U.S. Representative Peter Welch (D-Vt.) says that large projects like the Latchis and the Brooks House renovation require imminent capital, which is hard to get, and he noted that Congress needs to remember that federal dollars are critical to local communities.
He went on to describe cuts to grants and funding for such projects as “shortsighted.” He admits that federal grants can provide a “jumpstart needed to keep communities vital.”
Welch is doing what politicians in all 50 states do, year after year: looking for votes.
The Latchis and Brooks House projects are important to the federal taxpayers of Brattleboro, Vt. The taxpayers in the other 49 states and in the rest of Vermont would likely consider these expenses a waste of money, while at the same time praising their own congressional representatives for bringing federal dollars to their own, local projects.
As a result, the people in all 50 states continue to send their representatives back, year after year after year, and we do not see real change in Washington, D.C. So-called grants and funding of local projects is what is referred to as pork-barrel spending, which is helping drive U.S. debt to astronomical levels that must be paid back by future generations.
If you believe such “local” spending of federal dollars is perfectly fine, then you are among those who send the same representatives back to government year in and year out, and you have lost your right to complain about “business as usual” in Washington, D.C.