Political Quotes

“Before the ARC came along, we was so far down we had to look up to see bottom. What the Appalachian Regional Commission did in the years when it was receiving significant amounts of funding was to lift the level of poverty from 31 percent in Appalachia, to reduce that level of poverty down to 14 percent, to lift the per capita income from the mid 40's percent of national per capita income to 86 percent of national per capita income. This is a program that works. We created, in 20 years, 1.5 million jobs at an average cost of $2,400 a job, documented, congressional hearings, GAO study. In EDA every year we return more money in Federal, State, and local taxes from jobs created by EDA than the Federal Government invested in 20 years of the EDA programs, $6.5 billion every year in tax dollars from the 1.4 million jobs created in the EDA program nationwide, helping out counties and regions of high unemployment and severe economic distress. That $4.5 billion of Federal funds leverages an additional $9 billion in private and local investments in EDA projects nationwide, helping communities lift themselves up by the bootstraps.”