Saturday, July 30, 2011

The GOP Has Threatened Our Infrastructure Funds, So Get Ready to Crumble

The awesome Melissa Harris-Perry, who's filling in for Rachel Maddow on MSNBC this week, took a look last night at the state of our nation's infrastructure -- and the money it takes to keep that infrastructure functioning.

"It costs money to build the stuff we use every day: the water mains and highways, the electric grids, the sidewalks, the giant hydroelectric dams. And it also costs money when you don't keep the stuff you've got in good repair," she said. "The talk in Washington these days is all about spending cuts -- how we're all got to sacrifice, or we will never survive. But there's also this danger of [being] 'penny wise and pound foolish.' You think you're saving money by cutting a corner, but you're actually creating a bigger problem in the long run." And indeed, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, if we ignore our crumbling infrastructure, we will cost the U.S. economy some 877,000 jobs and suppress $3.1 trillion in GDP growth. Yikes. Read more

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