"If we want people working in America, we got to make sure our highways and roads are modern,…We've got to bring up this transportation system into the 21st century."
For those of you wondering what earthly form the infrastructure build/re-build portion of the Great Stumble Sideways will appear, we’ve got a pretty good idea as the above quote cannot be attributed to the current President but rather his John the Baptist-like predecessor, George W. Bush who was pumping the just-enacted $286.4 billion transportation bill just 3-1/2 years ago at a Caterpillar plant in Illinois.
$286.4 bil for roads, bridges, transportation systems… and bike paths not even 4 years ago. Where does the time… and money go? Wherever both have gone it has apparently gone fast enough that we need another spending program to get our transportation system into the 21st century.
Keith Ashdown, vice president of policy for Taxpayers for Common Sense, called the measure a "bloated, expensive bill" that the president should veto.
It is fitting that Mr. Bush is signing this legislation in Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert's district, Ashdown said, "Because the speaker's district has the third highest amount of highway pork in the nation."
The bill contains more than 6,371 special projects valued at more than $24 billion, or about 9 percent of the bill's total cost, he said. The distribution of the money for these projects "is based far more on political clout than on transportation need," Ashdown said.
The critique above was pulled from an archived CBS News article. We look forward to more straight-shooting and honest assessments of the Great Stumble Sideways by the 4th estate as more and more of its details are revealed.
P.S. We're confident that the Hollywood conventional wisdom of "sequels are never as good as the original" will certainly hold form here... even as its yet to be determined just how bad the original movie was.
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