Bridge to Somewhere

Blue Skirt writes on the tragedy of the 35W bridge. (Red Skirt also here.) I had said all I intended to say earlier but it was not to be. Sad to get into this political phase so soon, but I suppose it is predictable in this polarized atmosphere.

I was with Blue Skirt until halfway through she launched into the obligatory liberal attack on the war. If we weren't at war of course it would be an attack on defense spending, which should be the number one priority of the Federal government, I might add. Defense is something we as individuals, local governmets and the states can't reasonably do for ourselves.(Nuclear-free Berkeley excepted of course)

Well, at least Blue Skirt didn't blame the bridge failure on Reagan.

It's a government program. Reagan had a few choice expressions similar to "good enough for government work", that resonates here. But hey, since Blue Skirt is tossing blame around, why wasn't it repaired under the Clinton administration? It was under repair when the accident happened. For the record, the Bush administration upped the transportation budget. Let's look at a few of the liberals' pet projects benefitting a favored few---

Minneapolis built light rail at a staggering cost.

Amtrak has been a money loser for years, propped up by billions in subsidies.

In contrast, consider the cost of Sept. 11th, and the cost of another one or worse if we had not acted against al-Qaeda, and our sworn enemy Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Politics gets in the way of common sense. Politicians' spending on infrastructure is notorious for padding the payroll with patronage jobs and rewarding political contributors with contracts. Shoddy work is the result, accountability is elusive, and corruption is ever present.

And then there are the Boomers. Nicole Gelinas, City Journal:

It’s easy to see how this happened. If the fifties were the decade of infrastructure, the sixties were the decade of entitlements and social services—and the sixties haven’t ended. Just five years ago, a Republican Congress scrambled to add a huge new prescription-drug benefit to the 1965 Medicare program. Even when we do spend money on infrastructure, it often suffers from confusion of purpose. Congress treats federal transportation bills as opportunities for political earmarks, rather than for rational growth. And states see infrastructure projects as ways to funnel money to politically favored contractors and powerful construction unions, rather than as worthwhile undertakings to be done as efficiently and effectively as possible. At the state level, Medicaid spending dwarfs infrastructure spending, and most governors don’t sound the alarm.

No because they have constituents like this liberal:

Major infrastructure challenges, such as maintaining bridges over our mightiest rivers and modernizing levies, ought never be the sole or even the major responsibility of cash-strapped state and local governments.

Why are state and local governments "cash strapped" but not the federal government? Where does the money come from anyway? To liberals, it's always the "other guy" who is responsible and should pay, not them. User fees are one way, toll roads, what a concept! And what did New Orleans do with their federal levee money for years and years? Shoddy construction and handouts to favored operators to do who knows what. I have to say, I think the entire state of Pennsylvania is under road construction, and apparently has been for years. It's a regular cash cow for the unions and their Democrat allies who run everything. It's criminal.

And actually, most states are not cash strapped (well, except for Louisiana, Michigan and yes Illinois, run by unusually incompetent Democrat governors). Rush is so right on this one. I'm so tired of these sophomoronic liberal arguments I'm borrowing his rant:

This is one of these classic events that is custom-made for the Drive-By Media. "The country is falling apart. Bush spending too much in Iraq. Not paying enough attention to what's happening at home." Meanwhile, all these people complaining about the defense budget taking away money. Do you know that Minnesota was running, it's either this year or last, a $2.1 billion surplus? These states are running surpluses. Most of these states are awash in money. [snip]

The Democrats, ladies and gentlemen, are the only people that care about roads and bridges. The rest of us, we never have to drive on those roads and bridges. It's only liberal Democrats have to ride on the bridges. By the way, 600,000 bridges in this country, one of them goes down, "Country's falling apart because we're in Iraq." It's absurd, but it's a perfect template and a perfect action line for our buddies in the Drive-By Media. In 2005, for all these people saying that we spend too much in the military, the federal budget in 2005 was 2.47 trillion. The defense budget that year was 400 billion. Over 60% of the federal budget is spent on entitlement programs. Good old Soc. Security, good old Medicare, good old Medicaid, good old SCHIP program, with a P. They ought to change it, get the health care for the little children out there. Defense spending as a percentage of the total federal budget has been declining since the 1960s.

Here's Rush on the freshman Senator from Minnesota, Able Amy Klobuchar:

KLOBUCHAR: A bridge in America...just...shouldn't...fall down. And that's why we have called for this investigation. It's going to take time because we have to get to the bottom of this. I've already talked with Senator Reid and Senator Durbin and Senator Schumer.

RUSH: Oh, that will fix it!

KLOBUCHAR: We are going to work to make sure --

RUSH: That's right.

KLOBUCHAR: -- that the resources are there --

RUSH: Yes, yes.

KLOBUCHAR: -- to not only help with the immediate recovery --

RUSH: Absolutely right.

KLOBUCHAR: -- but for the long-term rebuilding of this bridge.

RUSH: Absolutely. Yeah, Senator Reid is going to handle this along with Senator "Schemer" and Senator Durbin. They'll get the bridge built. Never mind they had nothing to do with it falling. They're going to get it rebuilt. (chuckles) A bridge in America just shouldn't fall down? Why not? Everybody's going to die of AIDS; everybody's going to die of caffeine. We're all going to die in the next 25 years, the next 25 minutes. We're going to try to paint a picture of doom and gloom and crisis. A bridge ought to be falling every day in this country if the Democrats are right about the state of our circumstances here.

Note this list, compiled by Reason, of deficient bridges by state (best to worst). Minnesota ranks well in comparison.

I say just privatize it all, or at the very least enter into public-private partnerships. California had diverted highway money to shore up their bankrupt general fund after their spending spree on the dot.com dime, and subsequent bust. Stephen Malanga:

The problem is that 98% of our bridges and 97% of our roads are owned and operated by state and local governments--and that these governments have often used past increases in federal transportation aid simply to replace their own infrastructure spending.

So California turned to new sources of funding. Reason on PPPs bringing in new capital, and an added benefit---encouraging energy conservation--with this conclusion:

Our personal schedules don't stop and start to accommodate the political process, so the less we rely solely on government to fund transportation projects, the more we will be able to escape congestion.

But in May of this year, the new Democrat majority Congress signaled its intentions to roll back this innovative solution. Reason:

I was stunned when I saw the official May 10, 2007 letter to every state governor, aiming "to discourage you from entering into public-private partnership (PPP) agreements that are not in the long-term public interest in a safe, integrated national transportation system." The letter, on official U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure letterhead, was signed by Reps. James Oberstar (D, MN) and Peter DeFazio (D, OR), who chair the full committee and the highways and transit subcommittee. While the letter goes on to raise concerns about non-compete clauses, a mistaken belief that highway safety and performance will suffer, and other issues that are being addressed sensibly by state DOTs in their concession agreements, their main point seems to be that toll concessions will "undermine the integrity of a national system."

Apparently PPPs are bad now. When Al Gore was touting them and pretending to be a new Democrat it was called "reinventing government" but now the Democrats are revealed for the liberals they are. These actions are counterproductive and will make the funding gap worse.
Indiana has successfully sold off its tollway, Chicago its connecting Skyway, with contract clauses that enforce standards and accountability, and a bonus of financing by overseas investors. Globalization works in our favor. And as Malanga points out, even socialist France thinks the private sector makes sense in this area--they have been licensing out roads since 1955. So why would Congress interfere with success?

Why indeed. And then there is Congress' egregious interference via earmarks!:

In the 1981 highway bill, there were all of 10 earmarks. A decade later there were 1,850, and by 2005 the earmarks had multiplied to 6,371, or nearly 10% of total spending. [snip]

A main problem with these earmarks is that they often supersede the more urgent repair and replacement needs identified by state and local officials. Earmarked funds in past highway bills would go unspent because the vanity projects were unwanted and typically require some state matching funds. A full five years after the 1987 transportation bill, for example, no less than 64% of its earmarked money was still unspent because states had more urgent priorities for their share of the spending. By 1997, 55% of the $6.2 billion in earmarks from the 1991 highway bill had gone unspent. We can't report the same numbers for the 1998 and 2005 highway bills because the federal Transportation Department stopped disclosing the figures, lest it embarrass Members of Congress.

The risk of inaction has now been quantified in lives lost. We want a streamlined, transparent and accountable system that works, that's not dependent on stop and start politics and feckless politicians. We want a dependable bridge to somewhere.

The exhausted rescue workers are now turning to the Navy, one of the few consistently productive parts of the government. And please donate here to this charity, because Americans are a generous people and don't wait to be told the right thing to do. Now let's translate that into votes.