Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney returned to his economic message on Friday, highlighting a “bridge to nowhere” rebuilt by stimulus money and warning the U.S. economy could suffer a fiscal crisis like California’s if he is not elected in November.
Rising in the polls this week, Romney is eager to follow through by hammering at the White House’s handling of the weak economy.
He used the backdrop of a 1860s-era bridge in New Hampshire to illustrate what he called the wasteful government spending of President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan passed in 2009.
The stone bridge, rebuilt with more than $150,000 of stimulus funds, crosses a river but ends abruptly on one side with an 8-foot (2.4-metre) drop to a grassy field near a Ford dealership.
“This is the absolute ‘bridge to nowhere’ if there ever was one,” Romney told a crowd of supporters. “That’s your stimulus dollars at work – a bridge that goes nowhere.”
A notorious “bridge to nowhere” that connected the Alaskan mainland with an isolated island became a symbol of congressional pork-barrel projects, spurring public outrage and leading lawmakers last year to impose a temporary ban on earmarks – special-interest projects added to major bills.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/18/us-usa-campaign-idUSBRE84H13020120518
