Bob Wise: “before I rise in strong opposition to this amendment I want to thank the chairman and the ranking member for their help…”

“before I rise in strong opposition to this amendment I want to thank the chairman and the ranking member for their help in the Marmet Lock situation and helping a lot of people in the Marmet take area get some certainty by including some money for the beginning of the Marmet Locks, and I thank the gentleman for his nonpartisan way of handling this. First, I want to ask the two gentlemen from Wisconsin who have spoken so eloquently on corridor H, "Have either of you ever driven corridor H? Have you ever been on that segment of road that you're protesting so much?" The answer I think is quite evident by the silence. They have not, and they have not driven the 40 miles of corridor H that was completed from Weston to Buckhannon and then on to Elkins, and so they have not seen the economic growth that is already taking place on that. So I would use that as evidence of the academic background that I bring, which is that the Appalachian Regional Commission studies clearly document that every county with Appalachian Road Commission highways has job growth three to four times as high as those Appalachian and rural counties without.”