Transportation funding matters.
(Kevin Rofidal/United States Coast Guard)
Congress is unlikely to pass a long-term surface transportation bill this year, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood
said Wednesday. Neither the House nor the Senate has passed a bill, but even if each chamber passed its own bill, the differences between the two would likely be too big to overcome; just for starters, the House proposal is for a five-year bill, while the Senate proposal is for a two-year bill. Additionally, House Republicans are still calling for
major cuts not supported by the Senate.
The need for a transportation bill is enormous, with the Washington Post citing estimates of $1.7 or $2 trillion in needed infrastructure investments over the next eight years, with transportation a large part of that. "Transportation infrastructure" can sound awfully technical and abstract, but what it means are the 18,000 structurally deficient bridges that Americans cross 210 million times a day. It means trains that go where you need to go and roads that don't wash out. And it means jobs. Kristina Costa and Adam Hersh of the Center for American Progress cite an analysis finding that "every $1 billion in additional funds committed to highway projects between 2009 and 2010 produced 2.4 million job-hours," while "the return on investment on transit projects was even higher, with 4.2 million job-hours produced by every $1 billion in investment." Then there's the need to rethink and get ready for the future rather than remaining stuck in the middle of the 20th century.
But this is exactly the kind of stuff Republicans like to hold hostage both to whatever short-term demand they're making at the moment and to the long-term notion that the United States is not a strong enough country to be able to afford bridges that are safe. I have a proposal for Republicans who like to talk about "making hard choices" on funding questions. You either get to say "America is the greatest and best and strongest country there is" or you get to say "America cannot afford to fix our bridges." You don't get to say both.