Shouldn’t Americans repair America’s infrastructure?

by Jim Hightower

Listening at last to his inner-FDR, President Obama is going straight at the Know-nothing/Do-nothing Republican Congress.

At a recent rally on a bridge connecting Rep. John Boehner’s state of Ohio to Senator Mitch McConnell’s state of Kentucky, Obama challenged the two GOP leaders to back his plan for repairing and improving our country’s deteriorating infrastructure. “Help us rebuild this bridge,” he shouted out to Boehner and McConnell. “Help us rebuild America. Help us put this country back to work.”

Yes, let’s do it!

However, in addition to the usual recalcitrance of reactionary Republican leaders, another impediment stands in the way of success: many of the infrastructure jobs that would be created could end up in China.

Holy Uncle Sam! How is this possible?

It’s due to a trap door that was built into the 1933 Buy American Act. This law gives preference to U.S. companies bidding on major infrastructure projects – except it allows the general contractor to opt out of this requirement if the difference in U.S. and foreign bids is significant. This is no theoretical concern, for it’s already happening. For example, the $7-billion reconstruction of the Bay Bridge between San Francisco and Oakland is in the hands of a state-subsidized Chinese company that made the lowest bid.

While there are Americans involved in this huge project, the design, engineering, pre-fab, supervision, and other work – as well as profits – are going to China. Consequently, California’s hard-hit people and depressed economy are deprived of the wages, taxes, and consumer spending they would’ve gotten from some 3,000 jobs that went overseas.

Yes, let’s approve Obama’s infrastructure proposal, but let’s improve it by nailing the opt-out trap door shut. For information, go towww.americanmanufacturing.org.

“Bringing America Back: Are Infrastructure Jobs Being Shipped to China?”www.abcnews.com, September 23, 2011.

Related articles

• Obama takes on Boehner, McConnell in rather feisty language (americablog.com)
• Obama to tout plan in McConnell, Boehner backyard (sfgate.com)

Massa Limbaugh: “Put This Guy In His Place” (via The Erstwhile Conservative)

I wrote this paragraph yesterday about the Obama-Boehner Speechgate issue: The unprecedented flap over the date Mr. Obama will give his now too-hyped jobs speech before a joint session of Congress is merely the latest in a long string of indignities heaped upon him.  Since January of 2009, these pale-faced Republicans have been shouting to this uppity Negro: “You may have won the White House, boy, but you ain’t gonna run things around heah.” It t … Read More

via The Erstwhile Conservative: A Blog of Repentance

MULLAH BOEHNER

By Steve Brodner

If John Boehner’s fervent desire is to be on TV all the time, he is wildly successful.  Does it matter to him what he is famous for? That he is engaging in bringing down the American economy as part of his mission to bring down Obama? This is the Holy War of the ideologically blind and the morally corrupt, making him a big name for our domestic terror watch list. The irony is that we are watching him all the time.

Mullah-Boehner