U.S. Congressman Bobby Bright has been spending quite a bit of time in Crenshaw County these last few days, as he works his way through 92 incorporated municipalities by the end of the summer.

Bright visited the Amazing Grace Café in Dozier last Saturday and met several of the townspeople, including Mayor Karen Davis.

On Tuesday, Bright came back to the county, this time stopping in at Michael’s Southern Foods in Brantley.

Brantley Mayor Bernie Sullivan asked Bright about getting funding for street repairs and paving, and for sidewalks for the town.

Bright said that he would help in any way he could, but that he didn’t “control the money – I vote.”

“I get a certain amount of appropriations from three different sources I can pull from,” Bright said. “If you’ll send your projects directly to me, I’ll see what I can do.”

Bright touched on several different topics, including the nation’s healthcare.

“We have 15 percent of Americans who don’t have healthcare, and we’re going to do something about it before the end of the year,” Bright said, “but I don’t think the federal government should be the sole player in this—if we can just get those 15 percent covered, it will lower healthcare costs for all of us—but I don’t know all the details of the plan just yet.”

When it came to the big “bailouts” happening all over the country, Bright disagreed with them.

“Even if the state of Alabama was asking for a bailout, I wouldn’t vote for it because that would mean that someone along the way mismanaged the money,” he said.

Crenshaw County Commission Chairman Ronnie Hudson also spoke to Bright about the need for bridge repairs in the county, something that had been brought to the Congressman’s attention before he was elected. Bright said he would take a look at those projects again.

As far as partisan politics in the White House, Bright saw the need for more flexibility and compromise on the parts of Democrats and Republicans.

“We have so many people in our country who shift to one side of politics or the other,” he said. “You can’t just take one side that reflects one agenda and expect that to be the best way for our country…You need to be like a tree that can bend in the wind when it needs to.”