The wrecking crew

Isaiah Poole, Tom Paine:

The American Society of Civil Engineers’ preliminary release today of its 2009 Report Card on Infrastructure lays bare the toll conservative ideology has taken on our transportation system, public facilities, water network and power grid.

The ASCE gives the nation a collective grade of D in all of these areas. But when the grades issued today are compared to the group’s 2001 and 2005 reports, it is clear that in critical areas conservative stewardship of these resources have made things worse, and in no area has it made things significantly better.

Conservatives, therefore, get an F on their infrastructure stewardship.

Conservative leaders failed to make infrastructure investment a priority, refused to accept a federal leadership role in maintaining infrastructure, assumed the public was unwilling to pay a reasonable amount to cover the cost rather than educating the public and working to gain its confidence, and made what turned out to be bad bets that the private sector would step up to the plate and make up for public neglect.

Six infrastructure areas received lower grades from the ASCE than they received in 2001: drinking water, hazardous waste, navigable waterways, roads, public transportation and wastewater treatment. Five of these areas were already at either D or D+, with public transit getting a C-. Today, four of those six areas are at D-.

Two areas that received declining grades in both the 2005 and 2009 report cards, roads and public transportation, demonstrate the consequences of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress placing ideology above common sense.