[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 18041]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 ECONOMIC IMPACT OF HIGHWAY INVESTMENT

  (Mr. BROWN of South Carolina asked and was given permission to 
address the House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BROWN of South Carolina. Madam Speaker, the unemployment rate in 
South Carolina is over 12 percent. This is the third worst in the 
Nation, but only $400,000 in stimulus highway dollars have been spent. 
Instead of creating jobs, red tape is slowing projects down and forcing 
millions to be spent on painting road lines and pouring sidewalks, 
instead of going towards job-creating jobs like I-73.
  Infrastructure investment is a proven job creator, but instead of 
workers constructing miles of new and badly needed highways, we have 
miles of red tape.
  And we are at risk of seeing even more job losses as the Obama 
administration and the Senate stand against a new highway bill. Instead 
of setting a path of 6 years of needed investment in highways and 
transit, the other body and President Obama want us to wait another 18 
months. They want us to go down the same path as the last highway bill, 
where 12 extensions led to hundreds of millions of dollars in reduced 
investments and tens of thousands of jobs lost.
  Madam Speaker, we can do better. We must move forward with a new 
highway bill, but we also must ensure that we give States the tools 
they need to cut through the red tape preventing these dollars from 
creating jobs and building new infrastructure.

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