Ribbon cuttings often make strange bedfellows, as Democrats and Republicans set aside partisan differences to come together and celebrate the latest triumph in their neck of the woods.
And as officials cheered on Wednesday a major achievement — the early opening of the $1.1 billion DFW Connector project in Grapevine — U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson seized upon that captive audience to remind everyone of some political history.
The DFW Connector benefited from a massive $260 million in federal stimulus money. It was the largest single stimulus award to a transportation project in the U.S. And officials of all stripes acknowledge that the DFW Connector wouldn’t exist in its current form without the boost.
The stimulus, also known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in 2009 along largely partisan lines with backing from Democratic President Barack Obama. That means it didn’t have a whole lot of support — then or now — in deeply Republican Texas.
“Though I stood alone in this area in voting for it — and I was called a spendthrift — I’ll take it,” she said, as both Democrats and Republicans looked on. “Because when you can put a project together that moves people and goods like this project, I’ll be for it every time.”
And Johnson, a Dallas Democrat, hasn’t forgotten that fact.
Former U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, also voted for it, although his district only edged into North Texas. But Johnson is otherwise correct. Texas’ two U.S. senators voted against. None of North Texas’ other U.S. representatives in 2009 supported the stimulus.
That list of “no” votes includes U.S. Rep. Kenny Marchant, a Republican whose district features the DFW Connector.
On Wednesday, Johnson was the sole congressional official at the DFW Connector event; the crowd featured mostly state and local officials. So those stimulus opponents also missed Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez touting the project as a “symbol of America’s … recovery.”
But even with Johnson’s chiding, she offered perhaps an olive branch for a deeply polarized Congress: “I have never seen transportation as a partisan issue.”
“I’ve never heard of a sign or highway or airport or a port being labeled as a Democrat or a Republican,” she said. “So I have been very committed to making sure that our economy does not stop, knowing full well that the economy in this area means movement.
Source: Dallas Morning News - blog
