water, water everywhere

- and no money in the budget to fix it.

We moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1991, missing by one year the first of three “100-year” flood events that have hit since 1990.

Like Minneapolis and everywhere else in the country, infrastructure is failing all around us, and no one is willing to pony up the money necessary to bring our roads and bridges up to code. Tax cuts are more important. Foreign wars are more important. And now, bailing out subprime mortgage investments are more important. From today’s Columbian on this latest flood:

Interstate 5, the West Coast freeway linking Portland, Ore., and Seattle, has been submerged in pastoral Lewis County three times in the past 17 years by supposedly 100-year floods.
…
State Transportation Director Paula Hammond said 10,000 trucks and 44,000 passenger vehicles use I-5 through the region every day, and that the state economy loses $4 million each day that vital link is out of commission.

A solution has been debated for years. A vital 5-to-10-mile segment of the freeway at the same spot also was submerged in 1990 and 1996.
…
The [Washington state] Legislature allocated $30 million in 2003 for a plan to build levees along the corridor and expand the Skookumchuck River dam so it could better protect the region. [You can read the Corps of Engineers' 2002 report here.]

But the project stalled when key players, including Lewis County, withdrew support and the cities of Centralia and Chehalis resisted the potential obligation to cover maintenance costs.
…
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, noting the heavy costs of dealing with the Katrina hurricane disaster and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, also saw little way it could help finance the expensive project.
…
The project was on a corps priority list that cleared Congress over a presidential veto, but the $70 million appropriation hasn’t been authorized.

Without infrastructure, this country cannot survive. The lifeblood of the U.S. is linked inextricably to the ease of transportation of both goods and people. For too long, we’ve taken our roads and rails for granted – and failed to upgrade when severe weather events, population, and maximum loads were multiplying.

A gas tax now, when oil is approaching $100/barrel, will not fly. Any use taxes will be treated the same way – as a brake on an already slowing economy that is hemorrhaging jobs.

So it’s time to ask the wealthiest Americans, those who get the greatest benefit from our roads and rails and airports, to give back the tax cuts that have done nothing for the wealth of the country, but have devastated the government’s ability to do it’s job.

Repealing Bush’s taxcuts would put almost $1 trillion (pdf) back into the treasury between now and the current expiration date of those cuts (2010). That’s more than half of the $1.6 trillion the American Society of Civil Engineers says is needed to upgrade all of the U.S. infrastructure to safely accommodate current demands, raised in just the first 3 years of repealing Bush’s odious tax cuts.

For people without enough money to qualify for Bush’s tax cuts, their time is their most valuable asset. And the longer it takes us working stiffs to get to our jobs, to pick up our kids, to run errands on our lunch hours, the more we are giving up to support these tax cuts for the wealthy.

A democracy does not survive by pushing the heaviest burdens down the income gradient; a democracy thrives on progressive taxation and placing the commonwealth, rather than the wealth of individuals, first among its priorities.

When our roads are broken down by tandem Walmart trucks, causing closures and delays, the Walton heirs can take a private jet. The rest of us can’t opt out of the infrastructure – so the wealthy should not be able to opt out of their responsibilities, either.

For me, it’s just another reason to vote for John Edwards in 2008.