Structurally Deficient

That’s what the I-35W Bridge over the Mississippi River was called just last year. It needed to be replaced. But it wasn’t. Because that would have required- gasp- a tax increase. Which wasn’t going to get past Republican governor Tim Pawlenty:

But it was all a moot exercise anyway. Literally wielding a big red VETO stamp to appease the no-tax crowd that remains hell-bent on a something-for-nothing relationship with government, Gov. Tim Pawlenty deep-sixed the bipartisan transportation bill. “How dumb can they be?” he sneered of the lawmakers who dared approve a tax hike to fix the state’s roads. (Ironically, it was less than 24 hours later that Pawlenty came back with a proposal to raise the price of cigarettes 75 cents, claiming with a straight face that it wasn’t a tax but a “health impact fee.” The courts have subsequently ruled that, due to the state’s settlement with the tobacco companies, such a “fee” can’t be levied. Because Pawlenty refuses to call it a tax, the state is spending time and money to appeal the ruling.)

It’s not that the Republicans are against spending money- in addition to the Cigarette tax mentioned above, Minnesota is also shelling out for a new Twins Stadium. It’s just that they’re not willing to spend money on frivolous things, like education, or bridge repair.

And it’s not just Minnesota that has a problem with aging, unmaintained, infrastructure. Maybe you heard about the steam pipe burst here in New York a little bit ago? That pipe was over 80 years old. Here’s the kicker- it’s one of the younger steam pipes hiding underneath New York’s streets. And our subways are also over 100 years old, and also show signs of neglect and decay- peeling paint, crumbling platforms, staglitites and stalagmites forming due to water leaks old enough to vote- all of these I see daily.

And the biggest diaster of them all: New Orleans. The Federal Goverment saves literally hundreds of millions of dollars pre-2005 cutting spending on flood control and levee maintainance. The cost, of course, was a city destroyed (and not yet rebuilt).

And what’s worse: we’re spending $30 billion to ship arms to Saudi Arabia, $30 billion to build a wall to keep the Mexicans out, but only $6.4 billion to help New Orleans rebuild.

The common thread of all of these stories is a mismanaged government that ends up paying for the pound cure in an attempt to avoid paying for the ounce of prevention. Infrastructure maintainance delayed quickly leads to infrastructure needing to be replaced, at much greater cost, or infrastructure failing catastrophically, at giagantic cost. This is also the case with our health care system- those 45 million people with health insurance do get free, government funded, health care- they call it the “emergency room”. There is a value, when you get wheeled into an emergency room, to having the doctors and the nurses not worrying about wether you can pay or not, but instead worrying exclusively about how to treat you. Even if you can pay. So, in order to keep that value, we end up paying for the pound of cure.

In what possible way is this fiscally responsible?

In the meanest way possible- the goal here is to not pay for either. To pay for neither the ounce of prevention nor the pound of cure.

I return to the City Pages article quoted earlier:

This scenario plays perfectly into the hands of Tim Pawlenty and those Taxpayers League types who subscribe to a “starve the beast” theory of reducing the size of government. No one should be surprised that Pawlenty is suddenly cheerleading for a measure that survived his veto; it is a chance to bang the drum for $300 million per year in “additional” transportation monies without raising anybody’s taxes. The political calculus is simple enough: Let it fall to the Democrats to point out that those revenues will necessarily be taken from schools (K-12 and higher education make up 50 percent of the general fund) or health care (20 percent). And when they do, claim that the “hole” will be filled by a growing economy freed from the yoke of tax increases.

That is the false choice presented- which would you rather have, decent schools to teach the children, or bridges safe enough to drive over? There is only enough money (after the non-negotiable ball parks and tax cuts) for one. And soon, there won’t be enough for either.

Of the $80-100 billion New York needed to recover after 9-11, Bush ponied up only $20 billion, and a quarter of that was in tax cuts. The Katrina aftermath set new lows for Government incompetence and corruption. And go see “Sicko” for what’s going on with health care. Bush promises to help Minnesota rebuild- my advice, don’t trust those promises until you see the money. And don’t expect to see the money.

We can no longer afford Republican-run government. We can no longer afford tax cuts and fiscal mismanagement. The bill is comming due- not just in terms of money, but also in terms of lives. And the big will be huge. We’ve got tons of cure we need to spring for, in addition to the pounds of prevention, in order to make up for lost time. The money “saved” by the Republicans must now be made good for. In a time of crushing debt and economic imbalance- coincidentally making it harder to provide either the ounce of prevention or the pound of cure.

The real structural deficiency is not in our bridges, it’s in our politics- that it is an acceptable, even laudable, political position to make the goverment “small enough to be drowned in the bathtub”, as Grover Norquist does. Until this structural deficiency is remedied, I’d be carefull crossing bridges.