America's Failing Infrastructure

Under the Obama Administration our nation's infrastructure is steadily crumbling.  While the President has remained passive on many of our nation's most pressing issues, focusing only on his one major achievement while in office (ruining our nation's health care system), our nation is in need of structural support.   Obama focuses on fundraising instead of solving America's problems. He chooses to blame Republicans for everything and takes pleasure in dividing Americans among cultural and economic lines - but he can't ignore one pressing issue that is out of his control... our transportation system which is crumbling before his eyes.  Our own 10-year incumbent, Dan Lipinski (D-IL Dist.3), is the ranking Senior member on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Failing infrastructure has even 'hit-home' in cities such as the Village of La Grange (located within the 3rd Congressional District). As reported by the Chicago Tribune (July 15, 2014) "The Village spent $5.8 million since 2009, for a Maple Avenue Sewer Relief project. Some residents even question the good it has done.  Village staff have estimated that expanding the capacity in three main parts of the Village's system, including the Maple Avenue area, would cost about $40 million. The Maple Avenue project is slated to cost $11.2 million total."

Nationally, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), America's infrastructure is given a grade of "D+."  They estimate that by 2020, the USA will need $3.6-Trillion to fix all kinds of various infrastructure concerns (buildings, roads, rails, canals, ports, airports and tunnels).

ASCE states (July 11, 2014) that "Congress returned to Washington this week with the Highway Trust Fund on the agenda.  The Senate Finance Committee offers a bipartisan proposal by [Republican] Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon.  The House Ways and Means Committee marked up a bill Thursday morning, which is expected to be voted on by the full chamber next week [Week of July 14th-18th].  However, either bill would take some reconciliation to pass through the other chamber. More critically, neither bill provides a long-term, sustainable funding solution."

Washington Times Reports (July 15, 2014) that "As the president spoke [this week in Delaware], the federal Highway Trust Fund continued on its road to insolvency.  The fund, which gets money from taxes on gasoline and diesel, disperses dollars to states to fund infrastructure work. It’s projected to run dry as soon as next month."

"The [Obama] Administration has proposed a massive FOUR-YEAR, $302-Billion plan — paid for partly through TAX HIKES, leaders in both the GOP-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate have instead embraced short-term [initiatives] (Washington Times)."

The "Global Research Company" estimates that freight bottlenecks and congestion cost about $200-Billion of 1.6% of U.S. GDP in losses each year. It states that "Chicago is the nation's largest railroad center.  Due to congestion, it currently takes a freight train longer to travel through Chicago's city limits than it takes for a train to travel from Chicago to L.A."  They continue to state that "210 million daily trips are taken across deficient bridges in our 102 largest cities. 1/4th of U.S. bridges are functionally obsolete, or structurally deficient, including 77% of Washington DC's bridges."

"Maybe instead of additional billions in transportation taxes on the American people in 2014-2015... we could assist funding by taking the $1.5-Billion from the 2013 and the $1.5-Billion from the 2014 "ObamaCare HHS Slush Fund" (and the $2-Billion that is set for 2015), that Dan Lipinski approved (H.R.1217), and transfer that money into the Highway Trust Fund to help re-build American transportation systems.  It'll certainly be a start in the right direction and save the American people from even higher levels of taxation than what is currently being proposed.  In April of 2014, Crain's Chicago Business News reported on Lipinski's support for raising taxes for transportation funding, citing Illinois' eventual run-out of transportation funds. Guy Tridgell, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Transportation, said "that’s not true, at least not yet." Even if the federal tap was shut off July 30th, Tridgell continued, "we believe we have enough balance to carry us through for three or four months."

We need to take another look at how our federal government spends our tax dollars. So many federal tax dollars are wasted every year on pork projects and over-spending.  As I've said before - at a time in our nation where taxes raised and revenues received, by the federal government, is at an historic all-time high, Dan Lipinski wants more taxes to be levied! Funding for transportation and infrastructure are important, necessary and sorely needed, however, additional taxes to fund these measures is NOT acceptable, nor fiscally responsible.  Illinois is Top-10 in the nation for highest gasoline taxes - haven't you paid enough at the pump already?" -- Sharon Brannigan, Candidate for U.S. Congress, District 3.