Political Quotes

“I appreciate the opportunity to come down and speak about a very important issue that I know is important to you as well as to myself. The Great Lakes are facing a crisis right now. The Great Lakes Navigation System is a critical international waterway that extends from the western part of Lake Superior. In fact, that point in the western part of Lake Superior is further west than St. Louis, Missouri--the Gateway to the West--and it extends all the way along the Saint Lawrence Seaway to the Atlantic Ocean, which is a distance of over 2,400 miles. The U.S. portion of the system includes 140 harbors, 60 of which are deemed as commercial and 80 as recreational and harbors of refuge, and it includes over 600 miles of maintained navigation channels. The system can handle 200 million tons of cargo that generate and sustain nearly 130,000 good-paying jobs in the eight Great Lakes States, not to mention what happens to our friends to the north and east and in the Canadian provinces and how important that relationship is with the trade that goes on. While the Army Corps of Engineers' national Operations and Maintenance account has increased by 20 percent from 1995 through 2012, the annual budget for the Corps' maintenance of harbors and navigation channels in the Great Lakes has remained virtually unchanged during that same period.…”