WASHINGTON, D.C. - Montana's Congressman, Denny Rehberg, today released the following statement responding to news that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has started closing the much-criticized Port of Whitetail.  Rehberg has been demanding this since early August.  The Port had been marked for renovation, at a cost of $8.5 million, and has been a matter of national criticism for some time, all the more now that Canada has decided to close its side of the port.  This decision by the Canadian government effectively made the Whitetail port available only for Canadian entry into the United States.

“This is one more example of politicians shooting from the hip when it comes to wasting stimulus dollars on projects that weren’t properly vetted or monitored.  No one bothered to investigate the Whitetail Port or talk to the Canadians before deciding it was worth millions to fix it up.  While I’m glad that CBP heeded my demands to stop wasting this money, I think the taxpayers in Montana would have preferred that these kinds of decisions had been made before more than a million unrecoverable stimulus dollars were put into it in the first place.”