Water Resources Development Act Of 2007--Motion To Proceed

Floor Speech

WATER RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT ACT OF 2007--MOTION TO PROCEED -- (Senate - May 10, 2007)

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Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, around here we have a lot of tough issues. We have a lot of disagreements. We try to work together. I have to say on this bill, this Water Resources Development Act, we have a bill that is the product of major bipartisan cooperation. Senator Inhofe and I are very proud of the work that has been done on both sides of the aisle. We have had tremendous help from our committee. The chair and ranking member of the subcommittee that oversees this, Chairman Baucus and Ranking Member Isakson, have been extraordinarily helpful, and all colleagues have as well.

It is rare to have a bill that is supported by the National Association of Manufacturers and the Laborers Union, the American Farm Bureau and the Carpenters Union, the National Waterways Conference, the Associated General Contractors, and the Operating Engineers. So we are here today to tell the Senate that this bill is a win-win for everyone in this country. We urge our colleagues who have amendments to consider them carefully, because we have worked so hard to balance this bill. It is a delicate balance. I know I have colleagues on my side who have ideas that I support, but I have an agreement, as does Senator Baucus, as do Senator Isakson and Senator Inhofe, that we will oppose all amendments that are not unanimously agreed to by the four of us in order to keep the balance in this bill. If we have amendments all four of us can agree to, they will be placed in a managers' package.

We want colleagues to please come to this floor as soon as possible with their amendments so we can see how we can dispose of them. Even though we will probably not be voting tomorrow or Monday, we will be working here on this bill.

This bill makes a huge commitment to the people of Louisiana. It puts Louisiana's coast on a category 5 protection path. It is fiscally responsible.

At this time I ask unanimous consent to do something very important, which is to have printed in the Record the CBO cost estimate associated with the substitute text that will be considered by the Senate.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record

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Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I say thank you to Senator Inhofe. People see us tangling on a host of issues. I think it gives them a good feeling to know there are times when we see eye to eye. I would say, when those times occur, it should mean we can get our legislation through pretty quickly because we have worked hard to accommodate the views of both sides of the aisle.

I am pleased the Senate voted overwhelmingly to start the process of considering the Water Resources Development Act of 2007. I hope, in short order, we will find out we can actually move to the bill. We are technically on a motion to proceed to the bill, which is slowing us up a bit, but we think there are other issues causing that. We hope they will be resolved.

This important legislation authorizes projects and policies of the Civic Works Program of the Army Corps of Engineers and, as I said, it has tremendous support both from my ranking member, Senator Inhofe, the entire Environment and Public Works Committee--which runs the gamut of philosophies and geographies and all the rest.

Colleagues asked to see the substitute bill we worked so hard on, that has a very good score from the Congressional Budget Office--less than the House-passed bill; fiscally responsible. A good chunk of it is aimed at Hurricane Katrina--which both Senator Inhofe and I feel very good about. We believe certainly Louisiana is in desperate need of help, and we have answered their call in a very strong way. I would say about 25 percent of the bill is actually dedicated to making sure Louisiana is made whole and is protected in the future.

We hope our colleagues from Louisiana will feel good about this. If there are other things they want to offer, we ask them to come down and show us what they are. Senator Inhofe, Senator Isakson, Senator Baucus, and I have an agreement that unless the four of us agree on these amendments, we are going to oppose them. That is hard for us to do. We don't like to give up our freedom. But on this we are going to do it. Why? This bill is 7 years overdue--7 long years. There is enough blame to go around as to why it happened. We don't need to get into it. It is not important. Right now we have an opportunity to make up for lost time and get to where we are back on a track that makes sense. This is a great economy in this country. We need an infrastructure that matches our ambitions and our future dreams for a thriving business community, a place where workers can get good jobs. So we need this bill.

What we are saying to colleagues is, first of all, some of you want to see the bill. Of course. The bill is available to you.

The bill is available in both cloakrooms. The bill will be printed in the Record tonight. You have all been part of it. I think you all will be pleased with it. There is a CBO score that has been placed in the Record for you to see. There is huge support out here in America for this bill. We have letters coming in from disparate groups in this country which include farmers, which include workers' unions, contractors, all kinds of businesses. This is a very powerful message to the Senate to move forward. The House has passed the bill. Let's get to conference. Let's get a bill to the President's desk.

Again, I say thank you to Senator Inhofe. I will say this a lot. But it has been a pleasure to work with him and his staff. My staff feels the same way. We have made great progress. This bill is a project of commitment, of bipartisan and partnership.

I mentioned Senators Baucus and Isakson. They have been very important in terms of working with us on this package. Many members of the committee went to Louisiana to see the problem there. Senators Landrieu and Vitter were determined to show us their needs, and they did. Again, a lot of the work in this bill is directed toward Louisiana.

I do want to thank members of the staff. Sometimes chairmen wait until the bill is finished to do that. But I want to do it now: My staff director, Bettina Poirier, and my deputy staff director, Ken Kopocis; Jeff Rosato and Tyler Rushforth for all their work. On Senator Inhofe's staff, I wanted to thank Andrew Wheeler, Ruth Van Mark, Angie Giancarlo, and Letmon Lee. Additionally, I thank Jo-Ellen Darcy and Paul Wilkins with Senator Baucus and Mike Quiello with Senator Isakson.

We have had many late-hour, emergency, stressful phone calls getting to this stage. We hope those phone calls will not have been in vain and that we have come up with a product everyone will be proud of.

In so many ways this is the start of a new day because I believe we are now on track to restore the regular process of meeting the Nation's water resources needs as they arise. But we will not get done with this bill if colleagues do not come to the floor and let us see their amendments.

I echo what Senator Inhofe said. Let's not play hide and seek with
amendments. Let's get those amendments out. I have already been very open. I have told everybody there is an agreement with the big four on the committee; that we need to agree to them, to support them. It may well be there is an amendment on Senator Inhofe's side that he wouldn't vote for because one of us said it is not acceptable. The same thing could well happen on our side. That does not diminish anyone's right to offer these amendments. They have the right to do it. We support their right to do it because if they come soon, maybe we can work on these amendments together and get them included in the managers' package. So that would be the best of all worlds.

I thank Senator Feingold because he and I had a chat. He is going to offer an amendment I do not agree with on prioritization of Corps projects. But he is going to come over here at noon. He is going to take his time then, and then he is not going to talk about this anymore until we have a vote. And he will do it in 2 minutes on Tuesday so that we can get the debate on these amendments over with now.

So I ask other Senators with amendments, within the sound of our voices: Please come over with your amendments. We have all day, all day here with an open microphone for you. You can take as much time as you want. You can put your amendment out there. You can talk about it, and then Senator Inhofe and I can look it over, share it with Senators Isakson and Baucus.

We want to accommodate everybody. We really do. If you meet the criteria we have set out--I think the criteria is well thought out. We want to make sure every project in this bill can be defended. That is important because we have precious few dollars to waste. So we want you to come over with your amendments. We are going to try to help everyone. We have already done so much to help you. We want to do more. We both agree, Senator Inhofe and I, that WRDA is an important bill, and it is overdue 7 years--too long to wait for a bill that authorizes essential flood control, navigation, ecosystem restoration; 7 years of projects being ready to go and unable to begin because, for whatever reason.

Again, we did not--we could not get the political will, or we could not just push it over the finish line, as I like to say. So we had 7 years of communities in your State and mine and Oklahoma and other places, people waiting to shore up their infrastructure needs, many of them vital to protecting homes and families from catastrophic flooding.

Believe me, I can tell you, in my State flood control is one of the major priorities of Senator Feinstein and I, as well as Governor Schwarzenegger. It is quite bipartisan in the State legislature as well.

So, yes, there are a lot of projects in the bill. It is the cost of waiting so long to act. So I think it is

remarkable that given all the time that has gone on, we were able to put together a bill that is fiscally responsible. The bill before the Senate is less expensive than the bill passed by the House. The original bill had some ambiguous language that drove up the score. But I believe Senator Inhofe and I and others, we have corrected this problem. It was not easy. It took discipline, but we worked cooperatively in a bipartisan way.

We have a bill that meets our communities' and our Nation's acute and unmet water infrastructure needs. It does it in a fiscally responsible way. Let me tell you what the bill does. Title I would authorize 47 projects consistent with completed chief of engineers reports. Now, that is very important because these reports lay out what we have to do, what the cost will be.

Those chief of engineers reports deal with flood control, navigation, and ecosystem restoration projects. These chief reports are the result of years of engineering science, economic analysis, environmental assessment, hours of Corps of Engineers work and expertise going into preparing these documents, concluding with the final review of the chief.

Title I would also authorize new locks on the upper Mississippi River, Illinois waterway system, and the concurrent ecosystem restoration plan for those waters. This project is important to waterway goods movement, particularly grains from the heartland of America. That is why the farmers support this bill. We have an amazing coalition of people supporting this bill.

If you cannot move goods, grain, from the heartland, we are in a lot of trouble. We will be in a lot of trouble if this bill does not get done. Senator Inhofe and I are committed to getting this done. We have our differences in this Chamber, and by the way, that is the way it should be. There are differences in this Chamber, but when it comes to this bill, it seems to me we have to set them aside. Those differences should be set aside.

Title I also includes authorization for the Louisiana Coastal Area Ecosystem Restoration Program, to revert wetland loss and provide hurricane and storm damage reduction benefits.

I will discuss this issue in depth at a later time. But we know the loss of wetlands is a major cause of flooding. Not even to get into the fact that our species need these wetlands, put that aside; the wetlands are flood control, natural flood control. We have lost so many wetlands that the Corps came to us and told us they believe it is a major cause of trouble now. We did not realize what we had until they were gone. So now we are restoring wetlands.

Finally, title I includes small projects for flood damage reduction, navigation, aquatic ecosystem restoration, under the continuing authority programs of the Corps.

Title II will make changes in Corps of Engineers authorities in how it carries out its programs. Title II contains the administrative provisions that are commonly referred to as Corps reform. These important provisions include updating the Corps' planning process, the water resources planning coordinating committee, independent peer review, and improvements to the Corps' mitigation program.

Now, a lot of this language was new to the last bill. I thank my colleague, Senator Inhofe. When he was in charge of the committee, he took the lead on this section, and we kept that section intact. We made progress with Corps reform. These provisions will help ensure the Corps does its job more effectively and soundly, require in many cases an extra pair of eyes on its projects.

Senator Inhofe worked with Senator Feingold and me and others. The language stands. We should be proud. Yes, there is Corps reform in this bill.

Now, I wanted to make it clear that Senator Feingold wants to do more. One of his ideas is prioritization. Frankly, I think it is off the mark, and we are going to have a debate about it to see where the chips fall on that particular amendment. But I thank him for his cooperation. He is going to come down in a little while. He is going to take his time. He is going to debate this bill. Senator Inhofe and I, I am sure, will have a response, and then we will be able to have a very short continuation of the debate just a couple of minutes per side, hopefully, on Monday or Tuesday, and we will finish this bill.

Title II also contains the authorization for the National Levee Safety Program, a new program that helps identify failing levees and provides Corps resources and expertise to help improve and repair those levees.

Title III includes provisions that would affect existing, ongoing, or completed projects. These sections include making modifications to project cost ceilings, modifying project purposes, changing project boundaries, extending authorizations for annual programs, and correcting original deficiencies. Why is this important? Because so much time has passed that these projects need another look. Sometimes there is new technologies that can come in and meet the needs. Sometimes there is new cost estimates that need to be reflected. So Title III affects existing, ongoing, or completed projects.

I have just about 3 more minutes or 4 more minutes, then I will have to yield to whoever would like to speak at that time.

Title IV includes authorizations for new project studies. It also makes modifications to ongoing studies. Title V includes modifications to the Estuary Restoration Act, an existing restoration program of the Corps. It includes programmatic authorities for regional approaches to water resources problems.

Title VI would deauthorize all or portions of 52 previously authorized Corps
projects. The deauthorization represents projects or portions of projects that are no longer supported by local interests. This does happen. Sometimes you have a plan, and after years and years people say: There is a better way to do it, or we don't need it. That is reflected here.

So that is a brief overview of the bill. But it only begins to express the bill's importance to our communities, our families, our Nation, our farmers, our workers, our businesses. The bill is about authorizing projects our communities need to help protect thousands of homes and millions of lives from catastrophic floods. The bill is about authorizing projects our communities need to help restore the great wetlands, estuaries, and rivers of our Nation. These are places in which wildlife thrives and our families can enjoy for generations to come.

Indeed, as hunting, fishing, boating, camping, and our outdoor industries boom, this bill is an important part of keeping America's recreation economy thriving.

The bill makes other very important contributions to our Nation's economy. It authorizes projects our communities need to help increase our port and waterway capacity and makes shipping easier, safer, more efficient.

It literally keeps America's economy moving. We are in a global economy. Ships come into port, and they go out of port. They move goods in, they move goods out. Workers are at the ports, businesses are at the ports.

I will tell you, when we get to our next highway bill, we have to do a lot more for our ports in terms of cleaner air and goods movement. I look forward to working with Senator Inhofe perhaps as early as next year, and the other colleagues who chair and rank on that subcommittee, to begin looking at that next bill that is so important to our goods movement.

But this is part of it. We need to pass this bill to keep America's economy moving because so much of our economy is dependent on our water resources. In just the next 2 minutes, I am going to give you a couple of examples of what I am talking about.

America's ports and harbors are our gateway to the world. Our manufacturers' goods, automobiles, computer chips, agriculture goods such as grains, wines, and fruit pass through our ports and harbors around the world. Goods worth $5.5 billion pass through our ports every day and more than 2.5 billion tons of trade move through our ports and waterways. That volume is expected to double over the next 15 years. In the next 15 years, goods movement is going to double in our country. So we have to get down passing this bill, because thousands of jobs are on the line. Many businesses are expecting us to take action, and our farmers want action. Five million jobs are at America's ports. WRDA is essential.

Outdoor recreation, I talked about that. The Corps of Engineers operates more than 2,500 recreation areas at 463 projects, and leases an additional 1,800 sites to States or locals. The Corps hosts 360 million visits a year at its lakes, beaches, and other areas. It is estimated that 1 in 10 Americans visits Corps projects once a year, 25 million people. We need to pass this bill. That generates 600,000 jobs to support visitors.

Public health and safety, economic growth, environmental protection are the goals of this bill.

This is the first bill--I think Senator Inhofe and I are very proud of this--that takes into effect ethics reform, even though the bill has not been signed into law. We have asked colleagues to submit letters answering the question: Do you have a conflict of interest in any of your projects? Those letters are open for the public to see. They are at the committee offices. We have printed in large print the results of those letters and each of the projects Members have asked for.

We are proud of that.

One of the lessons of Hurricane Katrina is we ignore water infrastructure at our own peril. We are going to be moving new WRDA bills right after this one. We are going to be looking at our levees. We are not resting after this bill passes.

I look forward to moving along on this bill. I know at this point we have a bit of a slowdown on the bill by my Republican colleagues. I understand their issues have nothing to do with the legislation. I respect that. It is a tool being used. But I urge both sides, let's put aside our differences on whatever they are. Whether it is judges, whether it is Iraq, God knows we have differences; they are tough. I respect those differences. Senator Inhofe does as well. But we need to move this legislation. This bill can't wait much longer.

Again, we are going to work in a cooperative way. We urge Members from both sides to get their amendments to the floor. Even though we can't at this point put those amendments in the Record, we can debate them today.

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Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I thank Senator Feingold for his kind remarks. He and I are close colleagues. We have worked very closely together on so many issues. On Corps reform, we worked closely together, and working together we did get very important peer review into the bill. I am very proud of his work on this bill and praise him for it.

It is very rare we find ourselves on differing sides, but I am in strong opposition to his amendment, and I want to lay out the reasons.

I describe the Senator's amendment as ``we have met the enemy and it is us.'' I reject the fact that Members of the Senate have to give us their judgment and their views on what is important in our own States to some politically appointed panel, probably politicians, because they will be appointed by politicians. I have other objections to this amendment because I think it creates a bias toward large projects. It reduces the ability of the Corps to pursue small ecosystem restoration programs. It reduces their ability to pursue small but vital flood control projects. It could preclude navigation projects that serve small communities, recreational interests, and subsistence fishermen.

Because, as it is drafted, it sets up a tier system of priority recommendations, but each tier is limited to 5 billion dollars' worth of projects, or 100 total projects. That means a worthy flood control project in my State, or any State, could end up stuck in a lower tier simply because it is more expensive, if equally more important projects in other States were ranked in a higher tier. I think it is an arbitrary system that can label a project second tier despite critical local public safety needs.

How does a project become second tier if it is the only way to protect a community? Such an arbitrary label will inappropriately undermine an important project's chances of receiving appropriations, and I believe people's lives could be in jeopardy because of it. I don't think that is the kind of prioritization we need when we have to fight tooth and nail every year to get critical funding for very important and needy flood control projects.

The Senator named a lot of groups I support and that support me, and I respect that fact. But to be candid, a lot of these groups don't like water projects in general, and I think sometimes they will just say: Fine. Anything to slow down these projects.

I believe Congress, not political appointees or a commissioner, should retain this responsibility. I understand the legislation has been changed to an advisory situation, but it only slows us down. It slows us down with political appointees, and I have a basic problem with that. It is adding layers of delay. We have already delayed this bill 7 long years. We need it, Mr. President. We need it.

We need it because the farmers say we need it and the corn growers say we need it and the labor unions say we need it and the chambers of commerce say we need it and we have colleagues supporting it--from Senator Inhofe to Senator Boxer. If my colleagues don't think that is something to point to, it is. It means things are working around here.

My colleague and friend, Senator Feingold, is a strong supporter of fiscal responsibility. We took this bill down from $33 billion to a score of $13.9 billion. How did we do it? We were careful. We did scrutinize these projects. And, by the way, we have standards built into this bill. I want my colleague to understand--and it is very important because this is kind of a trash-the-Senate amendment, taking away, casting doubt on our judgment--that we worked hard by setting up these objective criteria by which I have had to, frankly, turn against my own Members and say: You know I can't take care of that for you because it doesn't fit the criteria.

So I think there is a sense of fiscal responsibility that is permeating this place. We took a bill from $33 billion down to $13 billion--$13.9 billion to be exact--and we did it without some appointed people telling us what to do.
We did it because we care about fiscal responsibility and we care about keeping this economy moving, and I just don't think we need this commission. We went through an exhaustive process to determine which projects and studies would be authorized. They have to have chief of engineers or other completed Corps reports for construction. They have to meet a benefit-cost test, or have environmental benefits. So I think we have a lot of built-in safety features as we go through this process.

We have a very broad committee that has different ideologies. We represent broad areas of the country. Frankly, I think we all want to protect Americans. We have seen what happens when we look at Katrina, so we want to do our best.

I laud my colleague for his absolute commitment and dedication to finding ways to make this process work better, but I say this bill proves, in my opinion, that we are listening.

We did incorporate the fine Corps language that my friend worked on so hard, and he knows how strongly I feel about this particular amendment. But he insists on it because, in his heart, he thinks it is important. I know he has some things he will say now about my comments, so I will yield to him with the understanding that I will be able to respond in due course.

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