North Dakota’s Senator, Kent Conrad has come up with a plan to revitalize North Dakota. The plan is called, appropriately the Rural Revitalization Act of 2009 and it was introduced into the United States Senate by Kent Conrad in the hopes of passing legislation what would help raise North Dakota’s economy which, in turn, will help rebuild the nation’s economy as well.

There are a lot of projects contained within the bill. These projects are designed to provide funding for the state to upgrade its infrastructure, expand its health care programs and fund the generation of new power and power transmission projects. It would also help to fund public housing.

Among all of the projects included in the bill are the following:

Funding to construct and maintain roads and highways in rural areas
The Upgrading and Expanding of state transmission lines
Funding to help struggling small businesses in small towns and the rural regions of the state.
Funding for the construction of pipelines for renewable fuels
Funding to fix rural school buildings and provide extra support to outlying hospitals

The Act calls for funding for USDA Nutrition Assistance Programs like the Emergency Food Assistance Program and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program. It calls for single family housing loans as well as money for the National Health Service Corps.

While the big cities are clamoring for a piece of the eight hundred and nineteen billion dollar economic stimulus package, North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad points out that smaller communities are often overlooked when it comes time for the government to provide funding. His bill, the Rural Revitalization Act of 2009 will obviously help North Dakota but the language is constructed specifically to help provide assistance to rural areas all over the United States as well.

So far, there is quite a lot of support for Senator Conrad’s bill. The National Farmer’s Union, the National Rural Water Association, The North Dakota Ethanol Producers Association and the National Association of Development Organizations have all put their support behind the bill, acknowledging that larger cities are often favored over their rural counterparts and outlying areas.

Speaking as people from a rural area we can attest to the fact that small towns and rural regions do not see the support that urban areas see when it comes to getting legislation passed in Washington DC. North Dakota is not the only state that is sparsely populated. Wyoming, Oregon, South Dakota are mostly rural, with few—if any—large cities. These areas have needed help for a long time and so far little has been done to provide the assistance these places need to continue to survive.

Not everyone wants to live in a big city—if they did they wouldn’t live in North Dakota! Just because someone chooses rural life over urban life does not mean that they should be deprived of basic services like health care and clean water. Senator Conrad understands this and we wish his legislation luck.

For more information on North Dakota, visit http://www.northdakotamicroblog.com and http://www.nebraskamicroblog.com.

About the Author:

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – North Dakota’s Revitalization Plan