They get called "spending" and the connotation is that it is a choice or optional "program" and therefore inherently suspect or wasteful (from a certain mindset). There is nothing optional about repairing the crumbling infrastructure of the nation, period.
Rich MF'ers - who have disproportionally benefitted AND disproportionally skipped out on taxation for DECADES are on the hook for this. Their choice is to ante up NOW, and fix things before they completely fail, or keep dicking around and wait for more building collapses, bridge collapses or dam failures and THEN spend the repair cost AND the clean-up/search and recovery costs as well as insurance costs and so on...
This is not "spending" in the same way that everything else in D.C. gets labelled as "spending"...it is vital repairs and it is dangerous NOT to do it. The case is not one for creating jobs - although the proposed programs attached to the vital repairs will achieve some of that as well...the case is to make the necessary moves now to SAVE even greater expenditures down the line.
It is time that the wealthy - business owners or hedge fund managers or simple heirs and heiresses - own up to the truism that there really is no free lunch. Their "profits" and "assets" and "wealth" was artificially inflated by refusal to keep up the physical conditions of the national infrastructure through continual repairs and taxes to pay for them. Instead, they horded money, bought back stocks or "invested" on both sides of everything to ensure their gains at future expense.
Well, the bill has come due and those that took the most out, must now be forced to put the most in and cover the costs. It is either that, or let the golden goose die and crash the whole damn thing on their heads. If the choice is to continue stiffing the public and allow things to fail, then the rich best not be surprised when the national pastime becomes hunting them down for retribution instead of baseball.
= new reply since forum marked as read