Okay, we now have the latest scam for spending by Barack Hussein Obama as he is begging away for MORE money for infrastructure spending....MORE money for "roads." This is what Obama had to say according to the article from Breitbart:
"There's no reason to put more jobs at risk in an industry that has been one of the hardest-hit in this recession," Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. "There's no reason to cut off funding for transportation projects at a time when so many of our roads are congested, so many of our bridges are in need of repair and so many businesses are feeling the cost of delays.
"This isn't a Democratic or a Republican issue—it's an American issue," the president said.
Federal highway programs, and the fuel taxes that pay for them, will expire Sept. 30 unless Congress acts, and money for construction projects across the country would be held up.
But wait just a minute - we always hear about "infrastructure" and how things are falling apart...that we aren't investing in our roads and highways and transportation. And I thought to myself, haven't we been passing transportation and highway bills for years and years? What the hell have we been doing with the damn money?
So, let's just take a look at what's been going on with so-called infrastructure bills before Mr. Obama arrived on the scene:
President George W. Bush
President Bush, saying it will help economic growth, on Wednesday signed a whopping $286.4 billion transportation bill that lawmakers lined with plenty of cash for some 6,000 pet projects back home.
With fanfare, Bush signed the more than 1,000-page highway bill into law at a plant operated by Caterpillar Inc., which makes road-building equipment. For the president, it was his second trip away from his Texas ranch this week to highlight recently passed legislation.
"If we want people working in America, we got to make sure our highways and roads are modern," Bush said. "We've got to bring up this transportation system into the 21st century."
President Bill Clinton
Few federal issues affect voters more than the roads and bridges on which they ride. In June, President Clinton signed a major transportation bill authorizing $217 billion for transportation projects over six years – a major election-year investment by Congress. To pass the bill, lawmakers bypassed major legislative roadblocks, including allegations of pork-barrel spending and a debate over drunk driving laws.
President George H.W. Bush
I have directed Cabinet departments and Federal agencies to speed up progrowth expenditures as quickly as possible. This should put an extra $10 billion into the economy in the next 6 months. And our new transportation bill provides more than $150 billion for construction and maintenance projects that are vital to our growth and well-being. And that means jobs building roads, jobs building bridges, and jobs building railways.
So, there you have it - every President since Ronald Reagan has spent HUNDREDS of BILLIONS on transportation bills...on infrastructure bills....on road construction bills and yet once again we find ourselves with ANOTHER President bitching about how we have let our roads go to hell in America and it's a perfect way to get some jobs rolling in America.
I don't know about you but I'm a bit sick and tired of having this scam pulled on me and my tax dollars being lifted from my wallet for something that we apparently have paid for 10 times over.
Obama appeals for transportation bill passage
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama is appealing to Congress to pass a transportation bill that would put money in the pipeline for roads and construction jobs, arguing that it's an economic imperative.
Republicans say they support passing the bill, but Obama says time is running out and "political posturing" may stand in the way.
"There's no reason to put more jobs at risk in an industry that has been one of the hardest-hit in this recession," Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. "There's no reason to cut off funding for transportation projects at a time when so many of our roads are congested, so many of our bridges are in need of repair and so many businesses are feeling the cost of delays.
"This isn't a Democratic or a Republican issue—it's an American issue," the president said.
Obama issued his call as he prepares to make a major jobs speech to a joint session of Congress on Thursday in which he's expected to push for bipartisan action on tax credits and infrastructure spending to get the economy out of its doldrums. A new jobs report just found the economy stopped adding jobs in August and unemployment stood at 9.1 percent.
Federal highway programs, and the fuel taxes that pay for them, will expire Sept. 30 unless Congress acts, and money for construction projects across the country would be held up. That follows the partial shutdown this summer of the Federal Aviation Administration over a showdown between the House and Senate that led to thousands of layoffs of workers on airport construction and other projects.
Transportation experts say the impact of an expiration of highway programs would be even more devastating for the economy. Transportation programs tend to have wide bipartisan support, but given the focus of the House Republican majority on cutting the budget, the legislation could run into disputes over how much to spend on it.
Republicans used their weekly address to push for passage of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and attack Obama over his approach to job creation. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., complained that the administration has spent too much money on stimulus initiatives that didn't work while piling on burdensome regulations.
"While our workers are being held back by Washington, there's nothing in place to stop the federal government from bankrolling further big government spending—the kind that leads to government expansion into private-sector jobs, burdensome mandates on job creators and skyrocketing national debt," Goodlatte said.
The debt legislation passed last month requires both the House and Senate to vote on a balanced-budget amendment, and Goodlatte said Obama should use his upcoming jobs speech to join the call for the measure.
But the administration and most Democrats oppose the approach as unnecessary and political, arguing Congress should be able to control the budget without amending the Constitution. Passage is unlikely anyway since it requires two-thirds approval of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states.
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