LoBiondo: Bail Out Beaches, Funding Needed to Keep Jobs

WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-2nd) told the Herald that there has been a “mighty struggle” in Washington to continue federal funding for beach replenishment projects.
“If we don’t have our beaches, we don’t have visitors. If we don’t have visitors, we don’t have small businesses supporting the tourism industry and creating jobs,” LoBiondo said.
“With so much emphasis being put on bailing out GM and doing all this for big companies, why is someone suffering because of a lay off in relation to the tourism industry any less important than someone who is with one of these big mega-companies?”
“President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden need to recognize, in their new capacities as president and vice president, what they realized as senators when they supported beach projects. Now it looks like they turned 180-degrees on it and I think it’s wrong,” LoBiondo said.
“As senators they supported projects in their own states and now it appears they have done an about-face on this, and it’s important they understand that a tourism-based economy, geographically located at beaches, is why we have local jobs.”
“An unemployed person is an unemployed person; they struggle with the same issues whether they are unemployed from GM or because they’re from a tourism-based industry in Cape May County,” he added.