Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood appeared on Tuesday's edition of Hardball to urge Congress to invest in repairing America's crumbling infrastructure.
"Everybody has a bridge in their district that's not safe," he told Hardball host Chris Matthews.
A 2009 report by the Associated Press said that more than 150,000 bridges nationwide had been labelled "deficient or obsolete." Of those, only 1,286 had been marked to receive stimulus money for repairs. According to the group Transportation for America, there are now nearly 600,000 structurally deficient bridges in the United States, or one out of every nine bridges in the entire country.
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who also appeared on the show, co-sponsored a bill in the Senate that would invest more money in transportation infrastructure. Currently, a conference committee is trying to reconcile it with a similar bill passed through the House. According to another Transportation for America report, cited by Chris Matthews on the show, Boxer's bill would create three million jobs, while the House bill would cut 500,000.
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If there is any portion of Washington DC that needs, as they say, "torn down and made into a parking lot", it is the, current, US House of Representatives. Just saying.................
Infrastructure is a word the GOPers use only to refer to their in house and private deals. To the Dems with a historical fondness for the base elements of the New Deal - a moder marvel of innovation -will introduce a job creation package, funded by taxpayer money (well spent if utilized), and work on our quickly deteriorating freeway and road system, our rail lines and our bridges and waterways. Not spending money here, leaving it to private enterprise vis a vis GOP techniques means only preferred contractors receive contracts. Let the States and municipalities administer the funds, hire only locally and watch the increase in productivity, the correcting of transportation potholes and put people to work at the local level. It worked with the New Deal and it will work now.
Unfortunately, the GOpers cannot stomach the term New deal. Their one dimensional ideology prohiibits any new or innovative ideas.
Obama/Biden 2012