Senators Proposed Bridge Funds Hours Before Collapse

The taxpayer dollars being wasted in Iraq may be better used in rebuilding America.Senators Proposed Bridge Funds Hours Before CollapseBy Cliff Montgomery – Aug. 16th, 2007A few weeks ago, two powerful senators joined together to introduce legislation intended to help America rebuild its crumbling infrastructure.These men–who each possess a presidential ambition–introduced the bill onto the Senate floor just hours before the fateful Minneapolis bridge tragedy on Aug. 1st.Republican Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Democrat Chris Dodd of Connecticut should each be noted for attempting to solve this desperate crisis before the disaster in Minnesota sent most politicians to the corporate news shows armed with little more than crafted talking points.The Hagel/Dodd bill calls for the creation of a national bank which will prioritize infrastructure projects, and come up with creative ways to pay for them.Perhaps most telling, the bill’s supporting materials reveal that the projected cost of the new bank would be around $132 billion a year.Congressional Quarterly notes that “the overall price tag for repairing” our crumbling roads and bridges is “close to the annual $120 billion that the U.S. is spending in Iraq.”Considering that the two senators rightly want an end to Bush’s misadventure in Iraq, the tragedy in Minneapolis may for them spotlight a simple truth: The taxpayer dollars being wasted in Iraq may be better used in rebuilding America.The Minneapolis bridge collapse is merely the latest failure in a national road system which has long been crumbling while we fiddled away massive tax breaks to those who do not need the assistance, and pummeled our highways with an ever-increasing volume of traffic.Right after World War II, investments in our highway system rightly made it the pride of America. But today our federal interstate system exists as a shell of its former self, a patchwork of deteriorating roads and bridges, including a number of segments–such as the collapsed bridge  in Minneapolis–that engineers now consider broken down or no longer viable.The U.S. government’s last six-year road and transit legislation finally won approval in 2005…two years late.  At $286 billion, it was also about $90 billion less than the $375 billion that highway and transit advocates declared would be necessary just to keep American roads and bridges from falling into further disrepair.”We’re falling further and further behind,” Robert Poole, a Federal Highway Administration adviser, bluntly told The Washington Post.A 2005 Highway Administration study declares that at least 75,000 of America’s roughly 600,000 bridges–over 13 percent–have been found to be “structurally deficient.”In other words, some parts of the bridge–its deck or support structures, or perhaps both–were found to be poor or worse. Though not technically a death trap, the broken down structures often were slapped with weight and speed restrictions to offset the possibility of collapse.Capped with the recent Minnesota tragedy, such concerns have finally forced lawmakers to give consideration to America’s crumbling transportation system. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) rightly called the bridge collapse in Minneapolis a “wake-up call,” and very few lawmakers will publicly deny it at the moment.”We have all over the country crumbling infrastructure–highways, bridges, dams–and we really need to take a hard look at this,” Reid said in a television interview.But the United States will need a long-term investment of $188 billion over a 20-year-period just to repair the country’s aging bridges, says a 2005 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers.So will Congress still be ready to do its duty and find ways to come up with the needed funds  after it returns from its August recess? Will it pass the Hagel/Dodd bill, create some other investment plan, or just continue to ignore the problem? Only time will tell.Like what you’re reading so far? Then why not order a full year (52 issues) of thee-newsletter for only $15? A major article covering an story not being told in the Corporate Press will be delivered to your email every Monday morning for a full year, for less than 30 cents an issue. Order Now!