[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Page 22555]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          TRAGEDY IN MINNESOTA

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I wish to make a brief comment on the 
tragedy in Minneapolis, MN. Watching those pictures on television and 
listening to the accounts on the radio and seeing newspaper accounts 
and the pictures, this is a real tragedy. My heart and the hearts of 
all Americans go out to the people of Minnesota--to those who have 
died, those who have been injured, and certainly the families and 
friends of all those people.
  I am confident we will find out why that disaster occurred. Right 
now, we don't know. There is every reason to believe it was not an act 
of terrorism. I feel that is the case, based on hearing the Governor of 
that State making an announcement this morning.
  In passing, I say this. After every storm, the sun shines. I think we 
should look at this tragedy that occurred and make it a wake-up call 
for us. All over this country, we have crumbling infrastructure--
highways, bridges, and dams. We need to take a hard look at that. We 
need to look at it as the right thing to do and also not only for the 
fact that the infrastructure needs repairing or rebuilding, but it is 
good for America in more ways than that.
  For every $1 billion we spend in our crumbling infrastructure, 47,000 
high-paying jobs are created. I hope we will take a look at our 
highways, bridges, dams, water systems, and sewer systems, and see if 
we can do something about this infrastructure that needs such 
attention.
  We have some things coming up in the Senate in the near future we 
need to focus on. This tragedy is a wake-up call. We will have the 
Transportation appropriations bill, and we will have WRDA, which should 
be coming from the House. We will have Energy and Water appropriations 
and other matters. We need to work in a bipartisan way and also to work 
with the White House and have them realize there are things that need 
to be done with our country's infrastructure.

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