In my previous diary I outlined the reasons why Bush’s budget is a weapon of mass destruction for Middle America, the American environment, and ultimately, the planet. At the end of that diary, I touched upon five major budget solution items that counter the premises of the Bush regime’s warped priorities. With that, I will discuss the first solution item, the Sustainable Infrastructure Act, and how it fulfills five essential elements of spending priorities that benefit all Americans, below the fold.
In order to be a worthwhile item to consider in the budget, the budget item must fulfill at least one of the criteria below:
- It should be environmentally/ecologically sustainable (i.e., reduce pollution, energy use, waste, and/or greenhouse gas emissions, or help conserve natural resources and open space, relative to current conditions).
- It should contribute to short term cost savings on a national or individual basis (such as lowered taxes for those who are suffering) through immediate reductions in spending without increasing long-term costs or harm to the environment.
- It should contribute to long-term cost savings for consumers or taxpayers by either reducing expenses for individual Americans at a mass level (for example transit initiatives relative to car and truck transport), or solves problems in an early stage before they increase in scope or expense at a later time (i.e solving the healthcare crisis now will reduce later costs and expenses to effect a solution).
- It should create a tangible benefit visible to and useful for a majority of Americans, not just a small, special interest.
- It should be based on fairness to all, and equity as a moral imperative. Ordinary citizens should be empowered, not disempowered economically and politically.
Suffice it to say, it is hard to find many items in Bush’s budget that satisfy any of these criteria. In fact, it is a cheap labor conservative budget that dis-empowers directly or indirectly nearly all Americans. The Sustainable Infrastructure Act helps redirect priorities to rebuild our transportation, ecological, and intellectual infrastructure while helping combat global warming and restoring local economies.
Our infrastructure is in crisis. It is environmentally unsustainable, especially in the areas of transportation and land use, extremely costly on both public and private levels, and in many areas is deteriorating to Third World levels. The Society of Civil Engineers rates our infrastructure as Grade D and declining. It is only up to snuff in a few localized pockets, such as the excellent Chicago Metra commuter rail system, and some of the highways in Wisconsin. Even the better infrastructure is threatened by budget shortfalls that are resulting in deferred maintenance and redirection of infrastructure expenses to operating expenses. Unfortunately, while we are whipsawed by volatile high and even higher gasoline prices, and a transportation paradigm that needs to shift to save money and the environment, our leadership is giving us more of the same old solutions out of the 1960s when gasoline was 25 cents a gallon and global warming was not even on the radar screen. This includes wasteful and even dangerous highway projects such as the Boston Big Dig, the Illinois Prairie Parkway road to nowhere, and the revival of the shelved Crosstown Highway in Chicago, that will displace urban neighborhoods in favor of a highway designed to route long haul freight trucks (a transportation mode that needs to be phased out) through the city. And this is not to even mention the rumored NAFTA mega-highway disaster that is supposed to be in the planning stages in Texas.
Its time to say NO to this.
How?
In a nutshell, we use the power of the federal budgetary purse to achieve 11 action items below:
- Equalize funding levels and federal matching funds for sustainable transportation infrastructure. Make railroad infrastructure and equipment funding eligible for an 80-20 Federal match for federal and local/state funding, just as it is for major roads and/or airports.
- Railroad trackage and other railroad infrastructure is as essential as highways and far more sustainable. The private railroads pay property taxes on this infrastructure, which is a financial disincentive for improvements or maintenance beyond the bare minimum needed. Not only that but Bush proposes to cut back funding to the Federal Railroad Administration, which provides oversight. In contrast, highways and airports pay no property tax. Exempt the railroads on a national basis from paying the property tax and the Federal government will make up the shortfall to local government from the exempted rail property. This would be a first step to federalizing responsibility for railroad infrastructure, while the rolling stock would be privately owned. This is the current situation with the interstate highway system and airports, so federalizing railroad infrastructure would remove a barrier to parity funding. Also, the Feds should declare moratorium on removal of any existing rail infrastructure until independent non-partisan studies can verify that there is no further use for the trackage. Even lightly used spur lines to manufacturing facilities or tiny villages can be refitted to allow small freight deliveries that would remove trucks from the road.
- Make federally-approved, constructed, funded or permitted projects meet at a minimum, the lowest level of Leadership in Environmental and Ecological Design (LEED) certification for building construction. Institute a sliding scale of match/grant funding that increases with increased levels of LEED certification criteria. The EPA should get behind this, as well as items 5 and 7 below. EPA budgets should be increased by a minimum 50% over the next five years, or the equivalent of 10% increase per year, to fund granting opportunities and initiatives, as well as research into green building, energy conserving landuses and landscaping, and conservation/improvement of water resources.
- Discontinue all Federal subsidies and funding to oil, coal and nuclear energy, currently topping 10 billion/year to be reinvested in renewable technologies, efficiency and conservation initiatives. For example, more efficient lighting (LED and compact fluorescent) and less wasteful use of lighting such as excessive night lighting will free up enough energy to power an electrified national passenger rail network, and such a rail network can save 10% or more of our oil consumption.
- Institute federal granting/minigrants for local self-reliance infrastructure (small local light rail or electrified/biomass feeder bus projects, mixed use developments that emphasize walkable multiuse communities, localized food production and consumption, and localized energy production and consumption). Role for expanded EPA.
- Retrofit and Efficiency Small Grants/Tax Incentives – To accelerate efficiency, tax incentives (or even tax rebate type) small grants should be offered to homeowners and small businesses that install onsite energy generation, insulation, reconstruct long-lasting locally made or recycled materials, and get rid of energy/resource hogging landscapes such as large expanses of turf grass and non-native species demanding of large quantities of fertilizer, water and fossil fuels.
- Local Solutions to Stormwater Infrastructure problems - The stormwater infrastructure is overwhelmed in many urban areas, such as Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Chicago, where rainstorms routinely overwhelm the mixed storm-sanitary sewerage system and flush raw sewage into the Great Lakes. Small, localized stormwater infrastructure such as green vegetated roofs, rain gardens, and bioswales trap runoff and absorb it on site- replenishing groundwater using native plants and on site temporary storage of water. Permeable paving can also be employed in many areas to diminish runoff. Excesses can be collected in cisterns for graywater use during dry periods. This will reduce the stress on the existing infrastructure and reduce the need for costly fixes such as huge storage basins, new sewer lines, etc, which has been the solution for these water problems up to now. This technology is available for both retrofits (link) and for new construction at all levels. Granting authority and matching funds for federal projects should be made contingent on implementing these types of runoff mitigation projects.
- Beginning in 2008, de-fund all new major highway construction and expansion projects. Limit funding to repairs, maintenance or reconstruction of existing roads only. Reduce Federal highway administration budget by at least 4% per year beginning in 2008 with the ultimate goal of a 40% reduction by 2020. The monies would be redirected to developing/expanding rail transit.
- Levy an $0.05 (5 cents per mile) use tax surcharge above and beyond existing fees and taxes for single-trailer long-distance trucking - whether it is is within the U.S or from trucks originating in Mexico or Canada (non-US LD trucks would be taxed from the point of entry). This would kick in for all one-way trips greater than 150 miles by truck – all mileage per truck in excess of 300 miles roundtrip or 150 miles one way would be taxed at 5 cents per mile. This would help pay for the external costs of the truck shipments, the road damage and level the playing field towards alternatives. This tax should be split 50-50 between paying for alternative modes (primarily rail) and for repairing existing highway infrastructure damaged by heavy trucking. Double and triple-trailer trucks would be taxed from point of origin due to their greater impact and safety problems. Why create a "truck train": when rail can accomplish the same thing. A transponder similar to I-pass/EZpass can be used to collect the tax, obviating the need for mileage logs, which are often falsified.
- Rebuilding solution even has bipartisan support from even the likes of Trent Lott and even support from paleoconservatives such as Paul Weyrich), vastly increase funding to rebuild and improve an integrated U.S rail network for both passenger and freight. A suitable model for passenger rail is available at NewTrains. The program should support local electrified light rail (40-70mph), medium sized 80-120mph regional commuter rail or metro systems, and a national intercity 120+ mph high speed network for passengers. Most should be electrified where possible. High speed rail should be able to displace short –haul air travel for distances of less than 600 miles, and compete with it for 600-1000 mile trips. The freight rail infrastructure should be upgraded to allow for 80 mph freight service in the higher use corridors, and 60 mph elsewhere, which eliminates any time advantage trucking has. Bottlenecks such as old or deteriorated track and ballast (track bed), lack of sidings, lack of passing or multiple track or old signals and switches that are a detriment to expansion and need to be replaced before the rolling stock hits the track. Aside: the folly of running modern trains on ancient infrastructure was noted a few years ago in my back yard, where they tried running an Amtrak train to Janesville WI from Fox Lake, IL on 25mph restricted trackage from 1900. Needless to say, it was a joke and was cited by John Stossel and other shills showing what a failure Amtrak was. We do not want to repeat this mistake. This infrastructure initiative would also put parcel deliveries such as UPS on trains rather than planes or trucks, a process which failed years ago since the inadequate infrastructure could not deliver time-sensitive material. Other innovations, such as mixed freights that attach one or two freightcars for small, light packages and materials to passenger trains should be considered. Trains are to be supported as they have the potential to greatly increase efficiency, eliminate many of the pollution, congestion, waste, and needless injury and death problems associated with car and truck travel (link-my diary). The current bipartisan S.294, currently in committee, to expand and improve Amtrak, needs to be passed, (contact your Senator, there are already 27 cosponsors,) but even this bill, that nearly triples the current Amtrak budget, is not enough. Redirected highway and war spending need to be boosted to federalize rail infrastructure and spend the equivalent of an-interstate level program to improve and expand rail. A good start would be $25 billion a year, or about 2 hundreths of the discretionary federal budget. The rail system was basically built from scratch at the end of the 19th century and tripled in size in less than 20 years using little more than manual labor
- Finally, last but not least, rebuild our intellectual and scientific infrastructure, including basic nonmilitary R&D and health and disease prevention (such as the CDC, which has suffered under Bush’s budgets, despite demonstrated needs such as the threat of bird flu. As identified here one of the major problems under the anti-intellectual, anti-science Bush regime and Greed, Oil and Power congress has resulted in tech and intellectual trade that was historically high and positive in our can-do economy until the second year of the Bush Regime and has gone negative and stayed there. I propose the following general appropriation of $25 billion to be split among the CDC, NIH, National Science Foundation, renewable energy programs at DOE, and green construction initiatives and educational programs at the EPA.
With the next diary in this series, I will explore options on how to pay for these things through a reformed and changed tax code, and cuts in the wasteful National Security Budget. For reasons of space, I cannot provide the volume of space and analysis present in the monstrous Bush Budget, nor would I want to bore you with that level of detail, although to quote Faulker, it is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. However, boiled down to the essentials, these elements will help in rebuilding our transportation, environmental, and intellectual national infrastructure, which is quickly deteriorating to late Roman-Empire and third-world like conditions under the Bush regime.