Washington DC- A national taxpayer organization today called for key reforms to the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), a bill expected to be considered by a Senate committee today. "The current WRDA bill will take taxpayers for a billion dollar bath," charged Ralph DeGennaro, executive director for Taxpayers for Common Sense.
"WRDA is one of the most pork-laden bills in Congress," stated Ralph DeGennaro. "Hidden throughout the bill are pounds and pounds of water pork that penalize taxpayers so members of Congress can win political points." WRDA authorizes funding for Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) projects.
Today the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee will mark up S. 507, the Water Resources Development Act of 1999. The bill, as introduced, contains several provisions that will waste taxpayer money:
- Over $800 million, or nearly half of all projects authorized in the bill, would be spent on 15 projects that are based on "contingent authorization". Contingent authorization will pressure the Corps to skip the review process and to approve projects that are economically unfeasible.
- Many Projects are out of date. One project has not been updated for over 30 years.
- The bill would authorize the Corps to begin designing expansions of several Upper Mississippi Locks, despite the fact that the Corps own preliminary studies show this project to be economically unfeasible.
- While the Corps construction budget is around $1 billion, there is currently a backlog of over $20 billion in construction projects. The new bill proposes billions of dollars in new spending on projects that may never be appropriated.
- The bill exempts several projects from contributing local money for construction and operational costs for local projects.
"In 1986, Congress enacted reforms so that projects would be authorized only when all of their studies were done and when local beneficiaries were willing to pay a fair share of the cost. The Senate would undo those reforms if it passed this bill," continued DeGennaro.
"The current bill is a bad deal for taxpayers and for our country," concluded DeGennaro.
For more information, please contract info@taxpayer.net
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