No state is needier than West Virginia when it comes to fixing crumbling highways, airports and water works, with annual repair needs of $1,035 per resident that’s three times the national average.
Yet even with borrowing costs hovering close to four-decade lows, lawmakers rejected a January proposal to sell $1 billion of bonds to repair roads that run through the Appalachian Mountains. Budget cuts were a more immediate concern, they said.
Across the U.S., localities are refraining from raising new funds in the $3.7 trillion municipal-bond market after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression left them with unprecedented deficits. Rather than take advantage of Federal Reserve (FDTR) policy that’s held benchmark interest rates at historic lows since December 2008, they’re repaying obligations by the most on record.
At a time when spending is needed the most and rates are at the lowest levels in 50 years, Republicans (and more than a few red state Democrats) are saying we need more cuts in bridges and highways.
State and local spending on roads, railways and other infrastructure crested as a share of the economy during the post-war population boom. In the first quarter, the expenditures accounted for 1.4 percent of the economy, less than a third of the 1967 level, according to data compiled by Moody’s Analytics.
America’s governments would need to spend about $3.6 trillion through 2020 to put everything from roads and water to sewers and electricity networks into adequate shape, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, based in Reston, Virginia. That’s about $1.6 trillion more than governments are expected to dispense.
“We are not investing adequately in maintaining our infrastructure,” said Joshua Schank, president of the Eno Center for Transportation in Washington. “We are missing an opportunity to borrow at lower rates in order to do it.”
But we can't. Spending on roads and bridges is now "wasteful extravagance" while traffic jams and delays cost American companies billions in lost productivity every year. States won't spend the money, the federal government is blocked from spending the money, so who exactly is going to fix our highways?
Why, you are.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich has signed legislation to allow tolls on a new bridge over the Ohio River into Kentucky that will replace an overpass deemed "functionally obsolete."
Kasich signed the bill Wednesday at Cincinnati's Paul Brown Stadium. That's adjacent to the 51-year-old Brent Spence Bridge, which spans the river to northern Kentucky.
The bridge carries about 172,000 vehicles a day. The reconstructed bridge would more than double its capacity and address safety and traffic concerns that have caused the National Bridge Inventory to label the Brent Spence as "functionally obsolete."
The new bridge isn't yet built, and despite Kasich's approval, tolling is still far down the road. Kentucky also would have to approve legislation for tolling, and lawmakers in the commonwealth are vehemently opposed.
It would be Kentucky voters who would be paying the bulk of the tolls on this bridge, and that will cost people like Rep. Tom Massie their jobs. Of course, a private toll collecting company would be contracted for the deal. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Republicans want to "maintain roads and bridges".
Keep that in mind.
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