Rounds, Thune Celebrate Obama Program Grants for SD Infrastructure that Trump Tried to Kill

[TexasTowelie]

We all know the Trumpist Party doesn’t care about debt, but it’s always fun to see our “conservative” leaders cheering any influx of federal cash to pay for roads we South Dakotans can’t afford on our own thin public revenues. In this case, Senators M. Michael Rounds and John Thune celebrate federal handouts of $8.3 million to four-lanify Highway 106 so Tea folks can get to work in Sioux Falls faster and $20 million to fix up Highway 83 between Thune’s hometown of Murdo and White River:

U.S. Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and John Thune (R-S.D.) today applauded the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT’s) decision to award the City of Tea’s County Highway 106 project and South Dakota Department of Transportation’s U.S. Highway 83 project $8.7 million and $20 million, respectively, in critical infrastructure funding under the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) program. Today’s announcement follows multiple requests from the senators to DOT Secretary Elaine Chao for these projects’ funding.

“I thank Secretary Chao for recognizing the need to invest in these important infrastructure projects,” said Rounds. “The Highway 106 and Highway 83 projects will not only benefit the surrounding communities, they will allow for increased transport of goods and commodities across the region – a surefire boon to the regional economy” [link added; Senator M. Michael Rounds, press release, 2018.12.06].

Rounds knows whereof he speaks when he talks about the stimulatory impact of these federal dollars: BUILD is just the new name the Trump Administration slapped on the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program that President Barack Obama and the Democrats included in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to pull America out of the recession. Thanks to President Obama, South Dakota received the following freebies:

2010: $10M to help rebuild 15.6 miles of U.S. Hwy. 18.
2010: $16M TIGER capital grant to rebuild the state-owned MRC rail line from Mitchell to Chamberlain.
2012: $1M to help the Yankton Sioux Tribe build a bus barn in Marty.
2013: $8.78M to pave and add bike lanes to 17.6 miles of gravel road on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
2014: $12.69M to help restore 41.6 miles of MRC rail from Chamberlain to Presho.
2015: $6M to replace ten miles of rail near Huron and lay 7,000 feet of new rail in Philip for ag shippers.
2016: $14.62M to help the Rosebud Sioux Tribe rebuild BIA Route 7 from Mission to U.S. 83.
2017: $21M to help the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe rebuild and reopen BIA Route 10, the main route connecting Lower Brule to Highway 1806 and Pierre.

We should thank President Barack Obama for making the TIGER/BUILD grants available to South Dakota. We could thank Donald Trump for extending this sensible Obama-era program… but Trump asked Congress to eliminate TIGER/BUILD in 2017 and 2018. So by celebrating the grants for Tea and Murdo/White River, Senators Rounds and Thune are actually kinda-sorta standing up to Trump… for once. Yaaaay.

Read more: http://dakotafreepress.com/2018/12/08/rounds-thune-celebrate-obama-program-grants-for-sd-infrastructure-that-trump-tried-to-kill/

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Yup

The Guy from Kenya came through did he not.