Public Infrastructure: What Kentucky Needs ket.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ket.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
33
An automobile travels in a carpool lane along the highway system into Los Angeles. (REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo)
A group of bipartisan Senate negotiators reached a deal on an infrastructure bill that would cost billions without raising taxes, but it faces a tough road to gain the Biden Administration and other lawmakers’ approval.
Both sides of the political spectrum have made their demands on the bill. Conservatives are opposing $300 billion in new spending. At the same time, Democrats are demanding more than double the amount for traditional infrastructure as well as climate-related investments.
The group, which is made up of five senators each from both sides, has yet to release the details of its infrastructure package but believe the package can be fully paid for without a tax increase.
May 14, 2021 By John Shoulberg
The American Society of Civil Engineers released its Infrastructure Report Card, giving America’s infrastructure a dismal grade of C-, on March 3. The report helped to galvanize interest in the Biden administration’s proposed infrastructure bill, which is being debated in Congress right now, with a recently concluded meeting in the Oval Office between President Biden and congressional leaders.
As we and others have noted, one of the sticking points is what counts as “infrastructure.” The Biden administration is trying to use broad public and bipartisan support for infrastructure to include items like health care that are not traditionally thought of as infrastructure. Republicans also refuse to raise taxes substantially to pay for the Biden proposals.
Apr 23, 2021
President Joe Biden’s administration has its Infrastructure Report Card as part of its push to persuade lawmakers to approve trillions upon trillions of dollars to be spent on an infrastructure package that includes plenty of spending that has nothing to do with what most Americans think of as infrastructure.
Biden introduced the plan March 31, calling for some $2.7 trillion in new federal spending over the next eight years. Called the American Jobs Plan, it would be funded by increasing business taxes, hiking the corporate tax rate to 28 percent and establishing a minimum tax on corporate income.
There is no doubt an infrastructure bill is needed. The report card gives infrastructure in Ohio a grade of C-minus, saying, “In Ohio there are 1,377 bridges and over 4,925 miles of highway in poor condition.”
Since at least 1988, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has maintained what they call an Infrastructure Report Card that highlights critical shortcomings in the nation’s public built environment. The reasons for this are pretty obvious: civil engineers and the construction industry in general live on the development and maintenance of infrastructure, and because so much of it is paid for by government funding, which in a democracy is supposedly under the control of the people, you should let the people know what they ought to be spending money on, infrastructure-wise.
The ASCE report-card list found itself blinking in the spotlight of publicity last week when the Biden administration lifted it bodily and made it part of their promotional efforts to pass a multi-trillion-dollar spending package that is focused nominally on infrastructure. The ASCE’s definition of infrastructure and the Biden administration’s definition are two different things. To the best