Community Mercy Health Partners broke ground Friday, Oct. 10, on the new Springfield Regional Medical Center that is to be built in the city's downtown. Attendees quickly filled a yellow tent set up at the corner of North and Plum streets, spilling out into the bright mid-morning sunshine to watch members of the city's religious community offer prayers of blessings on the new hospital, slated to be completed by 2012. Cost to build the 264-bed, 475,000-square-foot acute care hospital is estimated at $230 million.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Dave Hobson (OH-7) today released the following statement about the passage of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (H.R. 1424) in the U.S. House of Representatives earlier today. Hobson voted for the bill.

“First of all, my two objections to the original bill have been addressed. Those include: changes to the “mark-to-market” accounting rules and raising the amount insured by the FDIC. From that standpoint, the bill is much better than the one that we voted on earlier this week.

“However, what I still object to in this bill -- and I tried to fix -- was the addition of pork-barrel tax extenders that the Senate couldn’t resist adding to the bill.

“In the end, this is one of my last votes, and I have done what I thought was the responsible thing to do for the economic future of this country. If the credit markets had failed as a result of inaction, the outcome could have been catastrophic to our economy. I just couldn’t chance the consequences.  Hopefully, our action will restore confidence not only in the U.S. credit market, but also in those throughout the world.”

“I realize that there are many people who may disagree with my position, and I respect their opinions.  In the end, I had to make a difficult decision, and I did.  Hopefully, history will record that I made the right one.”