Jim Oberstar lost his seat in Congress but not his voice on the sorry state of the nation’s transportation infrastructure. “What are we, a Third World country?” he asked his audience last Friday in a lecture at the University of Minnesota.
The fiery words were little different from those he uttered during his last days as one of Congress’ most influential figures. But now, without the authority of public office behind them, the words seem to drift in the wind.
That’s a shame. Even if you disagree with Oberstar’s priorities it’s hard not to admire his vast storehouse of knowledge about planes, trains, highways, bridges, ships, ports, canals, bicycles and whatever else ties the world together. For 48 years he labored under the Capitol dome, first as a congressional aide, then for 18 terms representing Minnesota’s Eighth District, which includes the Iron Range. Rarely did he stray from his passionate care for the unglamorous thing called infrastructure. It was as if he was born on a pile of ore, then spent his next eight decades figuring out all of its possible benefits.
Government becomes the bad guy
Minnesotans, after seeing close up the consequences of a fallen freeway bridge in 2007, should have a keener appreciation of the infrastructure problem, but perhaps not. As a whole, we are like the rest of the country: paralyzed by the partisan extremes, cowed by a whopping budget deficit and demoralized by an economy that grows only at the top.
Somehow, government emerges as the bad guy in this drama. The stimulus package, for example, was declared a flop even though, as Oberstar recounted last week, it repaired 36,000 lanes of highway, fixed 13,500 bridges, created 1.8 million jobs and generated $2.8 million in payroll.
Unfortunately, Oberstar’s attempt to continue the work with a reauthorized transportation bill got a cold shoulder from the White House in 2009. President Barack Obama, in his campaign, had promised not to raise taxes on the middle class. Oberstar’s bill would have required a hefty rise in the gasoline tax, so the president passed. In any case, he chose health-care reform over infrastructure, and the rest is history. Not only did Oberstar lose his battle with the White House, he lost his seat to Republican newcomer Chip Cravaack, who convinced voters that the 76-year-old incumbent was more focused on the nation than on his district.
Can recovery come without infrastructure investment?
Oberstar took on both issues — infrastructure and national focus — in his lecture last week. I’m sympathetic to Oberstar’s arguments: That it’s hard to imagine deficit reduction without a recovering economy; and it’s hard to imagine a recovering, competitive economy without an upgrade in infrastructure.
“What happened to the idea that America is more important than individual self-interest?” Oberstar asked his audience.
Indeed, it should be sobering news that the World Economics Forum rates the U.S. infrastructure 23rd best — right between Spain and Chile.
“America, despite its wealth and strength, often seems to be falling apart,” observed the Economist in its April 30-May 6 issue. Despite its huge highways, U.S. traffic congestion is far worse than in Europe. One reason is the absence of high-speed rail, the magazine noted. Even in the most advanced corridor — Boston to Washington — trains average only 70 mph, half the average speed of the dash between Paris and Lyon.
Stingy America
Americans seem apathetic despite sagging infrastructure and an expected 40 percent population rise over the next 40 years. “All this is puzzling,” the magazine noted, considering the nation’s history of grand public works. The Erie Canal, the transcontinental railroads and the Interstate highway system were breathtaking feats, but “modern America is stingier,” with spending on transport and water infrastructure falling steadily since the 1960s. The United States invests just 2.4 percent of GDP compared to Europe’s 5 percent and China’s 9 percent.
Moreover, while the U.S. still builds roads with enthusiasm, it fails to maintain them. In 2006 it spent twice per person than Britain on new roads, but 23 percent less on maintenance, according to the Economist’s report.
One of Oberstar’s favorite illustrations is of an Asian shipment arriving at the port of Long Beach. It takes 40 hours to unload and transport 300 containers 2,000 miles from Southern California to Chicago, at a cost of $300 per container, he said. Then, it takes another 40 hours to get the load 20 miles across Chicago — at a cost of $200 per container — before the freight can proceed to East Coast destinations.
“People tried to tell me that Chicago’s choke point is not a national problem,” Oberstar said. “That’s absurd … You order something from Amazon, it doesn’t fall down from the sky! In comes on a train or a truck.”
The end of bipartisan cooperation
The former congressman blames much of the infrastructure slide on partisan politics. Once upon a time, transportation was a bipartisan issue, he said, adding, “I never met a Republican road or a Democratic bridge.” He and his Republican counterpart, Rep. Bud Shuster of Pennsylvania, were “joined at the hip” on transportation issues, Oberstar recalled.
Then came Tom Delay. As House majority whip in 1995, Delay declared that no Republican could vote for any bill that most Democrats supported. He took revenge on any caucus member who crossed him, earning his nickname, “The Hammer.” (Delay was eventually convicted on money laundering and resigned from Congress.)
The result of Delay’s tactic was disastrous for infrastructure, Oberstar said last week, reciting another string of numbers to show the country’s disinvestment.
“We’re going backwards,” he said, shaking his head. “What happened to placing America first?” China, India and Brazil are “investing massively,” he noted, telling of his recent trip to France, where he met with Parliament’s Committee on the Future.
“We have nothing like that in our Congress,” he told them. “We only think about now.”
Great article but there is one problem. Please don’t act like this is all a big mystery. The collapse of America can be pegged to the day Ronald Reagan took office with the declaration that government is the problem not the solution, and Democrats basically decided to agree with him. Twelve years later Clinton and Gore completed Reagan’s program with their “Reinventing Government” program that was the largest privatization of government services in US history.
Meanwhile the average American curled up into a ball of consumer egoism concluding that public policy was obsolete in the face of consumer activism. Neither the Democrats or the Republicans currently offer any kind of national vision beyond “innovation”. Democratic support for national agendas is tepid at best because they’ve largely sided with the wealthy in the ongoing class war. Note the bipartisan support for stadium deals for instance- welfare programs for millionaires.
There’s nothing mysterious about this, it’s history. Everyone’s trying to figure out how to make good public policy without “big governmnet”, everyone accept people like Ziggy Wilf that is. The truth is human beings invented government for a lot of very good reasons, and a big country like the US needs a big government.
I call it: “The Great Stupid”. I’ve written a blog entry about it: http://pudstrand.fatcow.com/blog/?p=57
“Paralyzed by the partisan extremes”!?! Et tu, Steve? Hopping on the false equivalence express? Where’s the second extreme?
Obviously, this issue so critical to the future of our nation is not going to get solved by the Republican’s mantra of “cutting the deficit”. That will colearly only exacerbate the problem, and make a potential solution further off and more expensive in the end.
There is only one possible solution, and that is investment spending — and that can only come from taxes. That is why the battle to make our major corporations (and especially the obscenely rich oil companies whose gas we us on these deteriorating roads) pay their fair share. Additionally, the worst decsion by the Obama administration was giving in on raising the tax rates for the wealthy. Our deteriorating infrastrucure will be a legacy of this decision.
Why not privatize the Afghan war, letting the Koch brothers and the Chamber of Commerce support
the Karzai family, and use that money to build infrastructure and create jobs here in the homeland? Two missions accomplished, right?
I second Paul’s “The Great Stupid,” and go beyond.
The gasoline-powered automobile will be part of our future in the same way that a fine horse-drawn carriage is a part of our present. That is, it will be a much-admired curiosity, but not at all practical for the vast majority of Americans who are not Amish, and whose family traditions do not include mucking out stalls, farriers, and the bewildering array of “tack” for making horses useful working animals rather than expensive decorative accessories for the affluent rural lifestyle.
It’s not hard to visualize what this will do to the dreams of, for example, a new professional football stadium with parking for 25,000 cars and no public transit. The over-the-road trucking industry will become a historical footnote akin to the Pony Express. That shipload of goods from China will take longer to arrive at your doorstep via FedEx or UPS, or whatever replaces them.
If we don’t pay the taxes and make the necessary public investment in infrastructure that is decidedly not auto-dependent, and combine that with public policies that are similarly attuned to alternatives to the automobile, we will soon become a very large third world country.
The countries been through this before. In the middle of the great depression, and after WWII the nation had a huge debt to pay off, and a decade of backlogged public infrastructure projects. The answer? We raised the income tax rate on the wealthiest Americans from 25% to 95%. This paid off the debt, financed massive infrastructure updates, and promoted the deepest and longest economic expansion in US history.
Why is it so hard for center-left types to realize that it’s not the mid 1900s anymore? This article is framed as not only a tribute to Olberstar’s cronyism in public office, but that somehow 2011 is no different than 1960.
After 50 years of the American public being told its their “duty” to pay for their neighbors mortgage, education, transportation, healthcare, electricity, etc. etc. – why is it so difficult that many people now view government as a corrupt entity that’s more interested granting political favors for the few at the expense of the many?
People have told to give, give, give, give, even when it doesnt make any sense! The “balance” that once existed between the “welfare state” and “productive” society has shifted to the point to where people are just outright cynical when it comes to government asking for more money. And how can you blame them? Especially when articles like this are written to frame such deficit driven boondoggles like Light Rail (see my previous paragraph about political favors) as some sort of godsend. Most state-wide polling data shows that people are not supportive of spending more money on Light Rail right now, yet, the government proceeds. And we wonder why people dont trust the government or become leary when they are asked to pay more with such subjectively vague terms like “your fair share”?
So a former politician that resembles a great example of why we need term limits wants to blame partisanship for our crumbling infrastructure? Sure. But you better go take a look in the mirror first because you are more part of the problem than the solution.
I took my son to an engineering college to talk to a civil engineering professor after he had won a science reward. One of the civil engineering problems with our cement infrastructure is that the iron rebar is corroding and accelerating the breakdown of the material. Now they are coating rebar with a non corroding material.
I can’t bite my toungue. Former Congressman Oberstar is someone I volunteered for when I was young. I was as DFL’er. Part of what made him so attractive to me was his un-varnished, and barely concealed hatred and disdain for all republicans, conservatives and the private sector. He was a creature of his circumstances. I will not hold that against him. His constant belief that we were at war with the rich and that politics was a constant state of battle stations-battle stations-battle stations.
So many of us grew past him. 1995 as the beginning of partisanship…. PLEASSSEEEE.
It’s post 1995, but I watched Vice Chair or Chair or Ranking member Oberstar spend 8 solid years publically criticizing Gov Pawlenty and the MN-GOP legislature on regular basis. What he said when the camera’s weren’t present would make a Wellstonian cringe. Those years of bashing a local government was just not what politicians from different spere’s do. It’s impolite. Other DFL’ers of stature don’t do it. Either do MN Repubs. Now that the U has brought him on with my taxpayer dollars, they are on my sh#&T list. My kids are going to be advised not to go to my alma mater. He was a bitter partisan payback politician who flexed enormus clout on behalf of his district and mostly one half of the state. See if you can find one JUST ONE of his former Republican colleagues ( no Minnesotans or Wisconsinites) to say something nice about the former career of the former Chairman.
//People have told to give, give, give, give, even when it doesnt make any sense! The “balance” that once existed between the “welfare state” and “productive” society has shifted to the point to where people are just outright cynical when it comes to government asking for more money. And how can you blame them?
Fantasy narrative. People haven’t been give give giving, they’ve been take take taking. Balance? No, we’re paying the lowest tax rates in 60 years and our wealth disparity is now as great as it was during the Gilded Age and it’s and getting wider every year. It’s stupid to hire a bunch of people who don’t believe in government to run the government and expect the government to run well. People are cynical because because the Republicans have been promoting cynicism as a wedge issue for decades and the Democrats have failed to provide an alternative.
Partisanship or not, I am glad that Steve posted the Economist article from last week’s issue. The statistics in there are downright sobering, especially the comparisons between China, the EU, and the US.
I had more than a few conversations with city engineers while a planning commissioner in Colorado, and their considered view was that actual construction of a new road accounted for only about 40 percent of its eventual cost. Maintenance was the other 60 percent, and eventually, virtually every road – unless we’re going to build them like the Romans did, and then leave them unused for several centuries – will need to be replaced.
As I learned from a Republican mentor decades ago, there ain’t no free lunch, so continual cutting of taxes cannot help but eventually affect the degree to which the roads are usable for their intended purpose.
Paul’s assertions in #10 seem right on target to me. We’re trying to get the roads for free, which isn’t possible, while simultaneously disparaging and starving government, which is the only entity capable of building them on a wide scale for public use. Building new roads makes sense only if there’s money set aside to maintain them. So far – and this doesn’t seem to be limited to Minnesota – very few government entities are being given the financial wherewithal to set money aside for maintenance on anything beyond an inadequate, piecemeal basis.
The City of Minneapolis has about a thousand miles of paved roads, but because of costs, can only rebuild a few miles of what needs to be rebuilt every year. Even a “mill and overlay” of new asphalt is only a temporary, though longer-term, fix for a road that basically needs to be reconstructed.