Tim Kaine Wants a Trillion Dollars

And youall hesitate to send your fa-a-avorite web site $5? Sigh. Gentle Readers, this web site continually warns you to be wary about sending money into cyberspace, to watch web sites and see for yourselves whether they're written by a consistent writer (or group of writers) whose work you like and want to support...but...but...it may be easier to call foreign trolls and botmasters to account for the money they'll suck out of your bank account, given a chance, than it is to call the federal government. U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) claims to want to create more than 15 million jobs. Yes, but those jobs will be (1) temporary, (2) nonprofit, (3) at your expense, and (4) probably not awarded to any deserving self-employed person you've actually met. I know firsthand that Senator Kaine has in fact delivered jobs to some people--and so far as I know all of them were (1) registered Democrats and (2) in Richmond. I'd rather read his proposal for getting the federal government out of the way of deserving self-employed people in Gate City, many of whom are registered Independent, but very few of whom are registered Democrats.

(Said it before, and I'll say it again: Some of us choose to be rural people because we like those "gaps in rural broadband." Once in a while I do get that urge to look up something online while I'm at home, but then I think about the pleasure of living in a place that's still rural and leafy and real, from which I can easily walk two or three miles to a WiFi zone, and the urge passes.)

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Virginians know it all too well — our country’s infrastructure needs a big fix. From gridlocked highways to potholed roads, bridges in disrepair, Metro’s maintenance backlog, aging water pipes, crumbling National Park facilities, and gaps in rural broadband, Virginia families see the impacts of neglect on infrastructure priorities every day.

We’ve got to do better. That is why many of my colleagues and I have released a plan to make a $1 trillion federal investment to modernize our infrastructure and create more than 15 million jobs in the process. These investments include repairing transit, expanding broadband, improving airports, modernizing Veterans Affairs hospitals, rebuilding public schools, and more.

Throughout my work in the Senate, improving our crumbling infrastructure has been one of my top priorities. I’ve been a big advocate for fixing our roads and rail so Virginians can spend more time with their loved ones and less time sitting in traffic. I’ve worked to secure investments in water infrastructure projects important to Virginia – dredging and port infrastructure, restoration of important ecosystems like the Chesapeake Bay, and resilience to flooding and sea level rise for coastal communities like Hampton Roads. I helped return $6.2 billion in federal transportation funding to Virginia for 2015-2020. And more recently, I’ve helped secure funding to begin renovation of the deteriorated Arlington Memorial Bridge.

But while we’ve made progress, there’s so much more work we must do to support critical transportation needs. Please know I’m working hard to move our infrastructure plan forward to make daily life easier for you and your family — all while creating the jobs our Commonwealth needs and raising our platform for economic growth.

Sincerely,

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