31st Reason Why Obama Should be Impeached or NOT Re-elected

Government transportation spending is full of costly boondoggles.  After a long delay, President Obama is proposing what he hopes will be a way out of that. As part of a wider spending program he detailed Wednesday that includes tax breaks for businesses and $50 billion in infrastructure spending, the president is floating the idea of an "infrastructure bank."

An infrastructure bank is designed to leverage public money with private funds, creating much more bang for the taxpayer buck. It's also designed to take politics out of infrastructure spending by moving the decision making away from Congress to an independent panel. Think of it as a way to avoid more bridges to nowhere.

The idea garners support from transportation experts of all ideological stripes.  "For every dollar you spend, you get substantially more investment," said Bracken Hendricks, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress who specializes in energy and infrastructure. "It's really a smart way to do it."  What else would you expect a neo-prog to say?

While the bank faces strong opposition on Capitol Hill, here's how it might work:  Obama offered little in the way of details on how the bank would be funded or structured. But Emil Frankel, a former transportation expert in the administration of George W. Bush and now director of transportation policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said it could be started with an initial investment of maybe $2 to $4 billion.

That money would be used to guarantee loans for private capital on projects the private sector is interested in funding. That would include any infrastructure with a revenue stream like toll bridges and highways, Internet cables, or high speed rail.

Frankel said loan guarantees allow private firms to access capital at low interest rates. They generally result in garnering about 10 times the investment for each dollar of government money - so $4 billion in guarantees would generate $40 billion in spending.

The money is certainly needed.

Engineering groups have long criticized the country for neglecting its infrastructure. The nation now has a backlog of some $2.2 trillion in projects that need funding, according to the latest report from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Okay, Smiling Barack, one has to wonder why you haven't applied the idea of an independent panel to Social Security and Medicare to take politics out of the mix.  It's time to let the Trustees of these funds to decide what needs to be done restore their solvency in terms of changes to the ceiling on taxable income, the tax rate, and the retirement age using the best information demographers, actuaries, and statisticians can provide.  A 60% super majority in both Houses of Congress should be required to overturn the Trustees' decisions.  Congress hasn't wanted to touch these problems with a ten foot pole.  The independent panel or board of trustees is the answer.