July 4, 2014 Building and maintaining good roads never used to be in the least bit controversial. This is America, after all. Car culture rules! But as Paul Krugman points out in his column Friday, even the simplest, no-brainer decision that everyone knows would help this country on its pot-holed road to recovery cant get made in a do-nothing Congress committed to failed austerity economics and thwarting economic recovery under their sworn enemy Obama. The big topic is how an unprecedented plunge in infrastructure spending worsened and deepened the economic crash of 2008, which further weakened the economy in both the short and long term (Well played, Krugman writes, ruefully.) The specific topic is a seemingly uncontroversial one: The federal highway trust fund, which pays for a large part of American road construction and maintenance, is almost exhausted. Unless Congress agrees to top up the fund somehow, road work all across the country will have to be scaled back just a few weeks from now. If this were to happen, it would quickly cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs, which might derail the employment recovery that finally seems to be gaining steam. And it would also reduce long-run economic potential.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 23:12:52 +0000
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