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February 27, 2009 · Two San Antonio Congressman have secured more than one million dollars of federal money to help pay for improvements at the airport.
The money will not come from President Obama’s stimulus package – rather it was included in the massive appropriations bill known as the omnibus, which passed by the House this past week. Republican Lamar Smith worked with San Antonio Democrats to get the funding included in the legislation, but ultimately voted against the overall measure.
“Within the Omnibus of course there are spending programs like the project here at the San Antonio Airport that I do support - so I clearly support a lot of the spending programs within in the overall omnibus measure but I oppose the overall measure as just too expensive,” Smith said.
NAR: The funding is considered an earmark and Democrat Ciro Rodriguez used his seat on the House Appropriations Committee to get the money approved. He says the new rules concerning earmarks passed by Congress a few years ago, force lawmakers to be more responsible about how they request money.
“We’ve made them very transparent now – for the first time in history – we put our names next to the earmark – that’s why Congressman Lamar Smith’s name was on this one – Cuellar’s, Gonzalez’s and myself. In the Texas House – there are earmarks – there are line items – you don’t know who put them on there – on the federal level – you do,” said Rodriguez.
The nearly 1.2 million dollars will be used to increase capacity and make the airport more energy efficient. The money will help defray costs the city would have been responsible for.
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