Volume 150, No. 75 covering the 2nd Session of the 108th Congress (2003 - 2004) was published by the Congressional Record.
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“WASHINGTON WASTE WATCHERS” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H3694 on June 2, 2004.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
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WASHINGTON WASTE WATCHERS
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Feeney). Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mario Diaz-Balart) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. MARIO DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise once again as a member of the Washington Waste Watchers.
Mr. Speaker, as a result of Republican efforts, House committees spent a great deal of time last year finding wastes of taxpayer funds in Federal programs. Those efforts, as a matter of fact, highlighted over $85 billion in potential savings to the taxpayer.
This year, the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle) passed a budget resolution in the Committee on the Budget that goes a long way toward reducing and actually eliminating some of the most outrageous examples of waste, fraud, and abuse. By the way, I have to also applaud President Bush for working on implementing the President's Management Agenda, a performance-based system that seeks to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse. Mr. Speaker, we need to continue to work to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, because there is a lot more work that can be done.
Let us just look at a couple of examples. Let us look at the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, where, again, hard-earned taxpayer dollars are sent to ensure that our environment is protected. Yet a recent EPA Inspector General report found that an environmental advocacy group received nearly $5 million in educational grants that it used to lobby the EPA between 1998 and 2001, despite the fact that that is illegal, it is illegal to use those funds to lobby.
Another EPA audit found that they awarded a $700,000 grant without any knowledge of the work that the recipient was supposed to perform. They did not even know what it was for.
Yet another audit found that for almost half of the grants reviewed, and this is a quote, the EPA did not even attempt to measure the project's outcomes. Yet the Democrats want to raise hard-working Americans' taxes to do more of this.
The Inspector General also found that the EPA awarded a contract to an engineering firm that used some of those funds to host a golf day, but the Democrats want to raise your taxes to do more of this.
As a matter of fact, last year, the Democrats offered alternatives to major legislation that would have added almost $1 trillion to the deficit.
Let us make this very clear. The Democrat alternatives, all of their budget alternatives massively increased taxes. One of them increased taxes by $119 billion, the other one by $165 billion, and the third one by, again, a little bit over $165 billion in increased taxes on the hard-working Americans to do more of this.
That is the difference, Mr. Speaker. While the Washington Waste Watchers, while the President, while the Republican majority is trying to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, the Democrats are trying to pile on, and they have this love affair with increased taxes.
So, Mr. Speaker, while our friends, the Democrats, continue their love affair and continue to try to raise the taxes of the American people, those of us in the Washington Waste Watchers will continue to work with the President to try to root out that waste, fraud, and abuse and eliminate it as soon as possible.
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