More on the Bridge

The predictable cycle of more yammering that government can solve problems like the bridge collapse has started. John Nichols of the Nation (does anyone read that now except for the laughs?) used some colorful language to describe the first money coming from the feds to help with clean-up - the grant " will barely be enough to cover the expense of extracting the bodies of the drowned and dismembered commuters who were hurtled into the river when the interstate highway bridge they were traveling on buckled and then fell into the river. And it will not begin to pay for the rebuilding of a vital transportation link in one of America's most populous cities -- an initiative that will cost in the hundreds of millions. To get the money that is needed to repair the damage, limits on federal aid for infrastructure will have to be lifted."

The Daily Kos described the failure of the bridge in similarly epic terms "A tragedy courtesy of politicians who, in their own ways, follow Grover Norquist's dictum of reducing government until it's small enough to drown in the bathtub. And of passing out massive tax cuts, mostly to people who need them least. It's not just bridges. As the American Society of Civil Engineers Infrastructure Report Card 2005 points out, we're $1.6 trillion behind in infrastructure investment. That, by the way, is the amount of tax cuts Mister Bush tried to get passed in 2001, before he had the Global War on Terrorism™ with which to shape his legacy. Congress "compromised" and gave him only $1.35 trillion, tax cuts that writer Robert Freeman once labeled a "national form of insanity." (Note the ASCE is a "professional" organization dedicated to advancing the professional aspirations of civil engineers.)

Frosh Senator Amy Klobucher had the quote of the week when she said "Bridges in America should not be falling down." (This does not seem to be a technical judgment by the Senator who is a lawyer not an engineer.)

Balance here is important. We need to step back and allow the experts to assess why this bridge failed. From the preliminary reports I have seen there is some speculation that one potential cause could have been the stress the structure experienced from the way the retrofits were done this summer. But let's wait for the experts to study this. The second suggestion is that we should not automatically believe that because one bridge failed that we would be better off by spending a lot more money on "infrastructure" especially if it is done with taxpayer dollars. More money is not necessarily better than money better spent.