{"id":18155,"date":"2013-03-27T10:03:06","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T14:03:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=18155"},"modified":"2013-03-27T10:03:06","modified_gmt":"2013-03-27T14:03:06","slug":"an-interesting-potential-swap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=18155","title":{"rendered":"An Interesting Potential Swap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed Morrissey<\/a> at Hot Air<\/a> posted an article today posted an article about the current budget negotiations in Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

One of Obama\u2019s advisers at that time, former OMB director Peter Orszag<\/a>, warns that the nation\u2019s infrastructure<\/a> is ready to crumble unless we start spending big money to rescue it \u2014 and now, apparently, is the \u201cperfect time<\/a>\u201d to start borrowing heavily to do it:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mr. Orszag suggests that we issue $250 billion in bonds to pay for the repairs. The article goes on to say that the American Society of Civil Engineers<\/a> (ACSE<\/a>) has given the condition of America<\/a>‘s infrastructure a grade of D. These are the same people who will repair these roads if the additional spending passes. Do you think there might be some self-interest here?<\/p>\n

The article concludes:<\/p>\n

John Boehner has a proposal for Democrats<\/a> who want to talk infrastructure spending.\u00a0 He\u2019s willing to increase the allocations for that purpose, but only if the money comes from a specific new source of revenue:<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Congress continues to hunt for ever-elusive money to rebuild roads, bridges and transit systems, House Republicans are likely once again to turn to black gold.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the tax-averse and conservative-heavy conference, transportation interest groups\u2019 ideas about raising the gasoline tax or looking at distance-based fees are a tough sell. But expanding oil and gas drilling and using those revenues for infrastructure improvements represent what Speaker John Boehner has called a \u201cnatural link.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s one way to test whether Democrats are serious about infrastructure repair, or are looking only to create more pork-barrel projects for people back home \u2014 as the ARRA<\/a> \u201cPorkulus\u201d did in 2009 and 2010.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It should be an interesting debate.<\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today posted an article about the current budget negotiations in Congress. The article reports: One of Obama\u2019s advisers at that time, former OMB director Peter Orszag, warns that the nation\u2019s infrastructure is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5253,4292,5251,221,5252,298,5254,285],"class_list":["post-18155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-acse","tag-american-recovery-and-reinvestment-act-of-2009","tag-american-society-of-civil-engineers","tag-ed-morrissey","tag-infrastructure","tag-john-boehner","tag-peter-r-orszag","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18155"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18160,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18155\/revisions\/18160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}