[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 119 (Friday, July 21, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1497-E1498]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


 RETIREMENT OF STANLEY G. FEINSTEIN FROM THE GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE

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                           HON. GEORGE MILLER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                          Friday, July 21, 1995
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I want to express appreciation 
for the tireless 

[[Page E1498]]

public service of Mr. Stanley G. Feinstein, who retires this month from 
the General Accounting Office. At a time when budget-cutters seek to 
eliminate the GAO and cripple the Congress's ability to investigate 
Government waste, Mr. Feinstein's work exemplifies the valuable 
assistance that this Congress received every day from the GAO.
  Over the course of his career, Mr. Feinstein helped document some 
serious abuses of the public trust. His legal analyses of Federal water 
projects provided this Congress with the factual information we needed 
to make significant changes in Federal water policy and in the 
authorization of specific water projects. Mr. Feinstein helped us to 
sort out the intricacies of the Colorado River Storage Project Act, the 
Garrison project, the Oahe project, the Central Valley project, the 
Colorado River Basin Project Act, to name just a few. He told us what 
was authorized and therefore legal, and what was unauthorized and 
therefore illegal.
  I first met Mr. Feinstein in 1977 when he served on the staff of the 
San Luis Task Force, a presidentially appointed task force established 
to investigate abuses of a major Federal water project in my home State 
of California. Mr. Feinstein's work on that study uncovered abuses of 
reclamation law and demonstrated that large corporations were in fact 
receiving illegal subsidies from the Federal Treasury. These 
discoveries contributed in large part to the reforms embodied in the 
Reclamation Reform Act of 1982 and the Central Valley Project 
Improvement Act of 1992.
  Mr. Feinstein has for many years demonstrated an incomparable 
understanding of natural resource law, attesting to the importance of 
the independent legal analysis that GAO staff brings to the legislative 
process. His contributions will be missed, and we wish him a long and 
happy retirement.


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