Member of Silence in Remembrance of Armed Forces and Their Families

Floor Speech

Mr. KINZINGER of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, my friend from Michigan, I appreciate his interest in this issue. I have to strongly stand up and oppose it, though.

The 11th in Illinois, which is my district, is very, very focused and very reliant upon the ability to move commerce, the ability to have transportation, the ability for free flow of goods back and forth. That's a major, major industry in my district. A lot of jobs rely on that.

One of the great assets we have is the ability to float goods. That's a great thing. The fact of the matter is, when we talk about closing the locks and dams, we talk about the entire Chicago region's water and sewer infrastructure system is built on the idea that water flows out of Lake Michigan via the lock system; and cutting those off would completely devastate the area.

Possibly closing the locks permanently is totally not a solution to the problem. As most people have seen, the locks themselves are not even completely sealed. Even when closed, it still allows for some leakage.

At a time when we are addressing a continuing resolution, we should give the Army Corps of Engineers time to finish their study. Let's continue to be cautious. We're talking about $30 billion in commerce that's going to be affected in my area because we want to quickly make a judgment on this. I understand the passion. I understand the concern, but let's be very cautious.

At a time when the Chicago area, when my district has an economic downturn and people are waking up every day wondering if they're going to be able to feed their family or if they're going to have a job the next day, or people are driving on the interstates wondering if they can even get to work on time because there's already enough trucks, and now we want to add more and more trucks if we close these. That is the absolute wrong answer to this.

And so I'm asking, let's defeat this in this continuing resolution. Let's give the Army Corps of Engineers the time they need.

I ask my fellow colleagues to stand up and oppose this. It's too quick. We have to be cautious. We have to wait. We have to see.

When we took the majority, one of the things we talked about is being cautious when we get involved in free market and commerce; and we've talked about that caution and what we want to do to create jobs and what we want to do to allow people to get back to work and to solve this deficit not just by cutting spending, but by cutting the unemployment rate.

Well, I'm telling you, this would be terribly devastating for the people in Illinois, for the people in the 11th district and, frankly, for folks in the region.

Mr. CAMP. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. KINZINGER of Illinois. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. CAMP. I very much appreciate the gentleman yielding.

And I just want to comment, the gentlewoman from Illinois mentioned about her 12-year involvement in this issue. In fact, she and I worked very hard in 2006 to get the first funding for the electronic barrier, but that was 5 years ago. To wait for the study that I hear my colleagues call for is another 5 years. How much time is it going to take before we eliminate the threat to the entire Great Lakes ecosystem?

Again, I appreciate the gentleman yielding.

Mr. KINZINGER of Illinois. No problem.

I understand, this takes time. When we talk about affecting $30 billion in economic commerce, I would expect that to take some time.

Now, again, I appreciate the concern. I appreciate everything we're dealing with. This is a very serious issue. But, my goodness, the people in my district are already waking up wondering if they are going to have a job tomorrow, begging the free market to work. And that's all we're asking.

If we want to take this up at a later time, fine. But is it really appropriate, when we're debating hundreds of amendments to a continuing resolution, for this to be the area where we do something that's, frankly, been working or has been in study for 5 years and has a lot more to go?

I yield back the balance of my time.

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