You do not have to be a U.S. senator to know that our roads, bridges and even dams are falling apart from a lack of maintenance. You do not have to be a senator to know that our population has kept growing and our federal government has not done even one impact statement on the subject. You need an impact statement in some places to put up an outhouse. However, the federal government can allow our population to expand without even one public hearing or study on the effects on roads, bridges, airports, seaports, schools, sewer and water plants, electricity supply, medical care, fire and rescue, police and many other essential services and infrastructure.
Before I go into Senator Bob Corker's (R-Tenn.) brilliant idea to raise the federal gasoline tax to pay for some road repairs, let me put out a few facts of life about our huge trillion-dollar-plus federal budget process. It may interest you to know that foreign aid has gone up every year since the financial crisis and that foreign aid is exempt from sequester. The operating budgets for the State Department and its foreign aid arm, the U.S. Agency for International Development, are also exempt from sequester. Therefore, we have had plenty of money to fix and build infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan, but not for our homeland.
Now that plunging oil prices have lowered the price of gasoline and given the working people of the U.S. a real tax cut, Sen. Corker, a Republican, wants to raise the federal gas tax. Of course, the gas tax is a regressive tax and, as such, it would be more acceptable to a Republican. Sen. Corker is "a real corker," as they used to say, meaning a foolish person.
Corker is a favorite of CNBC and has lots of airtime since the financial crisis to act as the voice of reasonableness, and project an image of gravitas. In, actuality he is just another RINO who wants to raise taxes any way he can and then spend the money on his pet projects, which of course are derived from the lobbyists who control him. The Corker has been hanging around hoping that the Republican Party that has seen him on CNBC will wake up to his brilliance and will draft him as their presidential candidate.
I suggest that the federal government immediately divert a total of $25 billion a year for 10 years from the budgets for foreign aid and the operating budgets of the State Department and USAID. We should put the cash in a lockbox and call the fund the Homeland Infrastructure Aid Fund. Our State Department should then tell the European Union, Japan, and South Korea to make up the $25 billion per year because we defend them all at great expense and they all run trade surpluses with us.
When Jim Cramer asked Treasury Secretary Jack Lew a few months ago if he knew of any trade agreement that the U.S. has entered into in the past, say, 40 years that has ever produced a trade surplus for the U.S., Secretary Lew stared off into space and was incapable of answering. So, we protect the world and keep on giving away our jobs while our once-great infrastructure falls apart.
