Washington news in brief
Senator: Water act to aid rural areas
WASHINGTON — The America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018, which passed in the Senate on Wednesday, will increase the opportunities for small rural communities to improve their water infrastructure, U.S. Sen. John Boozman said.
The measure, which was forwarded to President Donald Trump for his signature, had wide bipartisan support.
The legislation deals, in large part, with the work of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But it also includes funds for several drinking water and wastewater projects.
Boozman, a Republican from Rogers, was one of the sponsors of the Securing Required Funding for Water Infrastructure Now Act. The legislation would have authorized $1 billion in spending over five years to assist with drinking water and wastewater projects across the country.
While that bill failed to become law, the measure that passed in Congress included $10 million in additional funding for a similar effort over the next two years, Boozman said. It also removes high application fees that have been a stumbling block for rural communities, he said.
“This really is going to be a very helpful program. It gets our foot in the door. And then, over that two-year period, we will be working hard to find additional dollars, significantly additional dollars, to be able to put in the program,” Boozman said.
Dennis Sternberg, executive director of the Arkansas Rural Water Association, had testified on behalf of Boozman’s original legislation.
In a written statement last week, he voiced support for the final package.
“We are very pleased a version of Sen. Boozman’s bill was included in the package. Small and rural communities have more difficulty affording public wastewater service due to lack of population density and lack of economies of scale. Rural America is very appreciative for the help,” he said.
Hill calls out VA over its retesting
U.S. Rep. French Hill has given his latest Golden Fleece Award to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, accusing the agency of wasting millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars.
The Republican from Little Rock cited a recent review by the department’s office of inspector general. It found that the agency had required thousands of disabled veterans to submit to unwarranted medical re-examinations.
Between March 2017 and August 2017, 19,800 unnecessary examinations were performed at a cost of $10.1 million, the report said.
The tests imposed an “undue hardship” on veterans and squandered department resources, the review found.
According to the report, re-examinations can be required “whenever VA determines there is a need to verify either the continued existence or the current severity of a disability.”
But re-examinations are not appropriate, in most instances, for patients who are older than 55 years old; nor are they necessary for people who have permanent disabilities that are unlikely to improve. Other categories are also exempt.
With proper screening, many of the re-examinations could have been avoided, the report said.
In a letter to the new secretary of veterans affairs, Robert Wilkie, Hill denounced what he called “careless, wasteful spending” and urged the department to do better.
The late U.S. Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis., was the creator of the Golden Fleece Award, using it to highlight government spending that he considered wasteful. After Hill’s election to Congress in 2014, he resurrected the award.
Trump rates 54% approval in state
President Donald Trump remains popular in Arkansas, a new survey finds, but his ratings have dropped since he first took office.
Fifty-four percent of Arkansans approve of the New York Republican, 42 percent disapprove and the rest are undecided, according to Morning Consult.
The research and media company says it conducted 1.7 million surveys nationwide between Jan. 20, 2017 and Sept. 30. The margin of error for the Arkansas sample, it said, was plus or minus 2 percent.
In January 2017, 59 percent of Arkansans surveyed approved of the president and only 29 percent disapproved.
In the latest survey, Trump got the highest approval ratings — 62 percent — in Alabama and West Virginia. His lowest marks were in the District of Columbia (17 percent), Hawaii (32 percent) and Vermont (33 percent).