Halliburton Awarded No Bid Contract to Rebuild Nations Bridges

President Bush announced today his administration would be awarding Hallibuton a $65 Billion no bid contract to repair or replace the nation's 156,000 structurally deficient bridges.
Vice President Chaney when asked for his reaction to the no bid contracts being let to the company where he was formerly CEO was quoted as saying "Yippie! Our years of neglecting the country's infrastructure has finally paid off, (handsomely)"


The Real Story:USA Today

"During a 2005 inspection, the I-35W bridge, which was built in 1967, was rated "structurally deficient" and possibly in need of replacement, according to a federal database. The span rated 50 on a scale of 120 for structural stability in that review, White House press secretary Tony Snow said."

"Of the country's nearly 600,000 bridges, 26% were found structurally deficient or "functionally obsolete" in a 2006 U.S. Department of Transportation report. The condition of heavily used urban bridges like the one that collapsed this week is even worse: one in three are classified as aging or unable to accommodate modern vehicle weights and traffic volume."

Three Anti-CAFTA Republicans Have Road Projects Slashed

National Journal's CongressDailyPM
August 05, 2005
by Darren Goode
Three House Republicans who loudly opposed the Central America Free Trade Agreement saw their highway projects cut as much as 70 percent, based on figures in the recently passed surface transportation reauthorization conference report. GOP leaders said they held off a vote on the highway bill to squeeze out support for CAFTA, which passed by two votes last week despite 27 GOP defections.

Two of the loudest defectors -- Reps. Virgil Goode of Virginia and Walter Jones of North Carolina -- had their "high-priority" highway projects cut by more than 70 percent from the House-passed bill. Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn., who also was an outspoken opponent of CAFTA, had his projects cut by more than half, all well above the average 20 percent average cut for rank-and-file House members. Goode said the House voted on CAFTA around midnight July 27 "and the next morning we looked through the transportation bill and saw that my projects had been cut 76 percent -- and that's all I know."