Posted on 04/25/2014 8:09:29 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Lawmakers are rallying around the 150-year-old U.S. Capitol Dome, weather-whipped and torn open by acid rain, worried that if an 11th-hour restoration isn’t fully funded, its most important traits could be lost forever.
“If this work isn't done,” warned Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., “we're going to lose the dome, we're going to lose it as it truly, historically is.”
A big fix, added Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., is needed, “so that we don't lose these treasures forever.”
The two Senate appropriators are joining to help Architect of the Capitol Stephen T. Ayers secure the money needed to complete the $60 million restoration projection, set to go into final stages next month with the erection of scaffolding to surround the whole dome, just like that done recently at the Washington Monument.
The interior is also in need of restoration, and the Capitol Rotunda is temporarily closed as interior safety netting is installed to begin that $21 million project.
Pockmarked with about 300 cracks and broken stone about a dozen years ago, there are now 1,300 cracks in the dome’s exterior covered with a dozen layers of lead-based paint that allow water to seep in and stain the interior. Some stone carvings are so damaged that it’s hard to make them out...
Congress is expected to fund the project, one of over 20 emergency fixes on the Capitol campus, and Ayers said it should be done in time for the next presidential Inauguration in January 2017.
The House has moved forward with funding, and the Senate is expected to follow in May. One insider suggested that members would rather spend less on it, but realize that restoring a piece of American history can’t be skimped on.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
The Whisper Spot. Very cool and we got a demonstration from one of the docents.
Post. 8
Speakng of a disappearing crisis, remember how all of “the homeless” vanished on January 20, 1993?
I can’t help but laugh out loud as I watch these idiots act as if a $60 million dollar expenditure would be something they would give a fig about.
Source: The Washington TimesIn 1965, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the hospital insurance program of Medicare - the federal health care program for the elderly and disabled - would cost $9 billion by 1990. The actual cost that year was $67 billion.
In 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee said the entire Medicare program would cost $12 billion in 1990. The actual cost in 1990 was $98 billion.
In 1987, Congress projected that Medicaid - the joint federal-state health care program for the poor - would make special relief payments to hospitals of less than $1 billion in 1992. Actual cost: $17 billion.
I prefer to look at it as a beacon of what America could be like Reagan did.
Most of them can steal that much for their pals before breakfast.
The way I feel about them now is that if it fell in during a session I’d be grateful.
Are we still giving North Korea a half billion dollars a year as under the Bill Clinton-——Madelaine Albright program?
No tears from this guy if it does
The way things have been for the years Hussein and crew have been in office, that building means nothing to me.
Let's hope for the best.
Same here. Let ‘er rip taterchip! Let it become the symbol of the decay of the nation from within. Condemn the whole damn thing and drive the fakers out of the building.
I don’t care if it does collapse. Restoring it will be as fake as the republic we claim to be and the freedoms we claim to offer or the integrity politicians everywhere claim to have.
Debt of Honor?
Only eclipsed by “Without Remorse”
We need another book called “Without Fear of Consequence”
That would be perfect for Idiocracy Nation.
Simple..just move Congress to the first state Capitol building for two years and then to the next state for two years, etc. Will solve the problem for at least 114 years.
Maybe time to move the US capitol to the center of the country, erect a couple of pole sheds with folding chairs for them to meet and bring in some FEMA trailers for office space. The entire place should be fenced to keep out lobbyists. Perhaps some place like Sioux City, IA would be a good spot.
I owned a home on Lake Hopatcong in New Jersey in the ‘80s and that was all the morons talked about. They said “All the lakes are dying!”. Lots of anti-business pukes back then too.
Which is precisely why they won’t do it!
Yes, they’re certain budget minded folks back there.
It’s amazing the American public hasn’t risen up and strung up these folks yet.
Yeah, and yet we have to pay for the repairs.
Consider the cost of the repairs related to the cost of the presidential campaigns every four years.
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