Congresswoman Cheri Bustos and U.S. Senator Dick Durbin will visit the Quad Cities Friday, January 17th, 2014.
It comes just a day after the Senate passed the $1 trillion appropriations bill for funding federal programs. The House passed that same bill on Wednesday. President Obama is expected to sign the bill shortly.
The bill should have a positive impact on the Thomson Correctional Center. The bill includes money for facilities that the Bureau of Prisons owns. However, that money is not set aside for the correctional center. The Thomson prison will not be used to house Guantanamo Bay prisoners, according to U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley. U.S. Senator Dick Durbin says construction should start on the prison in "a matter of months, or at most a year."
The activation of the prison should take two years. That would mean the prison would open up in 2016.
Senator Durbin and Congresswoman Bustos are not saying specifically where they'll be in the Quad Cities Friday, but they are also expected to talk about the Rock Island Arsenal. The federal government dealt with its last government shutdown in October of 2013.