NYT editorial: Before Another Bridge Falls

[DeepModem Mom]

Before Another Bridge Falls
Published: February 23, 2008

Nearly seven months after a highway bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, a federal commission put a jaw-dropping price tag on starting to attend to America’s crumbling foundations: $225 billion a year for the next 50 years just to maintain and upgrade surface transportation. That report, like the bridge collapse, should have sparked a serious policy debate everywhere people rely on bridges, roads and transit systems — which is everywhere. It hasn’t, and that makes taking on this critical work of national repair even tougher.

Of the presidential candidates, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have plans for repairing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure — but no persuasive explanation for how they would pay for it. Mr. Obama would use money saved from ending the Iraq war; Mrs. Clinton would apply savings from more efficient government. The federal panel called for paying for a large part of the bill with an increase in the federal gas tax of 25 cents to 40 cents over five years. So far no candidate has had the courage to suggest that.

The next president will have to show a lot more leadership if there is any hope of reversing the damage from decades of underfunding and inattention. Washington invests less than $90 billion a year on surface transportation. That means states and cities have to pick up more of the burden, and more expensive projects go unfunded....

Representative Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon, has been pushing for a real national infrastructure plan, and he has a good hook. He reminds anyone who will listen that President Thomas Jefferson’s administration wrote America’s first national development plan — calling for building roads and canals — in 1808. In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt charted a second plan, which foresaw the need to invest in electrical generation.

Another hundred years later, the country is overdue for a new plan, one fitted for the times....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/opinion/23sat2.html?hp

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Like all the important news, this is ignored

by the MSM. More important we find out more about some young blond girl who is missing.

[fasttense]

2. If the government simply stops it's transfer of the nation's wealth to Defense contractors,

then there will be billions and billions to repair the country's infrastructure. If we spent only half on our infrastructure that we spent on the war in Iraq, then we would all be living in a shinny new country.

[wellstone dem]

3. And the republican governor of MN and VP wanabee

Tim Palenty just vetoed the transportation bill passed by the Minnesota House and Senate because it included new taxes.

[DeepModem Mom]

5. That is amazing news. So Minnesotans may find themselves on another collapsing bridge...

but what the heck -- no new taxes!

[NC_Nurse]

4. If more bridges start collapsing people might notice. Sadly, that's

probably what it's going to take. Meanwhile, * proposes a 3 trillion $ budget that mostly benefits the DOD. :eyes:

[ben_meyers]

6. How about doing what Eisenhower did?

In the 50's Ike called his plan the "National System of Interstate and Defense Highways." Tied it right into the defense budget. That's how they justified federal money for the interstate system in the first place.