As for the tax cuts causing the bridge to collapse, I just have to ask. What part of increased tax REVENUES that have resulted from every tax rate reduction in the last 50 years do you not understand? What part of record high tax collections did you miss? Government may print money, but it doesn’t give that money any value. (see Mexican Peso or Russian Ruble) It also doesn’t produce a single bit of Gross Domestic Product. The more money left in the private sector, the more gross domestic product is produced. The more gross domestic product produced, the more taxes can be collected on it. Hence leaving more capital in the private sector (hence lower rates) increases GDP and thereby produces greater tax revenues. You don’t build diddly with tax rates, you build them with tax revenues. If I told you I was going to pay you $1000 an hour but you couldn’t work anywhere else and I was only going to have you work 1 hour a month, would you take that job over the one that pays $50 an hour but you would be working 40 hours a week. Your rate would be a lot higher at the $1,000 per hour, but you’d take home more (higher revenue) at the $50 per hour job. Which would pay your bills better? The higher rate or the higher revenue? The dirty little secret of taxes is that money is only taxed when it changes hands. The more frequently a dollar changes hands, the greater the percentage of it ends up back in the government coffers. You don’t tax wealth (see Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port), you tax when wealth changes ownership. Why do you think Teddy is so set on reinstating the estate tax? He knows that his family’s wealth is tied up in a living trust and he’ll never have to pay a dime of estate tax despite the estate being worth 10 times the minimum limit for the estate tax to apply. High tax rates stifle the economy.

One thing though- ODOT is smart enough to use the private sector to do the repairs. It gets done cheaper and at a higher quality than the gubmint could ever attain.

NJ looks to be a mess….

Ohio has $330 million alined this year for bridge repair and replacements alone. ODOT (The Ohio Department of Transportation) carries those repairs out.

If this is a true figure:

More than 70,000 bridges across the country are rated structurally deficient like the span that collapsed in Minneapolis, and engineers estimate repairing them all would take at least a generation and cost more than $188 billion.

That works out to at least $9.4 billion a year over 20 years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Why are the bridges not in good shape? Where is the money going?

I think, that from a government perspective both areas (traffic & defense) and its budget have the purpose to guarantee the safety of the citizens (though I don’t share that view for the war-case). Unfortunately I guess, that your government overestimated the dangerpotential related to the “war on terror” and underestimated the “war against rust”. I mean- this kind of collapse can happen anywhere else at each moment again…

As for the 35W, the state is responsible for upkeep of its roads, and that applies to the interstates as well. The funds can come from the federal level, but each state sets its priorities in constructing and maintaining those roads.