There is no question that at one time America was an exceptional nation,
but those days of a burgeoning middle class, an infrastructure the
entire world envied, and manufacturing jobs funding an economic boom are
just a memory. On Friday last, President Obama rightly touted the
nation’s economic resurgence since he inherited a devastated economy,
and he said that the country has, at long last, a chance to “reverse the
decades-long erosion of middle-class jobs and incomes;” a repugican
decades-long goal.
Sadly, although the President also said he wanted to
work with members of Congress to build on the nation’s economic
progress, it is likely he will be on his own. The President said, “We
just have to invest in the things that we know will secure even faster
growth in higher-paying jobs for more Americans. We have to make sure
our economy and government work not only for a few, but for all of us.
The six years since the financial crisis have demanded hard work and
sacrifice on everyone’s part. But as a country, we have every right to
be proud of what we’ve got to show for it. More jobs. More insured. A
growing economy. Shrinking deficits. Bustling industry. Booming
energy.” The President surely understands that repugicans will not
invest in anything, much less to make the economy and government work
for everyone; it is not in the Koch brother’s vision for America where
economic news is only good when the rich prosper.
However, with all the good economic news, repugicans in Congress have rejected any and every attempt to rebuild the nation’s
crumbling and decrepit infrastructure.
The sad fact is, that if this country does not change its focus on
opposing rebuilding America, it will never catch up to the rest of the
world and that is the goal of repugicans serving the
interests of the Koch brothers and Wall Street.
It is pathetic that as the American economy is
outperforming every other nation on Earth, the nation is falling behind
the rest of the world that is actively building for the future while repugicans debate and promote policies on how best to fall farther
behind and become the third world country they apparently lust after.
All the while, repugicans plan new and better ways to transfer more of
the nation’s wealth to the richest one-percent, decimate what is left of
the once-storied great middle class, and send more Americans into the
ranks of the poverty-stricken. It is not that America is lacking in
resources to rebuild and prosper, it is just that repugicans cannot
bear to see one penny of resources or wealth going to anything, or
anyone, other than corporations, Wall Street, and the Koch brothers.
President Obama has called on Congress to
appropriate funding to rebuild and repair the country’s third rate
(ranked 26th) infrastructure since 2009. When the President said “We
just have to invest in the things that we know will secure even faster
growth in higher-paying jobs for more Americans,” and “make sure our
economy, and our government work not only for a few, but for all of us,”
he was surely alluding to spending on infrastructure improvements only
the government is capable of. Let’s face it, the uber-wealthy, Wall
Street, and the Koch brothers will, and have, never put up one red cent
toward rebuilding the infrastructure that they profit from, so it is
left to the government to make the investment. Other nations with
struggling economies are certainly investing in the future, and it is
why a country like China will be the world’s economic leader unless
America acts; and soon.
America’s roads and bridges are crumbling, airports
are out of date, and most of the country’s seaports are becoming
obsolete as a direct result of decades of neglect. Indeed, business
leaders, labor unions, Democratic governors, mayors, Democrats in
Congress, and the President have complained about a lack of funding for
years, and called for more. But except for the President’s woefully
inadequate one-time cash infusion from the stimulus program, little has
changed. Earlier in the year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid noted
that there are over 70,000 bridges in America engineers consider
structurally deficient, but instead of acting to correct the problem, repugicans proposed hundreds-of-billions in tax cuts for the rich and
corporations.
What is stunning, is that in the recently passed
CRomnibus, over half of the nation’s spending was allocated for making
war, not making America’s infrastructure, economy, and middle class
stronger. A robust infrastructure rebuilding plan would create millions
of living-wage jobs, benefit the business sector, lift millions of
Americans out of poverty, and create tax revenue to wipe out the
nation’s debt and deficit.
With all the wealth this country has, it is pathetic
that the tunnel system between New York City and New Jersey dating from
1910 and about 4,400 meters long is so ancient and devastated from
recent hurricanes that they are on the verge of being closed at any time
creating “an economic catastrophe for America’s largest city.”
Meanwhile, in Switzerland the world’s
longest rail tunnel through the Alps is set to open and give European manufacturing a giant transportation advantage over America.
Another travesty is that repugicans have actively
blocked every attempt to bring high-speed rail to several areas of the
country including California, New York, and Washington. Contrast that
with a country like Italy that now has Europe’s
fastest
high-speed rail line that, like California’s proposed high-speed rail
project, extended and enhanced rail transportation to benefit the
manufacturing, shipping, and transportation sector while reducing the
dependency on fossil fuels and the effects of climate change. The repugicans in Congress, particularly those representing California have
pledged
to stop the high-speed rail project regardless it is the largest
Earth-moving project in state history and will create about a million
jobs for years that includes hundreds-of-thousands of permanent
well-paying jobs.
America leads the rest of the world in many areas,
but extremely high child poverty rates, most guns and gun-related
deaths, most prison inmates, human rights abuses, poorest middle class,
and crumbling infrastructure are nothing to brag about. President Obama
has, throughout his tenure in office, attempted to remedy many of those
world-leading statistics only to face abject opposition from repugicans. With the amount of wealth this country generates for the
rich and corporations, there is no reason America should be falling
behind the rest of the world, or its once cherished middle class should
be vanishing, but that is precisely what repugicans are crusading to
see to fruition.
A recent editorial in an extremely wingnut, and
large Central California, newspaper touted the President’s achievements
over the past few months and years, and then called on him to take the
next step and finally address, unilaterally, “rebuilding the middle
class and wipe out the income gap between the masses and the wealthiest
one percent by restricting their control of the economy they warp for
their own benefit to the exclusion of all others.” They did not,
however, call on repugicans to work with the President because they
know full well their plea would go unheeded and likely lose them
significant advertising revenue.
Obviously, the President has preached at, begged,
and cajoled repugicans to pass legislation addressing the income gap
and there is no better way to start than allocating major funding to
rebuild the country’s infrastructure. Early in 2014, a wingnut 'economist' called on the President to propose, and pressure
Congress to pass, at least $1.7 trillion to “start” rebuilding the
infrastructure he readily admitted would create millions of living wage
jobs, grow the nation’s economy, and recreate the middle class that was
once the envy of the world. However, with a repugican Congress poised
to hand the totality of the nation’s wealth to the rich instead of
preparing America for the future, there is little the President can do
on his own.
Elections have consequences, and the consequence of a repugican Congress is that regardless the damage to this country’s
economic future, America will continue falling farther behind the rest
of the world and keep declining. While the rest of the world progresses
and builds future economic dominance, in America the rich get richer and repugicans will finally achieve their thirty year goal of transforming
America into a third world nation.
