Bridge collapse and Infrastructure concerns...

[albed]

Congress controls the spending; democrats control the congress; so shove the Bush-bawling back up your brain.

[JackSpratts]

"This is a big idea. It harnesses public and private money. I think Dodd and I have really broken the mold here." - Chuck Hagel

Originally Posted by albed

Congress controls the spending; democrats control the congress; so shove the Bush-bawling back up your brain.

if the infrastructure started falling apart in the 80's it was during the republican's watch wasn't it? thank you citizen albed for once again promoting the irrelevent while ignoring the substantive. but regardless who was or is president, now that the democrats have (barely) taken over i'll expect you to ignore them for helping turn this around in the senate with a real bipartisan infrastructure solution. meanwhile the rest of us will watch and see what kind of positive influence president bush brings to bear on this issue, if any.

- js.

Edited by Jack

[albed]

The Hagel-Dodd bill, dubbed the National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2007, would create an independent national bank that would identify, evaluate and help finance the largest infrastructure projects...

The bank would be able to provide money for such enormous projects by selling long-term bonds to individuals, corporations and other entities. Rather than reaping interest on the bonds, the bond holders would get tax credits. The bonds would be guaranteed by the federal government.

Asked how much those tax credits would cost the government, Hagel said an estimate has not yet been worked up. However, he said the Government Accounting Office, the Treasury Department and others are working on an estimate.

Hagel said he and Dodd have been working on the bill for about two years.

Just a slimey shell game, creating another bureaucratic institution to shift present spending to future taxpayers. And they haven't even bothered to crunch numbers to reveal it's true cost, though I'd triple whatever price they claim just because they're scumbag politicians.

[Drakonix]

The States, NOT the Feds are responsible for maintaining bridges.

The States and the Feds are supposed to do inspections.

The Dems made lots of earmarks, but apparently not for maintaining bridges

Edit:

It should be easier for the Dems to get their way now that they have become adept at stealing and misrepresenting votes on the (Congressional) House floor. Shame.

[multi]

It is obviously more important for your country to supply billions of dollars of future taxpayer money on selling/giving arms to the worlds most volatile region to line the pockets of the elite military industrial complex than it is to look after the state of the local infrastructure.. not a good look guys..

The Federal/State issue is just bureaucratic nonsense... This is clearly a question of priorities, a question of the rich causing the slow decay of modern civilization like tooth rotting from the inside. It makes me wonder why we should fear some bloodthirsty religion taking over the planet when it is already being controlled by faceless entities that would send their grandmother to wall for a dollar.

[Mazer]

You guys probably aren't the only people in the world that are politicizing this issue, but this kind of bullshit only appears on the internet. I'm not really surprised, given the extremists we have here, but show a little originality for once (perhaps some sympathy would be appropriate too). I mean, even if we had spent our defense department's budget on the interstate highway system and replaced this bridge in the process, hundreds of people still die every day in car collisions that money just can't prevent. But you're doing the predictable thing, treating the bridge collapse like crime so you can justify your indictments, and since nobody knows if one person or a one group was responsible, you naturally blame the voters and the politicians. Lame.

[Drakonix]

Hell, Obama wants the U.S. to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq so we can invade Pakistan. That doesn't sound like turning "war dollars" into "infrastructure dollars" to me.