Putting the Wood To Oberstar
This Opinion Journal article puts the wood to Jim Oberstar’s proposed gas tax increase by pointing out the hypocrisy in his assertion that we’ve underfunded the nation’s transportation system. Here’s the first shot against Rep. Oberstar:
The gas tax pleas are coming from the usual suspects, in both Washington and St. Paul. James Oberstar, the Minnesota Democrat who runs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, recently stood beside the wreckage and recommended an increase in the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax, as a way to prevent future bridge collapses. His wing man, Alaska Republican and former Transportation Chairman Don Young, agrees wholeheartedly.
As it happens, these are the same men who played the lead role in the $286 billion 2005 federal highway bill. That’s the bill that diverted billions of dollars of gas tax money away from urgent road and bridge projects toward Member earmarks for bike paths, nature trails and inefficient urban transit systems.
Over the years, Oberstar has diverted $1.3 billion from the highway trust fund into bike trail projects. That’s before factoring in other earmarks. Young is the man responsible for earmarking $223 million for the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere”. The same year that Young was granted the earmark for the Bridge to Nowhere, he accumulated $941 million in transportation earmarks for his native Alaska.
In other words, Young and Oberstar have diverted well over $2 billion of funding that should’ve been used for projects that would’ve made bridges and roads safer. Instead, they built bike trails and bridges to nowhere.
Here’s the next shot at Minnesota Democrats:
In Minnesota, meanwhile, politicians and editorial writers imply that the bridge collapse is somehow the fault of those like GOP Governor Tim Pawlenty who believe in the “motto” of no new taxes, as a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune put it. Mr. Pawlenty has been skewered for his veto earlier this year of a 7.5-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax increase (from 20 cents a gallon currently). Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, has told her Gopher State constituents that if President Bush weren’t keeping us in Iraq, bridges wouldn’t be falling down.
Mr. Pawlenty has been wavering, first saying after the collapse that he was open to a tax increase but more recently showing more reluctance. Democrats in the Legislature are also demanding a sales tax hike to raise another $1.5 billion. What’s never explained is why the gas-tax revenue they already raise is so poorly spent.
Minnesota’s transportation auditors warned as long ago as 1990 that there was a “backlog of bridges that are classified as having structural deficiencies.” In 1999 engineers declared that cracks found in the bridge that collapsed were “a major concern.” Bike paths were deemed a higher priority by Congress, however, including its powerful Minnesota Representatives.
This tragedy has caused people to look more seriously at the impact earmarks have had on public safety. It’s also forcing people to ask questions like why we’re spending money on LRT, bike trails and the Big Dig boondoggle while ignoring things like bridge and highway maintenance. They didn’t pay attention prior to the I-35W bridge collapse but now they’re focused like a laser on transportation priorities.
While it’s true that Republicans like Don Young play the earmark game, it’s equally true that Democrats have wasted money on bike trails and other things. At this point, though, Democrats have insisted on the continued funding of LRT. At this point, I don’t think that that’s a popular position with the average person. In fact, I’d bet that we’ll see the pendulum swing back towards voters demanding that politicians do a better job of funding the basics first.
Here’s a big shot at the DFL-dominated Minnesota legislature:
Minnesota’s state budget is also hardly short of tax revenue. The state spends $25 billion a year, twice what it did 10 years ago. The Tax Foundation reports that Minnesota has the seventh highest personal income tax rates among all states, the third highest corporate tax rates, and the 10th highest taxes on workers.
The Legislature started the year with a record $2 billion budget surplus, and the economy threw off another $149 million of unexpected revenue. Where did all that money go? Not to roads and bridges. The Taxpayers League of Minnesota says the politicians chose to pour those tax dollars into more spending for health care, art centers, sports stadiums and welfare benefits.
Even transportation dollars aren’t scarce. Minnesota spends $1.6 billion a year on transportation–enough to build a new bridge over the Mississippi River every four months. But nearly $1 billion of that has been diverted from road and bridge repair to the state’s light rail network that has a negligible impact on traffic congestion. Last year part of a sales tax revenue stream that is supposed to be dedicated for road and bridge construction was re-routed to mass transit. The Minnesota Department of Economic Development reports that only 2.8% of the state’s commuters ride buses or rail to get to work, but these projects get up to 25% of the funding.
It’s obvious that Minnesota needs to do a better job prioritizing its transportation spending. It’s obvious that we need to hold taxes down while focusing our spending on public safety. The best way I know how to word this is that LRT is stealing money from important things like bridge safety and alleviating traffic congestion.
Technorati Tags: James Oberstar, Amy Klobuchar, Don Young, Bridge To Nowhere, LRT, Public Safety, Bridges, Tim Pawlenty
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
August 19th, 2007 at 2:36 am
[...] Cross-posted at California Conservative Categories: Liberals, Minnesota Politics, MNGOP, Taxes, Reforms, Special Interests, Election 2008, DFL, Klobuchar, Tim Pawlenty | [...]
August 19th, 2007 at 2:41 am
[...] Original post by Gary Gross and software by Elliott Back [...]
August 19th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Whatever ever happened to truth and integrity. MN seems to lack quite a bit. Of course I have a Congressman here that supports bike trails over road expansion and the like. Soon we will have a bike trail to S.F.!!!! Whoooeeee. Only problem is that I have no desire to visit that ’sick’ city.
August 19th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Yet how gleefully it seems, taxpayers allow themselves to be fleeced.
“Oh yes Senator Foghorn. Please throw more of our money at this problem.!”
How many times in the past 20 or 30 years have the magic words “Highways”, “Pure Water” and “Schools” popped up on state initiatives and ballot issues like perennial weeds. Yet we still drive over rough roads, buy bottled water and send our kids to rat trap schools.
August 19th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
All the whining in the world ain’t gonna change it. Only when there’s a pattern of voting incumbent wuovo’s (worthless users of valuable oxygen) in the primaries will those we elect to represent us MAYBE start to get the message that we, the people, want them to spend our money (yes, it is still OUR money) wisely and in accordance with our wishes.
That doesn’t mean turn off the spigot. It means budgeting in a way that benefits ALL the people instead of bicyclists, hikers and LRT manufacturers and installers.
Also, I’ve never understood farm welfare. Please explain to me how this makes we, the people, better off and allows the small family farms to continue?
August 19th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
August 19, 2007
Op-Ed Contributors
The War as We Saw It
By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY
Baghdad
VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.
A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.
As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.
Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.
However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.
In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a “time-sensitive target acquisition mission” on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.
Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.
Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.
The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.
Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington’s insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.
Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.
At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.
In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.
We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.
Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.
August 19th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Carlos,
Not my intention to whine, but point out how little in control we are, or seem to want to be. We elect these clowns, and trust them to do what they or their party promise, but we cant be there behind them everyday making sure they act prudently and be frugal with our money.
Its only when something like a natural catastrophy or bridge collapse, that shows us how screwed up they have allowed things to become that gets the attention of at least a few of us, while the rest of the country merrily goes their way fat, dumb and happy, saying Thank you sir, may I have another.
As Hamilton said to Jefferson, “Your people, sir, are a great beast.”
August 19th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
Wow, from bike trails in Minnesota to sick San Francisco… just the glorious conservative high-minded debate I expected to see. And I thought someone would point out the folly of a freeway entrance that you can’t enter, or the violence of Critical Mass. Or, at least the conversation would stay on falling bridges and governors not responsible.
But then, along comes Benn, and just tosses that monkey wrench into the room.
August 20th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Yes, Benn stayed very much on topic, didn’t he? If I didn’t know better I’d say he has a reading comprehension or attention deficit problem, but from previous posts it’s more likely just a problem of figuring out there’s more to life than hating GW.
Of course, anytime Rocky can read such drivel he gets overly excited.
And T.A., my comments weren’t directed at you. I’m just real tired of reading about what’s wrong and me, oh my, our “representatives” have been doing this for so long (whatever “this” happens to be at the moment) and me, oh my, whatever can we do to change it since it’s “their” fault?
I want to scream “It’s the elections, Stupid!”, but that doesn’t get anyone anywhere, either. It’s amazing how few people realize the politician’s gonna do what he must to get re-elected. It’s the true representative who’ll do what he says. We have virtually no representatives anymore.
August 20th, 2007 at 9:00 am
I think Benn intended his quite entry for the article below, but missed his target. Thats understandable. In the passion of the moment, we’ve all hit the wrong button a time or two.