Dear Senator:

We write in strong opposition to the final conference version of H.R. 1495, the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2007. This bill ignores years of accumulated evidence that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is sorely in need of fiscal reform. WRDA will add tens of billions of dollars in new projects, exempt projects from cost-sharing, and fail to prioritize the most critical projects from a backlog loaded with dead wood. Hurricane Katrina taught the country painful and expensive lessons about the antiquated, politicized approaches to water resource projects. The critical lack of priorities for our limited infrastructure dollars was again hammered home by the tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis. But just like the wasteful 2005 highway bill, WRDA 2007 loads up on earmarks rather than targeting funding to the most pressing needs. We urge you to oppose WRDA. Our organizations will consider votes on the Water Resources Development Act in our end-of-year scorecards.

This bill is a budget buster. As the Office of Management and Budget so wryly noted in an August letter promising to veto the bill, “it seems a $14 billion Senate bill went into a conference with the House’s $15 billion and somehow emerged costing approximately $20 billion.” In fact, the bill weighs in at more than $21 billion and more than $750 million of that increase came in the form of earmarks that were “air dropped” in during conference. These three-quarters of a billion dollars in earmarks were not in either the House or the Senate bill, but appeared for the first time in conference even though the new Senate rules prohibit that practice. The Senate passed their version of WRDA in May, but just a few months after passage, the Chairman of Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. Boxer (D-CA), added a $685 million earmark for one project alone.

Again, we urge you to oppose H.R. 1495, the Water Resources Development Act of 2007 and send it back to conference to whittled down to a responsible size. We will consider votes on the Water Resources Development Act in our end-of-year scorecards.

If you would like to discuss this issue further please contact Steve Ellis, Taxpayers for Common Sense Action at 202-546-8500 ext. 126 (steve@taxpayer.net) or Kristina Rasmussen, National Taxpayers Union at 703-683-5700.

Sincerely,

Ryan Alexander
President
Taxpayers for Common Sense Action

John Berthoud
President
National Taxpayers Union