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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMaybe it’s time to invest in infrastructure?
By Steve Benen
A friend of mine in Baltimore emailed last night to ask if Id heard about a landslide near where he lives. I hadnt, but it was a doozy part of a major street collapsed yesterday, swallowing cars and flooding railroad tracks that ran below street level.
Fortunately, and somewhat miraculously, no one was injured, but seeing the footage was a timely reminder that now would an excellent time for the United States to make some investments in transportation infrastructure.
At roughly the same time as the Baltimore slide, Michael Grunwald was reporting that the Obama administration is thinking along the same lines.
Republicans have urged the Obama Administration to propose a major transportation bill, calling Americas crumbling infrastructure a natural issue for bipartisan cooperation.
Well, on Tuesday, the Administration unveiled a four-year, $300-billion transportation bill. It included a 22% increase in highway funding, a 70% increase in transit funding, and a provision allowing states to put tolls on interstates. At a time when one in nine U.S. bridges are rated structurally deficient, and nearly half the public lacks access to public transit, its a pretty ambitious piece of legislation.
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More from Grunwalds piece:
(N)o matter how much Republicans say they care about infrastructure, theyre not going to accept any infrastructure proposals that come from President Barack Obama. They opposed his $50 billion roads, rails and runways proposal in 2010, and then again when it was expanded and incorporated into his American Jobs Act in 2011. Theyve blocked Obamas plans for an infrastructure bank and a national high-speed rail network. Theyve also blocked Obamas proposals for corporate tax reform, which is relevant, because the new GROW AMERICA Act depends on tax reform for much of its financing.
Other than its hideous acronym it stands for Generating Renewal, Opportunity, and Work with Accelerated Mobility, Efficiency and Rebuilding of Infrastructure and Communities throughout America GROW AMERICA has a lot of attractive features. It extends Obamas commitment to Fix It First, focusing on upgrades for neglected infrastructure that will reduce the nations maintenance backlog rather than new projects that increase the maintenance backlog. And while transportation bills are known on Capitol Hill as highway bills, GROW AMERICA continues the Administrations subtle shift towards passenger rail, freight rail, dedicated bus lanes, and other programs that dont necessarily involve asphalt.
Obama and his team keep unveiling policy proposals like these, as if the American policymaking process were still normal and a functioning Congress stood ready to evaluate proposals on the merits. Left unsaid, however, is that just about everyone, including officials in the West Wing, realizes that the administration is going through the motions, cognizant of the fact that the legislative branch of government wont actually do anything, even in response to good, necessary ideas...Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee made this argument rather explicitly this week, insisting that theyll approve hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks, relying exclusively on deficit financing, but Democrats shouldnt bother to even ask about new spending on anything.
Barring an unexpected turnaround in voter-turnout models this year, it means U.S. infrastructure will simply have to wait for an indefinite number of years for a sorely needed upgrade.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maybe-its-time-invest-infrastructure
Republican plan: Wait until all the brigdes and roads collapse, and then rebuild them. What about the the potential for castastrophe and death? See Republicans health care plan: Die quickly.
You May Have To Say Goodbye To Your Toll-Free Highways
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024893543
onehandle
(51,122 posts)I'm not going to pay a fee just to go a few exits to the Mall.
Xyzse
(8,217 posts)However, is it possible to do this kinda sort of like how Republicans do?
Unfunded spending? At least this is far more important than their new tax cuts for the 1%.
They have such a hard time figuring out where to get the money from. I suggest taking it from more of their half-baked plans on draining tax payer money to go back in to their hoarding.
Infrastructure at some point pays for itself due to its use and tax revenue they get from those that use it daily.
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)It is now 5 years old and we have had an unusually harsh winter. The result is that surfaces are now in bad repair with lots of potholes and peeling blacktop.
Very little was used for real road construction or for bridges and tunnels, since larger projects are by definition not "shovel ready". They require years of studies, plans, permits, notices, public hearings, yadda-yadda-yadda.
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)away from private shareholder profit and repurpose that money toward infrastructure and public transportation.
We need fewer cars on the roads, fewer long haul trucks, more rail.
Higher gas taxes, better public transportation.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)think
(11,641 posts)???
Vashta Nerada
(3,922 posts)It's time to invest in infrastructure. Not only will it make our roads and bridges safer, it'll create a ton of jobs.
demigoddess
(6,640 posts)and I never cross them if I can avoid it.
msongs
(67,395 posts)Orsino
(37,428 posts)Every passing year of corrupt complacency adds to the principal, so to speak, and the interest has become prohibitive. Our government invests primarily in our wealthiest families, who haven't spent the last decades repairing things.
We are never going to catch up. The best we can possibly hope for is half-assed maintenance on the worst failures, and only after they fail catastrophically.