During last year’s Apple Festival, the HCDP booth featured a poster listing Henderson County projects that have been funded by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
Most people visiting the booth had no idea that our community has received almost $23 million of ARPA money to fund diverse projects including a new EMS station, water and sewer infrastructure, the VFW renovation, infusion therapy at both hospitals, assistance for families in crisis and improved broadband.
We think it’s important to get the word out, and a new video featuring our own multi-talented Gina Baxter is a perfect way to do that. The video gives a fun tour of several ARPA projects and can be viewed here:
ARPA is intended to help communities all over the country recover from COVID setbacks. The money we’ve received is not only leading to shiny new improvements throughout the county, it is also helping to provide jobs for families and to increase visitation and traffic for existing local businesses. (See the County Website for the full list of projects.)
ARPA is just one example of how Democrats have provided concrete benefits to average Americans in recent years. Medicaid Expansion is another. Governor Cooper and other NC Democrats have been fighting for this since 2017, even when Republican legislators sued Cooper in federal court to stop the process. According to the governor’s website, North Carolina missed out on an estimated $521 million each month the state did not have Medicaid Expansion. Since December 1, when North Carolina finally became the 40th state to expand Medicaid, 400,000 North Carolinians have been able to get affordable health care.
Another case in point is the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill—which was passed thanks to support from virtually all Democrats in Congress along with 13 Republicans in the House and 19 in the Senate. According to Sen. Tillis’s own report, Henderson County received almost $50 million for highway planning and construction plus $483,829 for pedestrian improvements and $103,500 for safety improvements. Again, these monies are providing jobs and increased business in addition to the improvements themselves.
The list could go on. Historically, Democrats have worked to enact good government programs that directly impact communities across the country—from Social Security to the GI Bill to Medicare.
We know all this, but a lot of people don’t.
That’s why it’s up to us to spread the news.
We hope you can share Gina’s video with friends and family. It is interesting and uplifting to see the variety of projects going on in the county.
We’re also trying to spread the news by publishing a series of What Dems Have Done posts on our social media accounts, usually on Wednesdays. The series is meant to remind all of us about the positive impact our community has experienced thanks to Biden and other Democrats. You can help us by checking our accounts occasionally and sharing information with your connections. It doesn’t take a lot of time or commitment!
With so much chaos and noise being generated by right wing extremists, it is good to have fact-based examples of how good government is supposed to work. It is inspiring to know that all of our county—even people who would never vote Blue—have benefitted from What Dems Have Done.
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