U.S. Congressman John Boozman 3rd District of Arkansas

House Seal Outline

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Washington, Jan 23 -

U.S. Representative John Boozman (R-AR), Ranking Member of the Water Resources Subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee heard testimony on infrastructure investment in the economic stimulus package proposed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of December 2008, there were 1,438,000 unemployed construction workers in the U.S. and the unemployment rate in construction of 15.3 percent.

“Spending our money to improve our infrastructure is an appropriate way to spend taxpayer dollars and it’s a great way to put hardworking Americans to work,” Boozman said. “We need to make sure funds are appropriated to ready-to-go projects so taxpayer dollars don’t sit unused and not have the impact it is intended to have.”

Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar and Ranking Member John Mica proposed a more than $90 billion investment to infrastructure projects, but less than 9 percent of the proposed $825 billion stimulus package is appropriated for those projects.

“I’m happy to see funding for infrastructure problems, but the proposed funding doesn’t go far enough to tackle the problems that we are facing. We have a shortfall in the amount of money we invest in our infrastructure and that gap will only continue to increase. Infrastructure is one of the most important investments we can make and unfortunately the stimulus proposal doesn’t go far enough.”