Newsletter: Straight Talk with Sam - Getting our Priorities Straight

Statement

There are some who believe that the United States government has an endless supply of money to spend. I am not one of those people. I believe that budgets are about priorities. These are the kinds of decisions that Missourians make every day in their own lives.

For instance, you may want a new television, but you might have to delay that purchase until next year because your washing machine needs to be repaired. In the same regard, the federal government has to decide which of our needs get the limited amount of resources that we have each year.

When you look at the Army Corps of Engineers budget, from Gavin's Point Dam to the mouth of the Missouri, we spend tens of millions on wildlife restoration and only a fraction of that on levee maintenance.

In the President's Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Proposal, Missouri River Fish and Wildlife Recovery is one of the highest funded construction projects for the Army Corps of Engineers. What's worse, this one project would receive more money than flood control efforts for the entire country. With a finite amount of resources at our disposal, this approach simply does not make sense.

The priority should be to finish rebuilding the levees that were damaged by multiple years of flooding. That is why I am introducing a bill to remove "fish and wildlife" as an authorized purpose for the Corps, ensuring its focus is on the most important priorities, such as flood control and navigation. People's homes and businesses must take precedence over the habitat of birds and fish. The federal government needs to be spending the limited resources it has on rebuilding damaged levees and doing all it can to protect our communities from flooding risks in the future.

Sincerely,

Sam Graves

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