Bush To Oberstar: Take A Hike, But Not In The Gas Tax! by Doug Wrenn

Bush To Oberstar: Take A Hike, But Not In The Gas Tax!

By Doug Wrenn

August 27, 2007

Kudos to President Bush for quickly and decisively shutting down the spendthrift Congressional Democrats for callously manipulating a needless national calamity and trying to build political capital from it.

Shortly after the tragic collapse of the I-35 westbound bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota Democrat Congressman and Chairman of The House Transportation Infrastructure Committee, James Oberstar, made an impassioned and insulting public plea (more like a demand) for taxpayers to submit to a five cent national gas tax hike and very angrily inferred that this and all future tragedies are the fault of the taxpayers for not contributing enough to the federal dole. But that was before the President pounced and gave this predatory palooka a one-way ticket back to Pelosiville, where naming post offices take precedence over fixing bridges.

As Yogi Berra once said, "It's deja vue all over again!" While local and state officials in New Orleans pointed their fingers at the federal government for recent funding cuts just months before the broken levee from Hurricane Katrina, a logical question begs answering: What did they do with all the money the feds gave them for all that time before the disaster? Many disasters don't spontaneously happen; often times, they gradually evolve. Likewise, now that we know that bridge inspectors had cited the I-35W defective bridge several years before, where was the fiery finger-pointing Oberstar then, and for that matter, his Republican cohort, Alaska Congressman and former committee chairman, Don Young, who is also championing a hike in the federal gas tax?

One problem with Congress, as Gary Hoitsma points out in his August 20th front-page Human Events article, "Bush Right To Reject Tax Hike After Minnesota Bridge Collapse," is earmarks. Earmarks, or wasteful and often costly pet projects that usually only benefit a particular House member, his district, or cherished cronies and donors, are everywhere. Congress is full of earmarks, yet no one is listening. While these hacks and primma donnas on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee were steering the fruits of our weekly toil into a bridge that would go nowhere in Alaska, another one did go somewhere, into the Mighty Mississippi, and it took several of our fellow weekly toilers with it for a final and lethal commuter ride. Note to Congress: Perhaps you might have an easier time collecting more of our money for your fiscal corruption if you stopped us off with your fiscal ineptitude. Or is it visa versa? So much for the "House" that Nancy built, although the previous Congress did not fare much better.

As Hoitsma cites in his piece, the President correctly replied to the finger-pointing, open-handed Congressional beggars that they should take an internal look at how they spend the money they do acquire from the taxpayers, such as the $286 billion transportation appropriation boondoggle from two years ago, which included $22 billion for bridges and $24 billion for coveted earmarks from this royal den of thieves and connivers.

President Bush is right, despite the fact that he accusing Congress of being fiscally imprudent is the epitome of the kettle calling the pot black. The real problem is not a lack of money; the real problem is the massive, widespread and incessant mismanagement and utter waste of the money collected. As a matter of fact, Congress has too much of our money.

In his August 13th piece, "Leveraged To The Max: Superpower On The Brink," published in The Washington Times National Weekly Edition, Pat Buchanan hits the nail right on the head with regard to how we mismanage our money and where that sordid practice will lead us in both the near and distant future. While I highly recommend this worthy read, don't repeat my mistake and digest it before bedtime. It's neither light, nor particularly soothing reading by any means, but rather a much needed and urgent national wake up call that makes caffeine feel like a sedative.

Buchanan cites that we currently have 70,000 "structurally deficient" bridges throughout the country. He also cites the many instances of worsening disasters with the rest of what he correctly calls our "crumbling infrastructure," including roads, sewers, and electrical grids as well.

He then goes on to juxtapose our massive and worsening transportation and infrastructure woes to our equally drastic economic and military woes, as he cites that we are becoming more of a debtor than a creditor nation and how our various defense treaties, along with the current war in Iraq, and potential future threats, make it impossible for our already "breaking" military to realistically uphold all its various promises, both at home and abroad. Meanwhile, our economic policies and treaties give away our jobs and industry overseas, while strengthening the real elephant in the middle of the room, a rapidly growing and menacing China, with the US fixed in her crosshairs. Buchanan also mentions our internal as well as external debts, currently raising havoc on the stock market, and the very gnawing dirty little secret that few wish to discuss: we don't build or expand any more. We tear down dams rather than build them. We no longer build new highways, nuclear power plants or oil refineries, and we don't even want to drill our plentiful own oil. Meanwhile, other nations of the world, our enemies included, are intently and zealously watching our self imposed demise. In short, you could call it slow suicide by political correctness.

Buchanan also touches another third rail: federal entitlements, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which, according to columnist Robert Samuelson, now comprise 40% of our $2.7 trillion federal budget now, and may well rise to 75% of that cut come 2030. To continue on as we are could mean 30%-50% tax increases, and a possible quadrupling of the federal budget, and mind you, this coming as baby boomers age, the younger generations are doing significantly less procreating, and more illegal immigrants flood our country unchecked, many of whom, according to the Heritage Foundation, will cost the system far more than what they will put into it, despite what their advocates and supporters claim.

Our beloved country, as well as our once free and prosperous way of life is going down the same fatal path as previous free societies. We are spending and taxing ourselves to death, literally. Why? Because we simply woke up one morning and realized that we can, just like the fallen governments before us.

Our Constitution is not rocket science, but it is a necessary framework, as necessary to the survival of our nation as sleep, food, water, oxygen, hygiene and exercise are to our bodies. Article 1, Section 8 articulates the roughly 20 powers that the federal government has, via Congressional appropriation. Likewise, Article 2, Section 2 defines the limited executive powers of the President. The 10th Amendment leaves the rest to the states. If we were to simply abide by the sage framework our ingenious forefathers had laid out for us, roughly two thirds to three quarters of our current federal bureaucracy, agencies, programs and debt would not exist, and each and every one of us would have more liberty, more money, more prosperity and less intrusion in our daily lives.

Like it or not, healthcare is not mentioned in the Constitution. Less charitable help is given to our exaggerated number of impoverished since the federal government not only intervened, but also raised the costs of doing business in the healthcare marketplace. It is ludicrous and disastrous that such medical entitlements, which will only realistically increase, and never decrease or go away are considered "non-discretionary spending" by the Congress. These entitlements only further cut into, erode and smother the federal governments primary function, which is to protect us, hence our thin stretched and "breaking" military of a half million, dwarfed in size not only by China, but by North Korea as well by at least double.

Meanwhile, we have a Border Patrol, which, despite the valor and best efforts of its fine personnel, is more of a speed bump than a roadblock, not only to impoverished Mexicans, seeking a better life for their families, but what the Border Patrol calls "OTM's," or, "Other Than Mexicans," blended in among this mass illegal and practically unchecked immigration. Among many, if not most of those OTM's are terrorists, many of whom our bloated, bumbling mammoth amoeba of a federal government now believes includes many al Quaeda members as well. Oh yes, and while that is going on, black-outs are occurring, manhole covers are exploding and becoming projectiles, roads, once designed more for emergency evacuation rather than daily transportation are crumbling, dams are giving way, and yes, bridges, that's bridge(s), plural, with an "s," are collapsing, and all while our government leaders helplessly scratch their heads and desperately wonder how they are going to pay for this massive bill, well into the billions, after they have already squandered all our money. The Minneapolis I-35W bridge was not the first such bridge fatality, and among the other 70,000 or so other disasters waiting to happen, and I sadly doubt it will be the last any time soon, either.

Transportation now seems to be like education (which isn't even a federal function); an open, ever festering wound that refuses to heal and will continue to be a political football with which to acquire and redistribute money for partisan power and personal sinecures. Meanwhile, people are dying and all we get from our elected leaders are angry speeches, extended palms, thumped chests and pointing fingers. This isn't about another nickel at the pumps that might doom a prospect for a family summer vacation, or force a commuter to consider a car pool. This is about a corrupt, inept, self-absorbed government destroying its own people from within. We created this monster. Only we can stop it. And until we do, our future nickels to Washington, or what Ross Perot aptly once called "that giant sucking sound" will continue to go in the same direction as another failed bridge, namely that one in Alaska, thankfully only on paper, but still ultimately, to nowhere.

To the victims claimed by this ongoing national atrocity, including those tragically and recently lost in Minneapolis on that fateful day, may you all rest in peace. To those elected so-called "leaders" who attributed to their deaths, indirectly, albeit callously because of excuses as trivial and inane as payment to the political patronage system, and your next successful reelection, may God still have mercy on your pathetic, bought and paid for souls.