Bob Wise: “I want to rise and challenge the loan guarantee program that is going to get rammed through this House probably this…”

“I want to rise and challenge the loan guarantee program that is going to get rammed through this House probably this week. It started out a couple of weeks ago as a $9 billion loan guarantee program as the Mexican peso was devalued. Then it rose to $18 billion, then $25 billion, and the last I saw in the newspaper, $40 billion loan guarantee program. As I traveled the Second District of West Virginia this weekend, I ran into questions. In Calhoun County, for instance, where they are running short of money for the Arnoldsburg sewer project, why can we not have a loan guarantee program that will help that project? What about the eastern panhandle homebuilders I met with? When the farmers' home money has run out, hundreds of homebuilders are sitting there without homes they are able to finance. How about a loan guarantee program for them? How about central West Virginia as we try to renovate the Western State Hospital? That could use a loan guarantee program. Or in the Kanawha Valley as we try to move ahead in economic development and some threatened extinction of the Economic Development Administration that creates jobs; how about a loan guarantee program for that? Forty billion dollars is a large guarantee.”