By Paul Bowers
Sen. Lindsey Graham held a conference call Monday to praise President Barack Obama’s inclusion of $3.5 million for a Charleston harbor-deepening study in his proposed 2013 budget. Sen. Graham thanked the president for the budget item, which he said would prevent his having to earmark the funds, but harshly criticized the rest of the $3.8 trillion budget.
“The president’s budget as a whole is more a political document than it is a solution,” said Graham, an Upstate Republican. He added that most of the proposed budget is “not going anywhere,” even in the Democratic-majority Senate.
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Sen. Graham, who is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he was confident that the $3.5 million allocation would survive even during a hotly contested election-year budget process. “I think everybody in the House knows how important it is,” Graham said. “And I’d hate to be the House member that told me no.”
The bigger obstacle, he said, will be securing the remaining funds for the completion of the deepening project, which he said could total as much as $300 million.
“This is good news for 2013,” he said, “but we’ve got a long way to go.”
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