During the Democratic convention President Obama noted that one of the ways that we need to invest in our future – while creating jobs in the process – would be to address our aging infrastructure. I think that he even mentioned bridges which ought to be a big deal for Missourians since we have hundreds of bridges that are disasters waiting to happen.

I invite you to take a look at this interactive map at SaveOurBridges.com. The little tags that spring up when you run the cursor over the map represent bridges that are both “structurally deficient” and “fracture critical.” To give you an idea of what this means, the I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed a few years ago, killing 13 and injuring 145 people, had been determined to be structurally deficient and fracture critical. When you look at the map, you will notice that Missouri is almost obscured by the number of symbols indicating bridges in a similar state. There are so many deficient bridges that you have to keep zooming in closer and closer in order to make out specific problem bridges.  

Most of these decaying bridges carry fewer than 24,000 cars a day, but the traffic on two bridges in the St. Louis area and one in Kansas City average between 25,000 and 75,000 cars daily. I don’t know about you, but this sort of statistic makes me very nervous. According to Forbes

The sad state of America’s bridges is likely to make an already challenging fiscal future still more so.  It will cost an estimated $70.9 billion to address the current backlog of deficient bridges, according to FHWA’s 2009 statistics.  This estimate may prove wildly conservative.

While the size of this investment may seem massive, the political consequences of delay seems likely to be so substantial that one would suspect the Uncle Sam to pony up whatever funds were necessary.  Surprisingly, this does not appear to be happening at anywhere near the scale needed to avoid more catastrophes like the one that took place in Minnesota.

Unlike William Pentland, the Forbes contributor whom I quote above, I am not surprised at all by government inaction. Certainly since the cooperation adverse Tea Party Republicans who elbowed their way into the congress in 2010 have been banging the deficit-über-alles, our-way-or-the-highway drum, it seems as unlikely that we will address our infrastructure problems as it is that we will effectively deal with our employment problems – even though renewing and maintaining our aging bridges would go a long way toward meeting both needs.  

This is not to say that we won’t get some new bridges, although we may have to wait until there are a few more horrendous events like the Minneapolis bridge collapse. However, given the GOP reluctance to commit to using government to build and maintain infrastructure, it may be private investors who take up the slack – which will probably be just fine with the original crony capitalists. Get ready to say hello to toll bridges since politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, seem to lack either the clout or, often, the intestinal fortitude to take on the anti-tax, deficit cutting claque in order do the right thing. So it looks like we will end up paying over and over for the right to get from one place to another. Time Magazine‘s Barbara Kiviat summarizes some of the arguments against turning our national infrastructure over to private interests:

… Tolls often skyrocket under private owners, though with the blessing of elected officials, who avoid the political costs of raising tolls or taxes themselves. That’s how privatized roads deliver double-digit returns for investors and often lead to upgrades like electronic tolling. But there are other devils lurking in the details, like noncompete clauses that may prevent transportation agencies from building new roads, or the inability to use roads for economic development by, say, adding a new exit to attract businesses. Some officials get queasy about locking themselves into long leases; Colorado officials already regret offering a 99-year lease for the Northwest Parkway. …

It is likely that, no matter what, we will see a few more private-public partnerships to build new bridges in the future. We don’t need to totally surrender our national infrastructure to the big-money boys, however; there is another way.  The President’s jobs bill, The American Jobs Act (pdf), allocates $27 billion for transportation infrastructure programs, including bridge and highway repair.

We’d get new jobs and new bridges. What’s not to like? All we’ve got to do is say no to Romney/Ryan and vote the rest of the GOP bums out. And guess what? If we’re finally able to get the level of public infrastructure spending that we need to boost the economy, we’ll speed up the recovery overall, increase tax revenues and we will finally be in a real position to deal with deficit reduction in a sane, reality-cognizant fashion.

From the White House:

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

_________________________________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 20, 2011

Statement from President Obama on the Senate Vote on Teacher and First Responder Jobs

For the second time in two weeks, every single Republican in the United States Senate has chosen to obstruct a bill that would create jobs and get our economy going again.  That’s unacceptable. We must do what’s right for the country and pass the common-sense proposals in the American Jobs Act.  Every Senate Republican voted to block a bill that would help middle class families and keep hundreds of thousands of firefighters on the job, police officers on the streets, and teachers in the classroom when our kids need them most.

Those Americans deserve an explanation as to why they don’t deserve those jobs – and every American deserves an explanation as to why Republicans refuse to step up to the plate and do what’s necessary to create jobs and grow the economy right now.

We must rebuild the economy the American way and restore security for the middle class, based on the values of balance and fairness. Independent economists have said the American Jobs Act could create up to two million jobs next year.  So the choice is clear.  Our fight isn’t over.  We will keep working with Congress to bring up the American Jobs Act piece by piece, and give Republicans another chance to put country before party and help us put the American people back to work.

###

The vote, just to discuss the bill:

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 112th Congress – 1st Session

Vote Summary

Question: On Cloture on the Motion to Proceed (Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to S. 1723 )

Vote Number: 177 Vote Date: October 20, 2011, 09:55 PM

Required For Majority: 3/5 Vote Result: Cloture on the Motion to Proceed Rejected

Measure Number: S. 1723

Measure Title: A bill to provide for teacher and first responder stabilization.

Vote Counts: YEAs 50

NAYs 50

Blunt (R-MO), Nay

McCaskill (D-MO), Yea

[emphasis added]

Is anyone surprised that Roy Blunt (r-lobbyists) turned out to be an obstructionist in the Senate and a protectionist for the privilege of the top one percent? Think about that the next time you’re waiting for police or fire personnel during an emergency.

FiredUp! recently posted a video of Senator Roy Blunt telling us that nothing would probably get done about jobs until after the election. This prediction, thanks to the obstructionism of Senator Blunt and his GOP congressional buddies, who saw fit to hold the line against the President’s jobs bill, is probably all too true.

Of course, freshman Senator Blunt, who may already be going after a GOP leadership position in the Senate, is not just guessing about what we’ll see – at least from the Republicans – in the coming months. Remember the jobs plan he was metaphorically waving around during his senatorial campaign? He claimed, falsely, that it had a hundred pages, but the gist can be summed up in a trio of brief phrases – cut taxes for the wealthy, cut social programs, and gut the regulations that protect the little guy from big business.

Now, back to the present. Yesterday, a few GOP pols, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), gathered together the faithful media to announce the details of the “Jobs Through Growth Act,” a purported GOP jobs plan, an entity which up to now had been conspicuous only by its absence.  

Guess what? The “Jobs Through Growth Act” can also be summed up in a trio of brief phrases: cut taxes for the wealthy, cut social programs, and gut the regulations that protect the little guy from big business. It’s specifics, as reported by Steve Benen, include:

Cut taxes, approve a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution, eliminate the entirety of the Affordable Care Act, eliminate the entirety of Wall Street reform safeguards, blocking EPA enforcement of clean air measures, and a tax repatriation holiday for international corporations.

Isn’t this the same kind of stuff the GOP did during the eight years of the Bush regime? Shouldn’t we be trying to clean up the mess they created then, not adding to it? As Jonathan Chait observes:

There is zero chance that any independent agency or macroeconomic forecaster scores this proposal as either reducing the deficit or increasing employment over the next year. On the deficit, they may propose to cut tax rates, offset by spending cuts or closing tax deductions, but the latter will be totally unspecified. On jobs, the GOP simply will not engage with the premise of the entire macroeconomic forecasting field that the economy is suffering from a lack of demand. The purpose of this bill is to straddle that awkward divide, and provide a sound bite to answer Obama when he says he has a jobs plan.

I guess Blunt really does know what he’s talking about when he says there’ll be nothing done about jobs over the next months; he and his fellow GOPers, along with their corporate generals in the war on the middle class will see to that.

UPDATE:  In the video, Blunt hits the anti-regulation drum yet again, calling them, if I remember correctly, “job-strangling” regulations. CNN offers a few facts he ought to consider:

In the first two quarters of this year, only 2,085 new unemployment claims were attributed to government regulation, while 55,759 were tied to insufficient demand, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data on mass layoffs.

Furthermore, less than 20% of small business owners cite government regulations as their most important problem, according to a survey by the National Federation of Independent Business.

Poor sales, for example, were a much bigger worry.

That was then:

John Adams to Abigail Adams, [post 12 May 1780]

Adams Family Correspondence, 3:342

“I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.”

This is now:

October 12, 2011 03:38 PM

Scapegoating the Liberal Arts

by Daniel Luzer

Too many students are getting useless degrees, complains the governor of Florida, Rick Scott, who argues that what Florida needs is more students with “practical” majors. This advice seems realistic, but it’s actually based on nothing but a myth stemming from some weird assumptions about the evils of the liberal arts….

….This is a very odd way to look at economics. Encouraging people to study science and engineering is commendable, but when you’re talking about this only in terms of helping people get jobs, this is all just ridiculous. People don’t go to college to get jobs; they go to college to get an education. No one has ever demonstrated that students can’t get jobs because they studied the wrong things. That’s because this isn’t true….

….Most employers say they just want applicants who can work hard and think critically. And that’s exactly what the liberal arts help students do very well.

So that their descendants can dwell in corporate cubicles or work for minimum wage with no benefits at an anti-union national chain store.

An article in The Hill today details the subterfuges of the Democratic quislings who seem to want to go bat for the Republican election effort next year by voting “no” on the President’s jobs bill. The list includes most of the usual suspects – with one wonderful exception:

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), another election-year target who has attempted to distance herself from Obama, has spoken favorably of the bill. Her office did not respond to questions on Monday, but on Tuesday said she would vote for it.

Looks like McCaskill’s been paying attention. As Greg Sergent reports, pollster Stanley Greenberg contends that not only is it important, politically speaking, for Democrats to attempt to to draw a distinction between themselves and Republicans with this vote, but that Democrats who shy away from doing the right thing could be undercutting themselves as well as the President:

“They reduce their risks for reelection by showing support for a jobs bill that’s going to be increasingly popular as voters learn more about it,” Greenberg said. “They have to be for something on the economy, and this the kind of proposal they should support. If I were advising them, I’d say you want to be backing a jobs bill with middle class tax cuts paid for by tax hikes on millionaires. Moderate voters in these states very much want to raise taxes on the wealthy to meet our obligations.”

But now is not the time to let up on the pressure on McCasilll. Keep those letters and phone calls coming; let our Democratic Senator know how important we think this jobs plan is and how enthusiastic we will be about those Missouri politicians who support it.

UPDATE:  After last night’s vote, don’t forget to call Senator McCaskill and thank her for standing with the real Democrats yesterday. The President’s bill got a majority even though it couldn’t breach the Republican filibuster, but as Greg Sargent explains, getting a majority was vitallly important.

Governor Jay Nixon (D) issued a press statement about the special session today:

September 28, 2011

Gov. Nixon issues statement on special session status

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Gov. Jay Nixon this afternoon issued the following statement regarding the General Assembly’s special session:

“The General Assembly has been in special session for more than three weeks, at a cost to taxpayers of approximately $170,000.  It’s time for the House and the Senate to resolve their differences and get a fiscally responsible jobs bill on my desk, or to bring this special session to a close.”

Any bets that all the republican members in the General Assembly run for reelection on jobs? Yeah, chutzpah.

Yesterday, via Twitter:

@RepHartzler Rep. Vicky Hartzler

View my weekly newsletter […] 19 hours ago

Okay, we’ll bite:

View From the Capitol – Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler’s Newsletter for the Week of September 5-9, 2011

….There is a jobs proposal that can work and is being advanced by House Republicans. Our pro-jobs plan addresses our economic challenges, encourages investment, and supports job creators without raising taxes on working families and small business owners. Our plan reduces many of the regulatory government burdens on small businesses, simplifies the tax code which has become too complicated and cumbersome, and includes passage of the pending free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea – agreements that will create 250,000 jobs and that are being withheld by the President.

In addition, the House Republican plan empowers families, small businesses and entrepreneurs by maximizing domestic energy production to ensure an energy policy for the 21st century. This includes promotion of lower energy prices through increased domestic production and by encouraging all forms of energy production.

Finally, we are working toward significant spending cuts to pay down America’s unsustainable debt burden and force Washington to start living within its means as American families must do each and every day. Advancing these ideas will create jobs and move us toward a balanced budget. We will continue to promote these proposals in the weeks to come, while looking for areas of agreement with the White House. The American people deserve action – but smart action that will advance the cause of job creation without spending our way further into economic insolvency….

[emphasis added]

Yep, it’s more of the same republican corporatist drivel.

Do you think someone actually asked small businesses anything?:

“Fog Of Uncertainty”: Speaker Boehner Ignores Business Owners’ Actual Concerns

September 02, 2011 11:20 am ET – Matt Finkelstein

….As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, “The main reason U.S. companies are reluctant to step up hiring is scant demand, rather than uncertainty over government policies, according to a majority of economists in a new Wall Street Journal survey….”

Posted on Thursday, September 1, 2011

Regulations, taxes aren’t killing small business, owners say

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON – Politicians and business groups often blame excessive regulation and fear of higher taxes for tepid hiring in the economy. However, little evidence of that emerged when McClatchy canvassed a random sample of small business owners across the nation.

“Government regulations are not ‘choking’ our business, the hospitality business,” Bernard Wolfson, the president of Hospitality Operations in Miami, told The Miami Herald. “In order to do business in today’s environment, government regulations are necessary and we must deal with them. The health and safety of our guests depend on regulations. It is the government regulations that help keep things in order….”

….None of the business owners complained about regulation in their particular industries, and most seemed to welcome it. Some pointed to the lack of regulation in mortgage lending as a principal cause of the financial crisis that brought about the Great Recession of 2007-09 and its grim aftermath…..

Regulation, who needs regulation?:

DECEMBER 24, 2001

ECONOMIC VIEWPOINT

By Robert Kuttner

The Lesson of Enron: Regulation Isn’t a Dirty Word

In the wake of the Enron…collapse, defenders of deregulation are mounting a heroic effort to insist that the debacle was merely a business model gone bad, not an impeachment of freer markets. But the claim won’t wash. In fact, Enron suggests the need for tougher regulation in three distinct areas.

The first is financial standards. Enron could bilk investors because, despite the razzle-dazzle, nobody outside the company could figure out Enron’s game. Demands for greater financial transparency were resisted at every turn. The more we rely on markets to achieve efficiencies, the more we need transparent reporting. Otherwise, a deregulated environment becomes too tempting an arena for scams. Only regulators (and their proxies, such as the Financial Accounting Standards Board) can force corporations to disgorge potentially embarrassing information. They didn’t with Enron. In this respect, the Enron collapse is reminiscent of Long-Term Capital Management: financial geniuses with a formula that couldn’t fail (but did), operating beyond the purview of regulators and taking investors and banks down with them….

And then there’s Wall Street. Anyone into putting the totality of their retirement into Wall Street? Just checking.

And you might ask the tourism industry on the Gulf Coast what they think of environmental regulations.

Let’s see, what do you think the effect of cutting government jobs would be on the unemployment situation? “…Finally, we are working toward significant spending cuts…” Wrong again, Representative Hartzler (r). Let’s take a look at what happened as state and local governments have cut their budgets:

From Media Matters Political Correction.

For those right wingnuts who have a chart reading impairment this shows that private sector employment (blue) has gone up and public sector employment (red) has gone down. Uh, the net effect is static job growth. Now, tell us again who’s been insisting on those budget cuts at the expense of employment?

Shall we look at the impact of President Obama’s jobs plan on Missouri?:

THE AMERICAN JOBS ACT: IMPACT FOR MISSOURI [pdf]

…Of the investments for highway and transit modernization projects, the President’s plan will make immediate investments of at least $716,900,000 in Missouri that could support a minimum of approximately 9,300 local jobs….

…These funds would help states and localities avoid and reverse layoffs now, and will provide $565,200,000 in funds to Missouri to support up to 9,100 educator and first responder jobs…

…investment in school infrastructure that will modernize at least 35,000 public schools – investments that will create jobs, while improving classrooms and upgrading our schools to meet 21st century needs. Missouri will receive $422,200,000 in funding to support as many as 5,500 jobs….

[emphasis added]

It’s the jobs.

I was struck by an article in today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch, describing the imminent closure of a campground for people displaced by the Joplin tornadoes earlier this year. Among the few remaining inhabitants of the camp are some who claim to have come to Joplin in hopes of finding work when the rebuilding starts. That’s what 9%+ national unemployment numbers get you – people so desperate they hope to turn disaster into a job.

Economist Jared Bernstein helps put our current situation into perspective with this chart from the Bureau of Labor Standards, which shows the components that make up the unemployment picture during the period from 2007-2011:

We’re not losing jobs, but we are failing to create new jobs, condemning millions to literally years of unemployment  The truly pathetic aspect of this situation, however, is the performance of the politicians we send to Jefferson City and Washington to watch out for our interests. There are some brave Democrats in Jefferson City, but too many of our state and federal legislators are refusing to deal with our urgent jobs crisis, preferring instead to quibble about spending cuts and to fight over which parts of an already decimated budget carcass they get to pick over.

The GOP response is worse than useless. On one end of the spectrum we have Roy Blunt’s obsequious concern for his corporate benefactors, or “job creators,” to use the GOP designation for the very wealthy, in spite of the absolute failure of these putative job machines to produce more than a minimal up-tick in employment when, as during the Bush years, their needs were tended so assiduously. On the other hand, we have the outright contempt for the unemployed evinced by GOP State Senator Jim Lembke who filibustered to prevent the use of federal funds to extend unemployment benefits, asserting that beneficiaries of the benefits were “stealing from their neighbors.”

But the totally unsurprising GOP fecklessness doesn’t mean that our Missouri Democrats are doing much better. Whether it’s Senator McCaskill dithering about what she really meant when she was talking about not extending unemployment benefits, or Governor Nixon, who, in the words of a Post-Dispatch editorial last May, was “too worried about making a campaign misstep or flying around the state announcing government handouts with dubious job-creation ability to provide the leadership that was needed,” the impression they create is one of timidity and weakness.

It isn’t as if there aren’t Democrats who know just what to do. Take, for instance, Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky, whose “Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act,” would put more than 2 million people to work, with particular emphasis on the long-term unemployed, the 99ers, whose joblessness has exceeded the 99 weeks of unemployment insurance our mostly millionaire congress-people are willing to grant them. But that’s not all – remember we also need to address revenue and debt issues – the act would be:

… financed by separate legislation introduced by Schakowsky called the “Fairness in Taxation Act,” which would raise taxes for Americans who earn more than $1 million and $1 billion. It would also eliminate subsidies for big oil companies while closing loopholes for corporations that send American jobs overseas.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we’ve got Roy Blunt responding to a negative jobs report that reflected mostly federal jobs lost due to GOP inflicted spending cuts with the following bit of predigested GOP pablum:

Missourians are looking for jobs, but today’s latest unemployment report indicates yet again that there just aren’t enough jobs out there for people who are looking to get back to work. Washington Democrats are ignoring their pleas to cut taxes, quit spending so much, and help the private sector create real, permanent jobs.

Or there’s McCaskill, claiming that we can’t do much to create jobs, but maybe, just maybe we can fiddle around a little and:

… look at patent reform, we can look at trade agreements as long as they’re fair and don’t hurt American middle-class workers even more than they’ve already been hurt. We can look at regulations — what regulations are absolutely necessary and what regulations are getting in the way of businesses.

And while our Missourians are busy percolating this type of hot air, everybody agrees that the excellent, commonsense proposals put forward by Representative Schakowsky, proposals that would actually address our endemic joblessness, are DOA, victim to ideological warfare, greed, and cowardice.

Think Progress‘ The Wonk Room spotlights more jackassery on the part of State Senator Jim Lembke (R-1) and a few of the impressionable, tea party cub scouts (Sen. Rob Schaaf (R-28), and Sen. Brian Nieves (R-98) have been mentioned) who made it into the legislature while the state’s adults weren’t paying attention:

In Missouri – where the unemployment rate is currently 9.5 percent – Republican state senators are filibustering legislation that needs to pass today in order to prevent unemployed workers from losing their benefits

With the aid of several conservative freshman senators, [Senator Jim] Lembke (R) managed to successfully hold up the debate on the bill, which funds unemployment benefits for those Missourian unemployed for between 79 and 99 weeks. The extension bill has already passed through the House and is expected to easily pass the Senate when it is called up for a vote.

“Ninety-nine weeks is too much,” Lembke said. “It’s too long. Enough is enough.”

The extended support actually affects folks who have been out of work for 79 weeks, but who’s counting, right? I hope a few of the more rational and informed types representing the unfortunate citizens of Missouri can manage to explain to Lembke that 79 weeks, 99 weeks, or 109 weeks would only be too much if he and his cohorts had done anything to address the lack of jobs that makes the unemployment compensation so crucial. It’s hard for Lembke to understand, perhaps, but non-existent jobs don’t provide paychecks for anyone. Maybe if he could get over his red light camera spleen fit (and, incidentally, face up to the fact that 70% of Missourians think they’re a great idea), he’d have a little more time to spare for crucial economic issues that face the state.

On second thought, I forgot – he has so much time for tantrums because the GOP in Missouri doesn’t have to do much about economic issues – all they need to do is put their brains on cruise control and follow instructions from the Missouri Chamber of Commerce. Not that that particular anti-worker agenda is going to do much for those unemployed citizens Lembke believes have no need to eat or pay rent after ninety-nine weeks of fruitless job hunting have passed.

But it’s worth it, isn’t it, to let Jimmy Lembke and his playmates hold their breath, stamp their feet and send a message to mean old daddy …. I mean the federal government. Who wants to act like a grownup. Let them send all that taxpayer money to California instead of Missouri; just wait and see if Jimmy cares.