What a disaster this thing is, huh? Who would have thunk that a bridge would collapse during rush hour? Worse yet – the startling revelation that most of the bridges in the United States are “structurally deficient” is horrible!
Here is a situation that should have no political strings attached to it (although some lunatics swear that the bridge collapsing is President Bush’s fault). Our Congress needs to act – now – to repair the nation’s bridges and to ensure the safety of our highways.
One of the things that makes me sick about the highway system is that the government will swear up and down that using the highway system is a privilege that we can opt not to use or that can be taken away (ask anyone who has had their license suspended). Well, if this is a privilege, then why are our taxes (which we cannot opt out of) not used to fix the damn things like they’re supposed to? It’s disgusting.
Gas taxes are theoretically mostly allocated to repair roads and bridges. so the the suspension argument is a red herring. The highest tax payers are generally truckers, but they do a disproportionate amount of damage to these areas of infrastructure and should be taxed higher to a rate that is proportionate to the damage they do. This would force some of the freight to rail and make the wear and tear on th infrastructure less severe.
BTW, I am generally a dem so I find it interesting that you say some people (lunatics) are pinning this bridge collapse on Bush. I have not heard this myself. However, Bush is far more inclined to give a tax break than to pass legislation on transportation. It took some arm twisting to get SAFETY-LU passed (only when the price of it was negotiated downward)and it did not go nearly far enough as you so well expalined by the deficiencies in the bridge inventory in the U.S. (stuffed with pork like bridges to nowhere from a republican in Alaska who is under investigation) But now that you say it I am starting to think the lunatics have something there.
A bridge to nowhere hurt our national highway budget just as the disaster that is Big Dig in Boston constantly does.
I don’t agree with the lunatics, though. Bush didn’t knock down the bridge any more than he knocked down the levies in New Orleans. Decades and decades of Congresses who care more about pet projects than the overall good of this country are what destroyed our infrastructure. But, it can be fixed – we just need to stop spending on wasteful programs, stop loading our bills with pork, and it probably wouldn’t hurt if the “Vote Out All Incumbents” mindset that is beginning to brew at the statewide level in New Jersey spread across the nation!
Everyone sucks.