“I don’t know what planet these people have been living on for the last 18 months,” Mica says in the press statement. “They hijacked the $862 billion so-called stimulus, leaving less than seven percent in the bill for infrastructure, and they failed to ensure that even this small percentage of funds would be spent expeditiously.  Then the Administration undermined their Democrat House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman and killed any chance for a six-year transportation reauthorization bill.”

Mica argues that while it appears that the Obama Administration is doing something about job loss by proposing to spend more money on infrastructure with another stimulus effort, he points out that only 32 percent of the infrastructure funding approved 18 months ago in the first stimulus has been spent. 

“Projects continue to be bogged down by bureaucracy and red tape,” Mica continues. “Moving some of the tens of billions of infrastructure dollars that continue to sit idle should be an Administration priority to get people working and stalled major projects moving forward. Unemployment has now climbed to 9.6 percent nationwide.  In the hard-hit construction industry, joblessness exceeds an astronomical 30 percent in some states like Florida.

“Infrastructure funds need to be invested more quickly.  States need more flexibility in how they are allowed to spend money, and there must be more transparency in the process when the federal government is spending taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars….” (For Mica’s blog on transportation, go to http://republicans.transportation.house.gov.) –by Tina Grady Barbaccia