Biden offers encouraging words

CORONADO — Vice President Joe Biden spent the day with Navy personnel yesterday, thanking them for their service and announcing plans to expand homeowners assistance to military families with $555 million from the economic stimulus package. Speaking aboard the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, docked at Coronado Naval Base, Biden said military families and civilian Defense Department employees who recently sold their homes at a loss are in particular need of financial assistance. “In the middle of a credit and housing crisis, we recognize that military families cannot generally choose, to put it mildly, when they move,” he said. The vice president outlined other measures in the stimulus package for construction projects on military bases. “That’s why the Recovery Act which you read about includes more than $7 billion, in addition to the regular yearly budget . . . for military construction projects: new hospitals, child care centers, better housing at all our defense installations across this entire country.” Bases on Coronado will receive $138 million for 11 new projects, he said, which include a new bachelors’ quarters and a round-the-clock child care center. Read the entire Union Tribune story here.