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Flashback from McCain in Ankeny: Palin’s pork project connected to Minneapolis bridge disaster

Started by CIM Network · 10 months ago

Our colleagues at the Minnesota Independent have found a statement from Sen. John McCain criticizing Alaska’s infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” earmark project and connecting it to the I-35 bridge disaster in the Twin Cities.  At the time, McCain’s r ... Continue reading »

2 comments

  • primus

    10 months ago

    “Maybe if we had done it right, maybe some of that money would have gone to inspect those bridges and other bridges around the country,” McCain said at a campaign stop in Ankeny, Iowa on Aug. 4, 2007. “Maybe the 200,000 people who cross that bridge every day would have been safer than spending $233 million of your tax dollars on a bridge in Alaska to an island with 50 people on it.”

    Palin is the Pork Queen.
    reply
  • Netter

    8 months ago

    This is not "pork" spending that Palin legislated. The Gravina Access Project was one of 17 high priority projects in the state of Alaska funded by the “Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century." All states have access to the federal infrastructure funds for improving their tourism, their surface transportation, their business and land development. (For each State, the Act specifies a certain share of the aggregate funding for the following programs: Interstate Maintenance (IM), National Highway System (NHS), Bridge, Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) Improvement, Surface Transportation Program (STP), Metropolitan Planning, High Priority Projects, Appalachian Development Highway System, Recreational Trails...)

    Alaska's previous governor, Murkowski, was involved in early evaluations of the state's infrastructure needs. No real progress was made until Sarah Palin's Secretary of Transportation studied appropriate ways to utilize the available funding resources. The Gravina Access project was controversial and difficult to implement for many reasons. And Palin had to halt the stalled project in order to do something more immediately productive with the infrastructure funds available to the state. http://gov.state.ak.us/archive.php?id=623&type=1
    reply
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