ATLANTA — Politics isn’t the reason for the delay in federal funding to deepen the Savannah River ship channel, Sen. Saxby Chambliss said Monday.
When President Barack Obama released his spending recommendations for the coming fiscal year, they did not include the federal portion of the $652 million project that Georgia officials are eager to begin. Instead, the Obama budget contained just a token amount for some preliminary engineering work.
“That’s leading us to the altar and walking away,” Chambliss said.
The project is a priority for the state because the Savannah and Brunswick ports constitute Georgia’s second largest economic engine. And to keep it humming once bigger ships begin using the widened Panama Canal next year, the state has been working for 17 years to start the deepening project and has already set aside the state’s share of the costs.
As a result of the project’s significance to Georgia’s economy, the delay has become an issue this year in both the governor’s race and the contest to replace Chambliss in the Senate.
During an interview with Morris News, the Georgia Republican said he is frustrated by the delay but attributes it more to officious federal bureaucrats than to partisan gamesmanship.
“I really don’t see any way that you could point to this and say it was a political decision,” he said.
That’s a different interpretation than other Georgia politicians hold. Gov. Nathan Deal and his Democratic challenger, state Sen. Jason Carter, have used different words but essentially agreed in describing the White House action as punishment for Deal’s decision not to expand Medicaid as envisioned when the president proposed his health reforms that have become known as Obamacare.
Deal condemned the funding delay as heavy-handed politics, and Carter blamed the governor for refusing to budge on Medicaid.
In the Senate race, Republican candidates debating Saturday in Savannah accused each other of not doing enough to rush the project toward completion.
“This is about the fundamental lack of leadership and inability to be effective in getting the job done. Where was the sense of urgency 17 years ago when we started out on this, where was the sense of urgency when Republicans had the majority in the House, the Senate and the White House, where was that sense of priority?” said Karen Handel, Georgia’s former secretary of state.
Chambliss said he believes the Obama administration is sincere when the president and vice president say they support the project. He figures a mid-level bureaucrat halted the funding by concluding that Congress had not reached final passage of legislation that will raise the project’s official price tag to what it is today after 17 years of inflation.
The House and Senate have passed different versions of that legislation and are negotiating a compromise in a conference committee which the senator predicted would be completed by mid-May.
“I assure you, when that bill is passed, we will be back at the White House jumping in with both feet, demanding that they fund this project,” Chambliss said.