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| "This week I joined my fellow colleagues of the
bi-partisan I-49 Congressional Caucus and traveled to cities along the
I-49 corridor to highlight the need to complete the project. Once completed,
I-49 will provide a direct route between Winnipeg, Canada, and New Orleans,
Louisiana.
"In fact, construction and completion of I-49 will create roughly 65,000 new jobs in Arkansas’s Fourth Congressional District. "There are a number of other transportation projects that need funding in our district. These projects include the four-laning of U.S. Highway 167 from Little Rock to El Dorado, and ensuring the completion of I-69, the Great River Bridge and I-530, which will run right through the heart of Southeast Arkansas. "In order to ensure the crucial success of all these transportation projects, we must get a funding plan in place that allows us to fully develop and construct these highways. "This week we learned that the federal government posted the largest deficit in our country’s history - $374.2 billion. We have seen a $5 trillion projected surplus over 10 years become a $5 trillion projected deficit. Yet with the economic woes we are facing here at home, the Bush Administration wants to spend $20 billion to rebuild Iraq! "This is unacceptable. We have three million new people out of work. We have 43.6 million Americans without health insurance. We have the largest unemployment in Arkansas in a decade. Our cities and small towns in Arkansas are hurting, just like the rest of the nation. "It is time to restore fiscal responsibility to our government. We need to fund projects in our own country, not Iraq. It is time for us to invest in America’s infrastructure -- like these transportation projects -- which will create thousands of new jobs. Without them, our economy will continue to suffer." |
