Rep Jeff Denham Leads The DC Fight Against Valley High Speed Rail

Rep Jeff  Denham Leads The DC Fight Against Valley High Speed Rail

Today congressional representative republican Jeff Denham led a 4 hour meeting in Washington, DC in his fight against high speed rail (HSR). As a state senator, Jeff Denham kept mass transit out of the central valley for the past ten years and, in his new position in Congress, he is determined to keep high speed rail out of the valley for the foreseeable future. Today many local leaders met in Washington, DC to discuss HSR. Denham argues HSR is too expensive and all the valley needs is a couple more lanes on highway 99. Denham has no clue as to the needs of the valley. HSR is needed for the students of UC Merced, for valley seniors and disabled (like our veterans) and for those looking to expand businesses and jobs.
Denham has decided to run for Congress in CD 10 (Turlock to Modesto) in 2012. We must get Denham out!!


Some of the issues I am most worried about include;
1) Funding - I believe the HSR will attract a lot of riders. But people will not use the HSR system if our elected officials have no confidence in it or they constantly talk about "it's too expensive to ride." We need to work out the riding costs so that poor valley residents can use the system and we need to elect people who can discuss all of the issues, but not drag the progressing project down, causing the valley to lose jobs, money, business, investors and an improved quality of life.
2) Excess costs - the costs are increasing on the project and we need to see who is being paid too much and eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.
3) We need to keep the federal money spent in the US. If a lot of the federal funds are going into foreign pockets, then, I want to halt the project until we can get American vendors, specialists, etc. All of the materials must be made in the US, including the rail cars. I do not believe Americans will have confidence in  a China-made rail system.

There are other issues, but these are on the top of my list at this moment.