Do the math…please
Despite the obvious fact that there is absolutely no connection between one and the other, Senator Amy Klobuchar can’t seem to resist injecting Iraq into the collapse of the I-35W bridge:
U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, suggested Bush administration spending on the Iraq war may have crimped funding for domestic projects such as road and bridge construction, and for such infrastructure projects as new levees for New Orleans.
“We’ve spent $500 billion (250 billion pounds) in Iraq and we have bridges falling down in this country,” Klobuchar told MSNBC. “I see a connection between messed-up priorities.”
But, as Power Line notes, states received a 46 percent increase in federal funding in 2005:
U.S. President George Bush signed a $286.4 billion six-year transportation reauthorization bill Aug. 10, 2005 that covers federal fiscal years 2004-09.
Although the details of the reauthorization package are still being reviewed, Minnesota state and local governments can expect to receive about $3.5 billion in federal transportation funding through 2009, an increase of about 46 percent (or about $1.1 billion) over the previous six-year bill.
Since when is a 46 percent increase considered “crimping?”
Read further into the MNDot press release and you will find that a full 18.5 percent of the increase was earmarked for transit. As noted below, 40 percent of the state’s transportation bill is also dedicated to transit. I submit again that, if there is a problem with road and bridge funding, it is not a matter of too little taxation, but more a matter of priorities.
If we are going to talk about increasing taxes to fix roads, that’s a legitimate issue. But we shouldn’t pretend we haven’t been spending much needed road funds to build the Met Council’s legacy trains, a veritable money pit of both state and federal funds, for the last several years.