Mississippi In The News

One of the many negative side effects of the failure of the Clinton health care reform was that it made Big Willie C's administration gun-shy in advancing many more bold initiatives. This wasn't helped by hostile Republican Congress who was willing to shut the government down every time the Prez tried to drop a little extra federal coin for the benefit of all Americans. All of this forced Clinton to focus chiefly on incentives for business, balancing the budget, and foreign policy. Don't get me wrong- he handled those issues, for the most part, marvelously (insert Clinton "handling" joke here). But a lot of things got left by the wayside.

Like infrastructure repairs. Our Interstate System has been around longer than most of our citizens. And like a lot of our citizens, it's beginning to fall apart. This was most horrifyingly apparent last year when that Mississippi River bridge collapsed in Minnesota.

The current economic slowdown has hit our already teetering infrastructure system with a double whammy. Americans are driving less, 40 billion miles less, according to a report released by the Transportation Department today, which means revenues earned on fuel taxes are falling. Fuel taxes are what fund the interstate system. Add falling revenues with increasing maintenance costs and you have what my father used to call "a dilemma". He didn't use those exact words, but our fearless leader Mr. Leek has young, tender ears and this is a family blog. Or something like that.

Anyhoo- there is a nice, long informative piece on this predicament (or something like that) in today's Wall Street Journal (not even hidden behind the subscription wall!) that features some quotes from our own MDOT Executive Director Butch Brown:

Earlier this year, the House passed legislation that would provide an additional $1.7 billion to transit agencies over two years. Both chambers have passed bills that would significantly boost Amtrak funding.

The recent congressional action has raised some hopes. "I was ready until yesterday to have a list of projects to delay," said Larry L. "Butch" Brown, executive director of the Mississippi Department of Transportation, referring to the July 23 House vote to shore up the Highway Trust Fund. But going forward, he added: "There's going to be one hell of a challenge to come."

.........

Like many counterparts across the country, Mr. Brown is diverting money from new road improvement projects toward simple maintenance of existing roads. The most immediate challenge for states is ensuring Congress moves to bolster the trust fund so they don't have to further curtail plans -- and cut jobs. Mr. Brown said Mississippi stands to lose $140 million and around 5,000 jobs.

It's nice when Mississippi is in the national news for being just as bad off as everybody else rather than leading the pack. I'll take "typical" over "worst" any day.