The Cedar Rapid Gazette’s editorial board praised Sen. Grassley’s bipartisan work to ensure proper funding of the nation’s waterways, which Iowa’s agriculture industries rely upon to export. Grassley and his colleagues wrote a letter to White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney calling for adequate funding for waterways in next year’s budget. U.S. waterways serve 41 states throughout the nation as shippers and consumers depend on the ability to move around one billion tons of cargo valued at more than $380 billion annually. The United States is the world’s largest agricultural-exporting country, selling one third of its product abroad. More information can be found here.
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States like Iowa carry heavy burdens for our aging locks and dams, as significant portions of the country’s agricultural and energy exports move on barges, including more than half of U.S. grain exports.
U.S. Sen Chuck Grassley has joined the latest effort to secure our country’s water infrastructure. He signed a letter last month to White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, calling for adequate funding for the Navigation and Ecosystem Sustainability Program.
“With the expansion of world food and energy needs, the Mississippi River is poised to be more important than ever. The river already moves large volumes of agricultural and energy products between U.S. markets and ports, and serves as the country’s busiest waterway,” Grassley and nine other senators wrote.
Bipartisan agreement is increasingly difficult to find in our hyperpartisan political climate. Yet here we find widespread agreement among policymakers in river states where the economy depends on water freight.
Grassley joined four other Republicans and five Democrats in signing the most recent letter to the White House. Both U.S. Reps. Dave Loebsack and Rod Blum — a Democrat and a Republican with districts bordering the Mississippi River — have lobbied for greater waterway infrastructure funding in the past.
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With a tight budget and many competing priorities, it is reasonable and necessary to ask industry players to increase their investments. Combined with adequate federal support, Trump might finally make America’s water highways great again.