[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 62 (Wednesday, April 10, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2380-S2381]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CORPS OF ENGINEERS FISCAL YEAR 2020 BUDGET REQUEST
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President I ask unanimous consent that a copy of
my opening statement at the Subcommittee on Energy and Water
Development's budget hearing for the Corps of Engineers and Bureau of
Reclamation's fiscal year 2020 budget request be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Corps of Engineers Fiscal Year 2020 Budget Request
Mr. ALEXANDER. First, I would like to thank our witnesses
for being here today, and also Senator Feinstein, with whom I
have the pleasure to work with again this year to draft the
Energy and Water Appropriations bill.
Our witnesses today include: R.D. James, Assistant
Secretary of the Army for Civil Works; Lieutenant General
Todd Semonite, Chief of Engineers for the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers; Brenda Burman, Commissioner for the Bureau of
Reclamation at the Department of the Interior; and Timothy R.
Petty, Ph.D., Assistant Secretary for Water and Science at
the Department of the Interior.
Based on the number of appropriations requests we receive
each year, the Corps of Engineers is the federal government's
most popular agency. Because this is so important to many
Senators, Senator Feinstein and I have provided record level
funding in a regular appropriations bill for the last four
years.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers touches the lives of
almost every American. The Corps maintains our inland
waterways, it deepens and keeps our ports open, and its dams
provide emission-free, renewable hydroelectric energy. The
Corps also manages river levels to help prevent flooding.
This year record rainfall caused the Missouri River to
experience historic flooding, devastating parts of Iowa,
Nebraska and Missouri.
I can recall when, after the Missouri and Mississippi
rivers flooded in 2011, a room full of Senators showed up at
a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing to
ask what went wrong and what went right with disaster relief
efforts. So, there's a real interest in what the Corps does.
So, last year, Senator Feinstein and I worked together to
provide record funding for the Corps of Engineers--a total of
$7 billion. However, this year, the president's budget
request only includes $4.8 billion for the Corps--a dramatic
reduction in spending. In my opinion, we should spend more,
not less, on our nation's water infrastructure.
Today I will focus my questions on four main areas:
1. Making our nation's water infrastructure a priority and
properly funding our inland waterways system;
2. Adequately funding our nation's ports and harbors;
3. Making sure the Corps has the resources it needs to
respond to flooding and make repairs so they can continue to
manage river levels, and;
4. Using a more common-sense approach to making decisions
about which projects receive funding by looking at the
``remaining benefit to cost ratio'' of an ongoing project.
Today, because of Office of Management and Budget rules, the
Corps has to pretend a project is not already under
construction when the Corps decides which projects will
receive funding each year. This does not make any sense, and
makes it harder to complete projects on time and on budget.
In 2012, Senator Graham, Senator Feinstein, and I said,
``Let's ask what would a great country, the United States,
want from its ports, locks, dams, and waterways in order to
fully maximize them for our economic growth.''
We asked everyone to focus first on what needed to be done
and not get bogged down in the difficulties of how to pay for
it. From these discussions, Congress took three important
steps, focusing on properly funding our inland waterways
system.
First, Congress passed a law that reduced the amount of
money that comes from the Inland Waterways Trust Fund to
replace Olmsted Lock, a project in Illinois and Kentucky that
was soaking up almost all of the money that was available for
inland waterway projects.
Second, we worked with the commercial waterways industry to
establish a priority list for projects that needed to be
funded, on which Chickamauga ranks near the top, in fourth
place.
And third, we enacted a user fee increase that commercial
barge owners asked to pay in order to provide additional
funds to replace locks and dams across the country, including
Chickamauga Lock.
These steps increased the amount of funding that was
available for inland waterways projects from about $85
million in fiscal year 2014 to $105 million in fiscal year
2020. And Congress has followed through by appropriating all
of the user fees that have been collected in the last five
years. The user fees that are paid into the Inland Waterways
Trust Fund by waterway users are matched with federal
dollars, which allow the Corps of Engineers to make
significant progress to address the backlog of work on our
inland waterways.
But despite knowing the Inland Waterways Trust Fund would
have $105 million available for fiscal year 2020, the
Administration's budget is only proposing to spend $55.5
million--which leaves 47% of these funds sitting unspent in a
Treasury account. Then we would not be spending the money for
the intended purpose. And despite not spending the entire
$105 million in user fees from commercial barges, the
administration's budget also includes a new user fee for
inland waterways that would raise another $1.8 billion over a
10-year window.
[[Page S2381]]
I do not think this is a responsible approach. It makes no
sense to ask barge owners to pay more in fees when the
administration is not even proposing to spend all the fees we
are collecting today. The budget also only proposes to fund a
single project using Inland Waterways Trust Fund revenues,
the Lower Monongahela, and eliminates funding for the other
two projects that have been funded for construction for the
last five years--Kentucky Lock and Chickamauga Lock.
I can't count the number of times that the head of the
Corps--including General Semonite--has told me that it makes
no sense to start and stop construction. It's not an
efficient way to build projects and it is a waste of taxpayer
money. Replacing Chickamauga Lock is important to all of
Tennessee and if Chickamauga Lock closes, it will throw
150,000 more trucks onto 1-75. Funding for construction of
the new Chickamauga Lock has been provided for the past five
years so it does not make sense for the administration to not
include the project in the budget request. This year's budget
proposal is a huge step backwards for our nation's inland
waterways.
We have done a good job providing record level funding over
the last five years to adequately fund our nation's harbors,
including Mobile Harbor in Alabama; Savannah Harbor in
Georgia; and Long Beach Harbor in California; and many others
across the country. Six years ago, Congress took a look at
the need to provide more funding for our nation's ports and
harbors to ensure we can compete with other harbors around
the world. We realized that the government was spending only
a fraction of the taxes each year that were collected in the
Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund for our ports and harbors,
resulting in billions of dollars of unspent funds just
sitting in a bank account that got bigger and bigger each
year.
In fact, unlike the Inland Waterways Trust Fund--which has
virtually no balance in the trust fund--the Harbor
Maintenance Trust Fund has an unspent balance of over $9
billion today. To provide more funding for our ports and
harbors, Congress enacted spending targets for the Harbor
Maintenance Trust Fund in the Water Resources Reform and
Development Act of 2014 that were meant to make us spend a
little more each year on harbor maintenance projects.
We have met these targets for the last five years in the
Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill. The target
for fiscal year 2020 is about $1.595 billion. However, the
administration's budget only proposes to spend $965 million,
$585 million less than what Congress appropriated last year
and $630 million below the target. So I will ask the
witnesses how they plan to sufficiently fund our ports and
harbors without requesting adequate resources to do it.
Several members of this subcommittee are interested in
making sure the Corps has the resources it needs to deal with
the recent flooding in the Midwest and along the Missouri and
Mississippi Rivers. I look forward to hearing from the
witnesses about what resources they need so that we can make
sure they are included in the disaster supplemental
appropriation bill.
I'd also like to recognize Brenda Burman, Commissioner from
the Bureau of Reclamation and Dr. Timothy Petty, Assistant
Secretary for Water and Science at the Department of the
Interior. The Bureau of Reclamation delivers water to one of
every five farmers in the West, irrigating more than 10
million acres of some of the most productive agricultural
land in the country. Although Reclamation doesn't manage
water resources in Tennessee, I know of its deep importance
to Senator Feinstein and other Senators on this subcommittee,
and we look forward to hearing your testimony.
____________________