Apparently, helping the economy to grow while creating 11,000 good jobs in our state are deeds worthy of anguish and harsh words, or at least ambivalent soul searching. My record shows that I'm tough on wasteful spending. America's highways carry two and a half times the traffic they did in 1975. In the past seven years, highway capacity has grown only two percent while traffic has grown 37 percent.
Efficient highways are necessary for economic growth.
That's why 86 percent of manufacturing jobs in our state are located within five miles of a major highway. Construction and maintenance simply have to keep pace with usage. The alternative is economic gridlock, which isn't good for anybody. Critics charge that we are proposing to spend too much money. But every penny would come out of the Federal Highway Trust Fund.