@Foxfyre,
Foxfyre wrote:I was not discussing the merits of whatever projects the government takes on, though at least defense spending, however wasteful, is Constitutionally authorized while a bridge that benefits only a narrow and relatively small group of Americans is not.
FALSE. Funding bridges, roads, transportation systems, etc., is authorized by the Constitution under the Commerce Clause.
You fail to comprehend Congress's vast powers under the Commerce Clause. Even what appears to be a wholly local activity, such as a farmer accessing local roads for the purpose of trucking his grain to market, substantially affects interstate commerce. Obviously, the ECONOMY IS STIMULATED when businesses are able to get their products to the market and in the hands of consumers. Because Congress is constitutionally responsible for interstate commerce, Congress may fund local roads, bridges, highways, and other modes of transportation.
Here's an excerpt from an article that sheds light on the extreme importance of our nation's roads, bridges, and highways with regard to our national prosperity:
Quote:In April 1939, executives of the General Motors Corporation inaugurated a major exhibit at the New York World's Fair. Named "Futurama" " a word intended to signify a panorama of the future " the General Motors' exhibit immediately became the Fair's most popular attraction. . . .
To wide-eyed residents of a nation still suffering the effects of the Great Depression, Futurama's designer, Norman Bel Geddes, emphasized the idea that a future of fast-flowing traffic on modern and beautifully designed, limited-access highways would help restore prosperity and hope to residents of city and countryside. . . .
City Versus Country
In 1944, as America's leaders planned for the end of World War II, the possible Interstate Highway System was on the federal legislative agenda. Members of the U.S. Congress and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, however, could not at first agree on terms for funding postwar highway construction. One dispute was that farm groups and their many representatives in Congress wanted more federal aid to construct miles of low-cost roads that would make it easier for farmers to bring crops and families to nearby towns and markets. At the same time, representatives from New Jersey and New York and other east coast states with large urban populations demanded additional funds to pay for roads that would help improve traffic in congested cities. Proponents felt that federal money for highway projects promised a vast public works program for members of the armed forces as soon as the war ended. Truck owners, however, were not interested in whether highway building fostered jobs or improved property values. Leaders of the American Trucking Associations, a trade group composed of thousands of truck fleet owners and managers, urged reduction of gasoline taxes and construction of key routes that served shipping traffic.
Late in 1944, political leaders and leaders in the American trucking and farm industries reached a compromise. The federal government would pay 50 percent of the cost of building roads in cities as well as in rural areas important to farmers. As well, Congress would pay 50 percent of the costs to continue construction of the original federal-aid highway system, which since 1921 had formed the backbone of U.S. highways and included such well-known routes as US 66 running from Chicago to Los Angeles. To pay for all of that projected postwar road building, members of Congress voted to appropriate the then-gigantic sum of $450 million a year for three years starting as soon as the war ended. As part of this legislation, Congress authorized construction of the Interstate Highway System, but did not appropriate funds specifically to pay the immense costs for building it. Rather, Congress authorized state officials to transfer up to 25 percent of federal grants for highway construction to build the IHS.
During the late 1940s, however, few of those involved either at the federal or state level were willing to divert funds from relatively inexpensive urban and rural roads that promised to speed up traffic and get farmers to market in order to build 40,000 miles of the still untested and far more costly (per mile) Interstate Highway System. More important than engineering miracles, the $450 million appropriated by Congress promised construction contracts and jobs in every state of the union and certainly in most congressional districts. Disputes about the distribution of money " highway mileage politics, in other words " have always played an important role in shaping American highway legislation. In any event, in December 1944, President Roosevelt signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944, launching the largest and certainly the most expensive road-building program in the history of the federal government.
LINK
When you assert that funding wars is constitutional, but funding roads is not, you are LYING.
Your statement that you "strongly question whether ANY federal projects are more cost effective, thrifty, or less wasteful than defense contracts," makes all of us strongly question your sanity. Right after Bush commenced the first war, it was reported that the Secretary of Defense could not account for 2.3 trillion dollars in transactions.
Quote:The War On Waste
Jan. 29, 2002
"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.
$2.3 trillion " that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.
"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml
How many here believe, since the above report was released in January 2002, that the Department of Defense has become the paragon of cost effectiveness and thrift?
