Last night, the United States Senate voted to reject President Obama's $447 billion jobs plan. Recall that the bill, filed by the President on September 12 and styled the "American Jobs Act of 2011", includes a mix of tax cuts, extensions of expiring jobless benefits, and new spending on infrastructure – including roads, railways and schools. The bill also includes an expansion of the discretionary TIGER grant programs, and the increasingly popular TIFIA loan program. Big picture, it was designed by the White House as its plan to keep the country out of a recession in the coming year.
Last week, the President stated that:
While the President's plan seems to be failing in the Congress, at least there is the beginning of a conversation about our infrastructure needs, and some signals that it may be reconsidered in piecemeal fashion. In late September, Chief Executive Officers from some of America's largest corporations, including Doug Oberhelman of Caterpillar, Matthew Rose of BNSF Railway and Scott Davis of UPS, called for a renewed commitment toward infrastructure investment, writing:
Attention to the issue is past due. As just one reason why, last month the Texas Transportation Institute released a report in which it estimated that urban road congestion made U.S. drivers buy 1.9 billion gallons of extra fuel in 2010 and caused them to pay an extra $101 billion in total costs.
While the conversation is overdue, it may also be familiar to long-time observers. In 1982, when America was also in a recession, Ronald Reagan found a way to support an increase in the Federal gas tax from 4 cents per gallon to 9 cents per gallon (now at 18.4 cents) – noting in his address to the nation on November 27, 1982 that it wasn't really a tax but a fee that would cost the average user about $30 per year, that "America cannot afford throwaway roads or disposable transit systems", and that "we simply cannot allow this magnificent system to deteriorate beyond repair."
Proving, once again, that the issues don't go away if we fail to pay attention to them.
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