Shovel Ready Enough Now?

Apparently people dying on bridges, that was once such a priority, is less so compared to" stimulus" $2,000,000 let's pretend jobs. What was I thinking-real jobs with long lasting,society serving construction. Must not have been high enough in the administrations HOPEY/CHANGEY/DOPEY/SLEEPY agenda.


Read paragraphs from the past, first written for The Charlotte Sun on Aug, 2007.

New taxes with no bridges is the likely outcome of the disingenuous attempt to raise highway taxes in the aftermath of the Minnesota bridge disaster. Let’s establish at the outset that it was a real tragedy where real people lost real lives and the bridge was not okay.

The problem is that Congress is not okay either. It is equally rotted. It is equally degraded. It is equally unreliable. It does not matter whether they are blue or red. It seems as if many in Congress have succumbed to the “you scratch my vote; I’ll scratch yours” way of life.

Many, many bridges in America need replacing. In Lee County, the drawbridge on Highway 31 was pointed out as being substandard. The amounts bandied about to correct the situation nationally, some $250 Billion over twenty years, sounds insurmountable to someone who makes $400 a week. In point of fact, it could easily be handled as a governmental expenditure over twenty years in the multi trillion dollar economy we enjoy. It could be handled even faster with bonding out the projects, as was done during the Eisenhower administration when the interstate highway system got its first big boost.

The other thing they fail to tell you is that all that construction, all the materials, and all that labor is taxable activity, and the very building of the roads will create additional tax revenues. Economic activity creates tax revenues. Whether you like Bush or not, the tax revenue growth from our rapidly expanding economy has done a yeoman’s job of knocking down the deficit. If you don’t want to talk about it, fine. It you want to concentrate on all the negatives and why America is a terrible place, fine. But, the fact is any kind of economic activity generates taxes. When you slow that activity down, whether it is through rules, restraints, etc. there are less taxes.

The problem with the trust is that they are stealing so much money from the highway trust fund now for projects that are not highway or bridge infrastructure, or are outright ridiculous earmarks, that there is not enough money to keep up with our deteriorating infrastructure, and that is all you will hear about.

If you could trust these people to walk the talk on anything long term, there would be enough money. In a time when our economy is less robust and energy prices are up (largely because of unrealistic legislative constraints). I don’t think we need another five cent tax for roads, because it will not go to the bridges, and it will not go to the roads. A substantial portion of the current money is spent on mass transit for buses and subsidies, job programs and a myriad of other things that are not permanent in nature and are not what the tax is meant to pay for. Why in the world would we trust them to handle the next five cents any better.

No, the problem with the roads is that, even in their deteriorated condition, they are substantially more reliable than the people who vote to fund them. I will tell you the kind of five cents we should send to Congress; does anyone have a plug nickel?