James Oberstar: “I was in Sunbury and Shamokin Dam in Pennsylvania with our colleague, Congressman Carney, in his portion of the…”

“I was in Sunbury and Shamokin Dam in Pennsylvania with our colleague, Congressman Carney, in his portion of the Appalachian Regional Commission looking at the Economic Development Highway Program of ARC. Well, it's a long stretch from Minnesota to Appalachia, but the Appalachian region is an area that I have been associated with legislatively since I started here in the Congress 44 years ago as clerk of the Subcommittee on Rivers and Harbors, to the Committee on Public Works, predecessor to our Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. I was engaged then in the earliest stages of forming what we know today as the Economic Development Administration and the Appalachian Regional Commission. It was close on the heels of the designation by President John F. Kennedy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. to travel throughout the Appalachian region to assess the conditions of distress, to listen to the concerns of the communities throughout the 13-State region, and to provide him with a report and a road map on dealing with the needs of Appalachia. When John F. Kennedy went into the region, he found a region of poverty, a region of desolation.”