http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/15/1383149/-Why-do-Republicans-really-oppose-infrastructure-spending?detail=email
As the Amtrak derailment showed (again), the refusal to spend on infrastructure literally kills. Also, infrastructure spending: (i) is necessary and unavoidable (failure to timely spend on infrastructure increases the deficit in real terms), (ii) improves the gross domestic product and competitiveness, and (iii) is an obvious source for increased employment, particularly in currently hard hit segments. Moreover, infrastructure spending remains unambiguously popular. Indeed, infrastructure spending historically has had bipartisan support.
So, why are modern Republicans ideologically opposed to infrastructure spending today? For example:
In 2012, House Republicans introduced a transportation bill (including cuts in Amtrak subsidies and increases in truck-weight limits) that Ray LaHood, secretary of transportation during Obama’s first term, called “the worst transportation bill I’ve ever seen during 35 years of public service.” LaHood himself had been a seven-term Republican congressman from Illinois before he agreed to serve in Obama’s cabinet.
The most accepted (or easily reported) explanation is that today's Republican party is dominated by Southern states, the center of heavy infrastructure (and costs) is located in the Northeast, and Republicans refuse to spend on states that don't vote Republican. There is truth to this explanation and, frankly, it is not properly reported as part of the wider partisan scandal that it is.
For example, although federal disaster relief is uniformly passed in the wake of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, etc., the Hurricane Sandy relief bill was passed only when (as one of a few instances) the "Boehner Rule" was lifted to allow a bill to pass with largely Democratic votes. Why? Because only 70 House Republicans could be found who were willing to vote for federal emergency hurricane relief if the affected area was the the East Coast. Nice.
1. Starve the Beast: While Republicans continue to refuse to raise revenue necessary to fund infrastructure spending (traditional Starve the Beast), the latest application - Starve the Beast 2.0 - looks to hold hostage any and all necessary spending for cuts to other, unfavored, government spending. In that sense, you have to understand the crucial (even threatening) need for infrastructure spending as identical to the "debt ceiling."
For Republicans, the hundreds of billions to trillions of unmet infrastructure spending represents a massive, annual golden opportunity to extort draconian cuts to social, regulatory, non-defense spending. That is why Republicans also reject deficit-financing for infrastructure spending (at historically low interest rates) or alternative proposals like a private-public infrastructure bank. The goal here is not to invest in the country, but to seize upon any vulnerability to "drown the government in a bathtub."
republicans are not interested in Americans or the country they really don't make their money here this is just a runway to where the real bucks are that said it makes it a little clearer why there is little interest in job creation through infrastructure if they don't use it or that state doesn't vote their way screw them. they shield the real agenda with all their contrived reasons why not to but bottom line it's not profitable to them and definitely not to those who are buying our gov't, maybe i should stop saying our truth is it's theirs and they have no problem showing us.
but we too have shown them that money can buy you a politician even a state but it can't keep the real American people down need proof 2008 and 2012, 2016 is totally up to those who want the freedom promised but denied to mean what it is suppose to mean not the neo republican definition where freedom only means they care free to do whatever they want to country and we the people.
