saying
this is absolutely irresponsible and shirks our responsibilities as
elected officials.
There is already a $58 billion dollar backlog of construction projects
previously authorized, and with only $2 billion annually appropriated
for project construction, this means that the nation’s most pressing
needs face significant competition for funding and likely delays. Furthermore,
this bill authorizes a significant number of projects and studies that
are beyond the Corps’ primary mission areas. The Corps cannot
be everything to everyone, and Congress needs to discipline itself and
set priorities.
I will continue to work with my colleagues to institute a system for
prioritizing Corps projects, and other critical reforms. We may have
an opportunity to pass those reforms sooner than some had hoped. The
administration has indicated that the President will veto this flawed,
bloated bill. Rather than overriding a veto, I hope that Congress will
use that veto as an opportunity to re-think the flawed mindset that
resulted in this bill, and in previous WRDA bills. We don’t do
our constituents favors by spending their tax dollars on projects that
are not justified or fully reviewed. We need reforms to make sure that
those tax dollars are spent on the most important priorities, not just
on members’ pork.
Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to oppose the WRDA conference report.
|
