President Obama spoke Monday at the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department Legislative Conference in Washington, asking Republicans to stop blocking infrastructure and transportation projects. (See transcript here.) These projects would immediately create jobs, which would immediately start reducing the country's deficit -- which is probably why Republicans are blocking them.
There are millions of infrastructure jobs that absolutely need doing. There are millions of people out of work who really, really need jobs. On top of that the cost of financing is the lowest ever. So maintaining and modernizing our infrastructure would immediately put millions of people to work. But wait, there's more! Modernizing our infrastructure would make our economy more efficient and our businesses more competitive, bringing returns for decades. So, of course, with all these points going for it Republicans are blocking it.
The Obstruction
We have been deferring infrastructure maintenance since the Reagan years, but in recent years Republicans have doubled down on blocking public investment, calling it "just more government spending" and even "socialism." And, they complain, construction projects help union members.
So Republicans have blocked bill after bill to repair and modernize the infrastructure, or to maintain and modernize our aging transportation system, build high-speed rail, etc. The president discussed this obstruction in his speech,
... over the last year, I've sent Congress a whole series of jobs bills that would have put your members back to work. But time after time, Republicans have gotten together and said "no." I sent them a jobs bill that would have put hundreds of thousands of construction workers back to work repairing our roads, bridges, schools and transit systems, along with saving the jobs of cops, teachers, and firefighters, and creating a new tax cut for businesses. They said "no." Then, I sent them just the part of that bill that would have created those construction jobs. They said "no." And we're seeing it again right now. As we speak, House Republicans are refusing to pass a bipartisan bill that could guarantee work for millions of construction workers. Seeing a pattern here? That makes no sense. Congress should do the right thing and pass this bill right away.
The Cost
Our aging infrastructure costs our economy. As things break down it gets harder to get things done. It is harder to start new businesses and our businesses are less competitive in the world. Shipments are delayed, etc.
There are other costs. Cars have to be repaired from driving on our substandard roads, people have to pay higher fuel costs as they try to get where they are going on clogged streets or taking detours around closed bridges, etc. People's time is wasted, which also costs. As we move toward third-world status, property values decline, we lose tourism, etc.
From a report on the president's speech in The Hill, (differs from advance transcript.)
"There are bridges between Kentucky and Ohio where some of the key Republican leadership come from, where folks are having to do detours an extra hour and half drive every day on their commute because these bridges don't work," Obama said in a speech to the Building and Construction Trades Department Legislative Conference in Washington. "Time after time, the Republicans have gotten together and they've said no," he said.
The Missed Opportunity
This infrastructure work has to get done at some point, and gets more expensive the longer we put it off. It not only gets more and more expensive to do this work the longer it is put off, but we are falling far behind our economic competitors as we fail to modernize.
But here's the thing -- as a share of the economy, Europe invests more than twice what we do in infrastructure; China about four times as much. Are we going to sit back and let other countries build the newest airports and the fastest railroads and the most modern schools, at a time when we've got private construction companies all over the world -- or all over the country -- and millions of workers who are ready and willing to do that work right here in the United States of America?
Jobs Fix Deficits
Jobs fix deficits. People are paying income taxes instead of collecting unemployment benefits or food stamps, they are spending their paychecks and the stores are paying taxes, etc. So government revenues are up and payouts are down.
This is why the deficit is jobs, but there is a deficit of jobs.
If you want to fix the deficit problem you have to get people working again. And since we have to maintain and modernize the aging infrastructure anyway, then let's get people working on... maintaining and modernizing the aging infrastructure!
Take Back The American Dream Conference
This and other issues will be talked about and worked on at the Take Back The American Dream Conference, June 18-20 in Washington DC.
This is where you need to be to forge the relationships and develop the strategies to change the direction of the country. At this conference, we'll be tackling some of the most pressing questions we face today:Be part of the American Dream movement. Join Campaign for America's Future, Rebuild the Dream, Progressive Majority and many other groups -- and thousands of progressive activists -- at the Take Back the American Dream conference.
- How do we compel candidates to embrace a jobs agenda big enough to end our economic crisis?
- How can we stop unlimited corporate campaign cash from buying this election?
- How many progressive champions can we help win in congressional, state and local races?
- How will we take back our democracy -- to Take Back the American Dream?
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for Our Future. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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One of five stone arch bridges in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, a landmark in civil engineering, a model of New England dry-laid masonry, the Sawyer Bridge has now been restored at a cost of $288,000 in state and federal funding, a job-creating endeavor wherein Republicans joining Democrats nonetheless support its belittler Mitt Romney's election.
This tourist attraction, but more, is a part of New Hampshire history, set in a new public park, included in the restoration initiative, at a bustling local intersection.
Mitt Romney, on May 18, visited the site in a calculated effort to undermine the president's 2009 federal stimulus package, mocking the vintage icon as "the absolute bridge to nowhere," the project "careless," representing Washington waste.
The nominee failed to recognize the town's sentiment and pride in the history of one of his four home states.
One wonders how his tactless words might ultimately impact the 2012 November vote.
So much this man can't understand---
Not stately, towering or grand,
The dear old bridge of ancient stone
To him has meaning quite unknown;
A man acutely unaware
Of why it still is standing there,
The modest bridge that's humbly spanned
The decades on its native land---
Only a bridge, but what it's meant
Eludes this would-be president.
Elizabeth Gerteiny
Author of The President Of War
www.bushandcompany.org
The US government FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS ECONOMICALLY REQUIRE that US businesses utilize foreign labor, environmental regulations and electrical costs, if they want to provide the lowest possible price in the USA for each US consumer purchase, instead of going out of business.
Yes, this is oversimplified, but the principal of accumulation of NATIONAL WEALTH (creating marketable things with value) is basic.
Future wars might also be industrial wars where the nation with the most wealth creating industrial manufacturing production will win the economic war by producing more NATIONAL WEALTH!
Maybe that was how the US won WWII!
If US government borrowing (by actually raising the debt ceiling, then printing and selling newly issued freshly printed paper US Treasury Bonds in return for foreigner’s US Dollars) to pay federal government expenses that are in excess of the tax collections continues at the present rate, then the US dollar purchasing value will diminish to a tiny percentage of today's purchasing value related to other (industrialized nation's) currencies when the USA has no more assets to buy with freshly printed US Treasury Bonds, etc., and then the Chinese Yuan (or Renminbi) might be the "LAST MAN STANDING" with any value for use in international business transactions.
I forgot about the Indian Rupee, the Pakistani Rupee, or the Brazilian Real which will also have purchasing power after the US dollar purchasing power is destroyed with the US government deficit spending since those nations (or their industrial manufacturing businesses and industries) are creating wealth instead of consuming wealth instead of consuming wealth as the USA is doing.
Foreigners will then immigrate to the USA and eventually become the major (or maybe the only) source of employment for US citizens after they redeem their US Treasury bonds and US Dollar (electronic) credits for title to and control of all of the businesses located in the USA
The US population will then become employees; possibly indentured servants; or maybe even beg to become slaves or indentured servants owned by the foreign countries and/or foreign individuals that will own everything of value in the USA in the very near future if the US government continues to destroy the US economy and the purchasing power of the US dollar with deficit federal government spending.
US citizens might have no options if they want to feed their families?
Our children and our grandchildren might also have to change to the religion of the business owner if they want the business owner to give then a job.
Re-industrialization would also create new NATIONAL WEALTH that will be available to be CONFISCATED in the form of TAXATION by various levels of government in order to create funds to pay for taking care of those that cannot take care of themselves, building and operating schools, streets, water and sewer systems, repay sovereign national debts, pork barrel projects, green projects, wars, streets, bridges, highways, welfare, unemployment, police, courts, prisons, fire fighters, social security and other WEALTH CONSUMING government provided bureaucratic activities for that family, tribe, city, state, or nation, without borrowing money and obligating future tax collections from future generations to repay those loans (Treasury Bonds).
If Spain, USA, UK, France, PIIGS, etc., and/or Greece had a larger industrial manufacturing portion as a part of their GDP instead of government payrolls and government contracts, then that would create additional new jobs for their/our citizens plus industrialization would generate additional new NATIONAL WEALTH instead of destroying NATIONAL WEALTH with government spending (at all levels).
Each government would then be able to raise more funds to spend on government activities by CONFISCATING some of this newly created NATIONAL WEALTH being created by their wealth creators, and then not having to borrow WEALTH (US Dollars, Euros, Gold and/or other currency) back from foreign individuals (in the foreign industrialized nations) that each nations citizens paid to these foreigners to make the consumer items that we imported.
Each nation must create their own new NATIONAL WEALTH to pay for all of their increasing government expenses without borrowing additional US Dollars or Euros (wealth) back from foreign individuals in the wealth creating industrialized nations.
How much of the privately owned NATIONAL WEALTH can you confiscate from the wealth producers in the USA (and each other nation) to pay for government activities services such as medicare, medicaid, UI, SSI, FEMA, FICA, wars, infrastructure, roads, bridges, water, sewer, police, firemen, jails, courts, welfare and social security before the wealth producers stop working to support those that do not create any new NATIONAL WEALTH?
Tax payer funded jobs and infrastructure repair contracts will disappear if private businesses stop creating new NATIONAL WEALTH that is available to be CONFISCATED via taxes by the governments at various levels as taxation to pay for our ever increasing government activities such as more infrastructure, more teachers, more firefighters, more wars, TO TAKE CARE OF THOSE CITIZENS THAT CANNOT TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES, and maybe to also pay off some or all of the US national debt that we are expecting our children to repay to the bondholders.
1. plant, grow and/or harvest something of commercial value from the earth;
2. extract something of commercial value from the earth;
3. manufacture something of commercial value that is consumable
4. construct a building that is permanently useful for rental income;
5. provide professional services (medical, legal, dental, engineering, architecture, land surveying, technology, accounting, etc.);
6. collect payment for patent and copyright uses;
and if they then trade, sell, lease or rent these items and/or services to parties outside of their family, in return for a net transfer of gold, currency or commodities from other parties outside of their family into their own family, then that family is enriched.
Here they pulled Designs off the shelf and made changes on the run building 9 bridges and 4 schools.
There were some projects still going when the cut off date hit and we paid to finish them.
I heard many never even got the New Designs Aapproved in their states with that same old bid game.
We had a lot of heavy traffic routed thru because of rock slides for almost 2 years and it is like trying to ride a wash board.
The Bridge footers are sinking because of the wet then long dry weather.
Back roads are horrible too full of holes.
Some idoit in the Federal Government allowed the local Government to Annex the part of the Interstate hwy and now the cost of maintaining it is killing us.
Without going thru the bid/ design/ change/ approve/ change approve / bid game they have going.
I heard some state were still playing with designs when the cut off date hit.
The anti-government folks aren't going after waste. They are going after success. This is why successful and popular programs like public education, national parks, Social Security Medicare, and Infrastructure are targets. Their success invites attacks if your goal is to "drown government in the bathtub."
The media, as here, suspends disbelief and treats these as serious intellectual discussions. They aren't. They are propaganda in the war on government.
This deficit spending policy will soon destroy the US Economy.
Without profitable greedy US businesses, greedy US corporations, and greedy US businessmen, there will NOT BE ANY JOBS for US citizens to create wealth for those businesses, except for tax payer funded jobs which will also disappear if businesses stop creating NATIONAL WEALTH that would be available for that some of that new wealth to be CONFISCATED via taxes pay for economic stimulus such as bureaucratic government jobs, INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENTS, government contracts, unemployment benefits, social security benefits, welfare benefits, National Healthcare, wars, police, firefighters, and various other tax paid government activities.
The US federal government must stop creating new legislation that drives US businesses and those US jobs and wealth creating manufacturing capabilities to foreign countries.
The US federal government should repeal the laws that they previously created that allowed and economically required that US businesses and their US jobs and their wealth creating manufacturing capabilities to relocate to foreign nations.
All the cost born by the citizen ?
The industries (in the 1800s utilized railroads for product and material transportation, not trucks on public highways as they do today.
My point is that the USA industrialized long before the USA created public infrastructure with taxes.
The USA needs to make the things that US citizens consume, not sell title to privately owned in-country located farms, land, businesses, hotels, factories, breweries, etc and other assets to pay foreigners to manufacture the things that we import for our consumption, and also to pay for our own increasing government activities, especially when we consume more wealth than we create.
You actually said something I completely agree with.
It is about time!
But you say our government shouldn't even repair our own aging infrastructure, educater kids, or anything.
US Businesses must also pay lower (hourly) pay scales to US citizens in the USA that are well below the wages that they pay foreigners in foreign Asian nations because US businesses have to compensate for the additional EPA costs plus the additional US payroll costs that the NATIONAL HEALTHCARE, UI, Social Security, F.I.C.A., and other Federal Government payroll taxes that are added on top of the costs of US labor payrolls with lower pay for US workers.
Businesses do not want to be taxed to pay for government infrastructure that they do not need or use.
Are you proposing that the US government print up a bunch of freshly printed paper US Treasury Bonds and then sell them at public auction as needed to get some of the US dollars back from (individuals in) the industrialized foreign countries that we paid a lots of US dollars to make the things that we consumed and then use these borrowed US dollars for payment to US contractors to re-build and expand the US infrastructure (Pork Barrel Projects) in order to reduce unemployment.
These borrowed US dollars will probably be spent on imported foreign manufactured earth-moving machinery, imported materials (Steel, Cement, Equipment, Pipe and Wire), illegal alien labor, outsourced engineering, outsourced CAD drafting, etc., and the US workers will still be mostly unemployed.
Maybe any Economic Stimulus Spending should also prohibit any imported products (even if we no longer manufacture those products) from being purchased with any of these funds, and also prohibit all outsourcing of the Labor Required.
Will the industrialized countries of the world loan back enough US dollars (that US citizens paid the foreigners to make our imported consumer goods) the US Government to pay US citizens to work at jobs to repair our infrastructure?
What happens after these projects end, and these temporary "Pork Barrel" infrastructure jobs disappear?
This is a short term solution that will mostly economically benefit foreign manufacturers of industrial and consumer goods, salesmen of the foreign manufactured equipment, materials, etc., and the people working in the distribution of the imported things for our infrastructure improvements, but the balance of trade will still require sending borrowed US dollars back overseas to pay for these things that we import, and only the NATIONAL DEBT WILL BE INCREASED.
These "Pork Barrel Projects" can only be paid for with more and more US dollars that are BORROWED BACK FROM FOREIGNERS.
US citizens paid foreigners with US dollars by US importers to manufacture goods for US citizens to purchase and consume.
President Obama will would then need to print and sell more freshly printed US Treasury Bonds, and other securities faster and faster to industrious foreigners to get back their US dollars in order to pay for these growing US government expenses that are greatly in excess of our federal tax collections, including any new Pork Barrel project spending to create temporary employment to make President Obama appear to reduce unemployment.
As opposed to sending out unemployment checks you would have something real when you are done, and a new road that cuts commute time is a job that just keeps giving.
Concrete and steel is still manufactured in this country, ( Primary constuction material), I understand that it is common for contracts to require that a certain amount of the material be USA made.
You could also require the engineering to be done in the US. So even if a foriegn constuctor gets the contract he would have to open an engineering office here. But with Bechtel and Flure and others it is most likely that an American company would be the one provideing the engineering.
And of course you cannot export the actual construction.
China may channel reserves to U.S. infrastructure -minister | Reuters
"Dec 2 (Reuters) - China may channel part of its huge pool of foreign exchange reserves into investment in U.S. infrastructure, including rail and transportation networks, Commerce Minister Chen Deming said on Friday.
"China is unwilling to take on too much U.S. government debt. We are willing to turn that money into investment," he told U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke and U.S. businessmen.
Chen did not elaborate on how China might channel some of the country's war chest of $3.2 trillion foreign currency reserves to invest in U.S. infrastructure, such as rail and transportation systems.
"U.S. infrastructure in some areas needs rebuilding, for example its electricity grid, railways and transportation networks," he said.
"This type of investment, even more, can help resolve the unemployment issue in the United States," he added...."
The US government refers to these sales of existing US assets to foreigners to pay for the imported products that the US citizens consume and US federal government activities that are in excess of tax collections as "INVESTING IN AMERICA"
This is "sort-of like" US citizens selling our body parts to keep from working!
The Chinese and/or anyone else will not invest in anything that does not provide a return on their investment, such as roads, eleectrical power grids, bridges, sewers, water supplies, etc., unless they can charge tolls and fees for the use of these infrastructure investments.
Actually it has never been less expensive for the US government to borrow money. The lowest interest rates ever. We HAVE TO rebuild our infrastructure at some point, why not do it when we get finance it at the lowest cost ever, and when millions need the work?