Quote:

---

A Republican-led filibuster killed the presidents $60 billion infrastructure bill, the latest of a series of failures ( http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_09/025547.ph
p) to invest in this nations infrastructure. We have numbers to show how much the “fiscally conservatives” are actually saving from the government budget, and it is not a savings at all.

The I-5 corridor is one of the busiest trade routes between the United States and Canada, linking the port of Vancouver to the western half of the continental United States. It is so important to the nations GDP that it has been nicknamed the “Link to the World.” Almost $20 billion of trade went along the I-5 corridor between the two nations in 2006 alone

( http://jsis.washington.edu/canada/

events/Washington-Canada.pdf), and it has only grown since. The need to renovate, upgrade, and improve this key corridor has been clear for years

( http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/NR/rdonlyres/EB857B2B-6453-4296-ACA0-

00EBBCE49DFB/0/CorridorsoftheFuture.pdf).

The Republicans are no fiscal conservatives. They are no budget hawks. They do not understand that the government is not a business, and never can be. They operate on fundamentally different principles. A business is designed to maximize return to its investors, be they shareholders or the proprietor. A government is the opposite of this, and is designed to maximize productivity of its citizens. There are no “shareholders” to return profit to, so cutting in order to maximize profits is pointless, and only generates a drag on the economy. They simply do not understand economics, and that infrastructure investments are the key to growth ("Agricultural Leaders: Transportation infrastructure key to economic growth, jobs", http://agleadersmi.com/inthenews/pressreleases/Pages/Transportation-
infrastructure-key-to-economic-growth,-jobs.aspx; "Infrastructure Key to Fulfilling Promises of Economic Growth", http://philadelphia.regionsbusiness.com/print-edition-commentary/edito
rial-infrastructure- key-to-fulfilling-promises-of-economic-growth/; "Infrastructure and Growth*", http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/0,,conten
tMDK:22629797~ pagePK:64165401~piPK:64165026~theSitePK:469382~isCURL:Y,00.html).

But the Republicans would rather cherry pick economic papers which fit their ideology ( http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/31e2ff374b6377b2ddec04deaa6388b1/pu
blication/566/) and then refuse to admit failure ( http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/reinhart-and-rogoff-are-no
t-happy/). And they are ready to lead us off the cliff, quite literally, and cause another economic collapse rather than admit failure ( http://egbertowillies.com/2010/08/01/right-wing-republicans- caused-economic-apocalypse-so-says-reagans-omb-dir-david-stockman-p2-tcot-teaparty/). When a government invests in infrastructure, in growth, budget issues disappear (; http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/01/11/deficit-to-surplus- in-record-time-californias-comeback-story/). Those who argue anything else are the economic version of faith healers ( http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/10/18/romney-fails-history-lesson/), and can be safely ignored. Only by understanding the difference between a viable economic idea, and ideology ( http://thoughtstate.blogspot.com/2011/07/keynesian-home- owner-vs-austrian-school.html) can we move forward.

In the GOP’s masterful move to “save money” they have cost tens of millions more than the initial pricetag. This is repeated elsewhere when the Republicans enact policies which are guaranteed to waste more money than saved {Votes to repeal Obamacare, KNOWN to fail before they are brought up, are estimated to have cost $53 million...so far**}. They are not the party of fiscal responsibility, they are the big spenders, the party of money wasting. http://www.addictinginfo.org
/2013/05/25/so-much-for-fiscal-hawks-republicans-now- costing-you-tens-of-millions-to-save-a-few-million/#ixzz2UQJlqpZU

---

Quote:

---

The Congressional Budget Office’s calculations suggest caution. It estimates that the administration’s fiscal stimulus produced about $1 of economic output for every $1 in stimulus, on average. Spending on infrastructure — say, repairing bridges and roads — produced a bigger bang for the buck, because it also encouraged private investment. Tax cuts, on the other hand, yielded less, because taxpayers saved some of their windfall rather than spend it. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/business/in-a-

shovel-a-cure-for-stunted-economic-
growth.html?pagewanted=all

---

Quote:

---

Smith outlined the proper expenses of the government in The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Ch. I. Included in his requirements of a government is to enforce contracts and provide justice system, grant patents and copy rights, provide public goods such as infrastructure, provide national defense and regulate banking. It was the role of the government to provide goods "of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual" such as roads, bridges, canals, and harbours. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith]

---