Page 12 - Infrastructure Needs News Today

On in ft. smith? >> i think the quality of life here is excellent and its going to continue to get even better as we continue to grow the things that keep young people here when they graduate from university. >> reporter: whats your biggest priority as mayor? >> overall, id say its our infrastructure needs. >> reporter: the mayor and other local boosters say theres one infrastructure project that would dramatically transform ft. smiths fortunes. i got to tell you, this is the first time ive ever...

President trump won the region overwhelmi overwhelmingly. how would you describe the quality of life and whats going on here? >> i think the quality of life here is xe henlt aexcellent andg to continue to get better as we grow the things that keep young people here. >> reporter: whats your biggest priority as mayor? >> overall, our infrastructure needs. >> reporter: the mayor and others say theres one infrastructure project that would transform their fortunes. this is the first time ive ever bee...

>> how would you describe the quality of life and what is going on in fort smith? >> quality of life is excellent and itll continue to get better as we continue to grow the things that keep young people here when they graduate from the university. >> whats your biggest priority as mayor? >> overall, id say its our infrastructure needs. >> reporter: the mayor and other local boosters say theres one infrastructure project that would dramatically transform fort smiths fortunes. >> this is the first...

Talking about the legislative schedule about what kin of priorities trump chose to go through first off. and whether he made a mistake. whether if he had started with that infrastructure package that he had talked about early on, the trillion dollars in spending, if that would have bought him goodwill from people like elliott angle, thats the type of thing that every member wants. they want their money back in the district. they have infrastructure needs. that might have made a different type of...

Or high potassium in your blood. tomorrow, im gonna step out with my favorite girl. ask your doctor about entresto. and help make the gift of tomorrow possible. >> jon: back now with joe trippi and chip, when you look at the list of agenda items this new president has put forward, he criticized that sequesters of the 3-year-old program that badly cut the pentagons budget, so he wants to build a wall along the mexico border, wants a big infrastructure program. how do you pay for those things, or ...

>> whats the status of dams in your region right now? whats the area of your greatest concern there? >> sure. i think so far weve had close to a dozen dams give way. theyre all across the entire region. our greatest concern is, obviously, lets make sure were doing everything we possibly can to keep people safe. public safety, making sure -- weve had a cuff few the last couple nights. well reassess it and whether or not well have a curfew. protecting people, sometimes protecting people from thems...

Focused on the priorities. number one priority is preservation of life. after that we want to make sure our people have shelter, have food, have water. and were assessing all of our infrastructure needs. we have a long way to go. we prosecute making great progress. when we started this disaster, we had 130,000 people without water. that number is down to about 42,000. were still engaged in significant search and rescue, almost 2,000 homes. 350 people rescued from their homes. were still counting...

That thing kind of swept through. senator cruz and senator mcconnell got into it a little bit. where are you on the highway bill and the xm bank? >> the highway bill i have a lot more affinity for because every billion dollars you spend building highways you create 13,000 jobs. if you build it with a strategic goal in mind theres an advantage. infrastructure in this country is in desperately bad shape, so we need to look at the revamping of highways bridges, overpasses. $3 trillion worth of infr...

Before. lets start with brazil, example of the toll the world cup and take on a country, violent protests, worker strikes on the streets. a story line as you know leading up to the games. where are we now with that? >> i would say that, while the brazilian people are by no means happy about this tournament being hosted in their home country, the fears about protests and strikes have sort of fizzled out since the cup has started. and i say that, that doesnt indicate that the people are happy abou...

Differently had the congress been willing to work with the administration? what could we have done to make this unemployment number even better? >> thats the sad part, joy. there is easy stuff we could have done, no-brainer stuff. investing in all manner of infrastructure needs, expanding broadband, investing in transit cars, improving our roads and bridges, making our buildings more energy efficient. if we had done any of those things, which many folks had been calling for for quite a long time...