American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
Floor Speech
AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT OF 2009 -- (Senate - February 06, 2009)
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished chairman.
Earlier today we adopted an amendment that prohibits appropriations under this act to aquariums or zoos or beautification projects or other such entities, and Rhode Island was specifically targeted by the Senator who offered that amendment. He mocked a zoo that belongs to the city of Providence that would be, I think, a potential area of support from this bill. He mocked a tree-planting program within the city of Providence.
I urge my colleagues, at their leisure, to reconsider the wisdom of that vote, perhaps in conference.
The Roger Williams Park Zoo is a wonderful facility. Children come through it to get educated through schools. People are employed there. It opens minds to the wonders of nature. It has wonderful science programs. And it's a municipal business that is run for the benefit of the people of Providence. And it needs work. As long as it needs work, as long as cities are broke in this economy, I don't understand why one would single out a zoo as opposed to the Department of Motor Vehicles or some other structure that might need repair. Why take that job away?
Is the Senator who offered this so infallible? Does he know so much about other States he has never even visited that he can impose his views? I would never dream of suggesting that I know more about towns and cities in Oklahoma than the local political establishments of those towns as to what is wise. I really think that that is a mistake.
If a city needs tree planting and that brings real jobs and it puts people and their trucks and their trees and their nurserymen to work, and if it provides shade, and it provides greenness, and if it absorbs carbon, and if it engages in traffic calming, there are all sorts of good reasons why people would want to do that. Why is it necessary for one Senator to tell the city of Providence that he knows better, having never visited?
And, finally, we don't have an aquarium, but there was a story in the New York Times about ``Japan's Big-Works Stimulus.'' It talks about a bridge they built with their stimulus money. As to the bridge, here is what they say:
"The bridge? It's a dud,'' said Masahiro Shimada, 70, a retired city official who was fishing near the port. "Maybe we could use it for bungee jumping,'' he joked.
Here is what he concluded:
Among Hamada's many public works projects, the biggest benefits had come from the prison, the university, and the Aquas aquarium. These had created hundreds of permanent jobs and attracted students and families with children to live in a city where nearly a third of residents were over 65.
Of the hundreds and hundreds of projects Japan did for stimulus in Hamada, the three best included an aquarium--and we have ruled that out because one Senator from a State far from Rhode Island who has never been to my State purports to know more about what we should do in our cities than we do ourselves.
I urge that we have a little bit of the spirit of Ben Franklin at the closing of the discussion over the Constitution when he urged all of the Members who were present to doubt a little bit of their own infallibility so that we can get together and get something done. I urge the Senator who proposed this amendment to doubt a little of his own infallibility, and I urge that we have a little bit more confidence in our own local judgments about what might actually provide the most bang for the buck.
I thank the chairman for allowing me this moment and I yield the floor.
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