Congresswoman Brown Bitterly Disappointed Amendment to Water Resources and Development Act Not Accepted

Floor Speech

Congresswoman Brown made the following statement to the House Rules Committee:

"I want to thank the Rules Committee for allowing me to testify today.

I want to commend Chairman Shuster for restoring the bi-partisan nature of our committee and I want to thank Congressmen Rahall, Bishop and Gibbs for their hard work on this bill.

The amendment that I am offering along with a bi-partisan coalition of Members from different states is very simple. It authorizes projects that receive a final Chiefs Report up to one year following enactment of the bill.

Under the bill's current arbitrary deadline, critical Corps of Engineer projects throughout the United States will have to wait for years before being able to move their projects toward completion. The previous two Water Resources Development Acts each took 7 years to reauthorize, delaying important environmental restoration projects and slowing preparation for larger ships. Compounding the problem, the sequester cuts and recent government shutdown has slowed the Corps of Engineers even further. These states simply can't afford to wait for these critical infrastructure improvements.

The Jacksonville Port and North Florida community that I represent can't afford any more delays in preparing the Port for larger modern ships set to arrive in 2015. A deeper draft is critical to the continued viability of JAXPORT as an economic engine for Northeast Florida. Today, the Port provides 65,000 area jobs and $19 Billion a year in economic activity. With a deeper draft, the Port has estimated that one shipping company alone would add 90,000 jobs to the region.

The process for receiving a Chiefs Report for a project is long and painful, and includes thorough study and cost-benefit analysis. The project must be economically and environmentally justified, and it must provide an overall benefit to the country. The only difference between these projects included in this amendment and the ones that are authorized currently in the bill is that they receive their Chiefs Report after the bill was drafted.

The amendment does not change the current bill in any way, and is paid for in the same way as the projects currently authorized in the bill, through the de-authorization of obsolete projects, so there is no additional cost.

Simply put, authorizing these additional projects will generate billions of dollars in economic activity, create hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs, and benefit the nation's economy as a whole.

I encourage the Rules committee to accept this critical amendment, and I yield back my time."

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