Just over a year ago, the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed during rush hour traffic. Thirteen people were killed and a hundred more injured and, for a short period, a debate about crumbling infrastructure in America took place. Following the collapse of the Minneapolis bridge, structural engineers identified over 1000 bridges nationwide as having structural deficiencies. In the year since the bridge collapse, two thirds of those bridges, carrying 40 million vehicles a day, have had nothing more than regular maintenance. Twelve percent have been repaired, and an additional 24% have seen a partial improvement.
It's been estimated the cost to repair America's existing infrastructure, including bridges, roads, levees, power transmission lines, gas and water pipelines, etc, is on the order of $1.6T. You read that right; trillion. And are you surprised there's no money to spend on intrastructure? You shouldn't be.
On a related note, a portion of the tax we spend on every gallon of gasoline goes into the highway trust fund and that fund pays for the large highway projects around the country. As gas prices have increased, people have been driving less, and the highway trust fund has been depleted. For the first time in the funds history, it is anticipated to transition from a surplus to deficit and fund administrators are asking Congress to approve an $8B rescue plan by the end of this week.
Rep.
John Mica of Florida, the top Republican on the House Transportation
Committee, put it this way: "Unless we act now, each state’s highway
programs will experience severe disruptions and thousands of highway
projects may be delayed or canceled."
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who chairs the transportation and housing
appropriations subcommittee, saw the risk not just to "critical highway
construction and repair projects," but also to employment.
“This crisis could lead to millions of construction layoffs," she said. (Link)
At what point are our national leaders (and I would include Democrats here) going to engage in a serious debate about national priorities and what the nation can afford? I'm all for low taxes (is anyone for high taxes?), but pretending we can do all this tax cutting and have all the dough necessary to do foreign wars, infrastructure repair, health care for everybody (whether it's Obama's universal plan or McCain's $5000 tax credit) is just a big load of crap.
Hey, I really want that new Sony bigscreen LCD HDTV (have you seen it? It's beautiful.). But I can't afford it right now. The car needs new brakes andthen there's the college fund for my daughters....I either have to figure out a way to make more money or decide what things we need most.
Comments