Priorities
On the Road: Staycation Day One
Aug 25 2011
We visited Manassas, Culpeper, Charlottesville and Goochland on Monday as Senator Warner's August "staycation" continues across Virginia.
At BAE Systems in Manassas, Senator Warner held an employee town hall -- complete with his infamous deficit reduction PowerPoint presentation. Employees at the defense contracting company obviously were concerned about the future level of defense spending. "I have to be honest, we're going to have to put everything on the table to fix this problem, including defense," Senator Warner said. "Anyone who walls-off certain spending is not being honest about the problem."
Our next stop was the Culpeper Library of Congress facility -- or it would have been, had Virginia not experienced a 5.9 earthquake! Senator Warner was on the phone with reporter Wes Hester of the Richmond Times Dispatch when Wes said, "Senator, I have to go - there's an earthquake!" However, in the car, we couldn't feel the tremor at all.
We were able to continue the Culpeper town hall, in rather old school fashion, outside underneath a tree, while the building was inspected for any damage.
After the event, senator warner was able to get ahold of Pam Harlowe, mayor of the small town of Mineral, near the quake's epicenter. "I talked to the mayor of Mineral, where the earthquake was centered, and she said a lot of folks had their cabinets cleared off or cleaned perhaps more quickly than they would have liked," Senator Warner said to NBC29 when we stopped by later. "and particularly to the town hall building had some damage, but they had actually just broken ground last friday to build a new town hall, so they're hopeful that this will maybe speed up the process".
Here's hoping we don't face any more natural disasters this trip. Stay tuned for more updates.
At BAE Systems in Manassas, Senator Warner held an employee town hall -- complete with his infamous deficit reduction PowerPoint presentation. Employees at the defense contracting company obviously were concerned about the future level of defense spending. "I have to be honest, we're going to have to put everything on the table to fix this problem, including defense," Senator Warner said. "Anyone who walls-off certain spending is not being honest about the problem."
Our next stop was the Culpeper Library of Congress facility -- or it would have been, had Virginia not experienced a 5.9 earthquake! Senator Warner was on the phone with reporter Wes Hester of the Richmond Times Dispatch when Wes said, "Senator, I have to go - there's an earthquake!" However, in the car, we couldn't feel the tremor at all.
We were able to continue the Culpeper town hall, in rather old school fashion, outside underneath a tree, while the building was inspected for any damage.
After the event, senator warner was able to get ahold of Pam Harlowe, mayor of the small town of Mineral, near the quake's epicenter. "I talked to the mayor of Mineral, where the earthquake was centered, and she said a lot of folks had their cabinets cleared off or cleaned perhaps more quickly than they would have liked," Senator Warner said to NBC29 when we stopped by later. "and particularly to the town hall building had some damage, but they had actually just broken ground last friday to build a new town hall, so they're hopeful that this will maybe speed up the process".
Here's hoping we don't face any more natural disasters this trip. Stay tuned for more updates.
