[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 11317-11318]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1945
                       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

[[Page 11318]]

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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