The hypocrisy of voting against Indiana’s infrastructure
Last week, U.S. Secretary of Transportation and former mayor of South Bend, Pete Buttigieg, appeared as a guest on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show.
Colbert, never much of a centrist, asked Buttigieg if it aggravated him to see Republican senators who voted “No” on the roads and bridges bill now bragging about roads and bridges money, taking credit for a bill they’d tried to kill.
Buttigieg, who is a centrist, wouldn’t be goaded. He acknowledged the hypocrisy, but refused to hold politicians’ dishonesty against their constituents back home. Sincerely (if nauseatingly) earnest, Buttigieg said it was ‘rewarding’ to ‘change minds’ as political opponents were finally able to repair crumbling bridges. He did not delve into just how neglected our bridges and roads really are.
Nation’s bridges and roads are falling apart
The Interstate Highway System was authorized in 1956, and most of the system was completed between 1960 and 1990. In the build up to the vote on the 2022 infrastructure bill to repair bridges, roads and highways, no one seriously disputed the neglected state of those resources.
According to the Infrastructure Report Card, there are 617,000 bridges across the United States, 42% of which are at least 50 years old. Over 45,000 of those bridges have been deemed structurally deficient, which means they could collapse, as a bridge in Pittsburgh recently did. The country’s older bridges are also now more susceptible to extreme weather events like flooding, which can lead to overtopping of flow waters, washout, and other storm-related damages that can — and do — lead to loss of life.
When the bridge in Pittsburgh collapsed in January, it was covered in snow, and there was little traffic. Although the collapse dropped a city bus
into a ravine and flipped a car on its back, no one was killed. Like other bridges in the country, inspections of the Pittsburgh bridge had previously revealed the poor condition of the deck and superstructure, with advanced deterioration of primary structural elements. Had the bridge collapsed during heavy traffic, the loss of life would have been disastrous.
Maintenance of infrastructure like the Pittsburgh bridge has visibly declined through decades of underinvestment. Although the estimated life of roads, bridges, and railroads depends on variables like weather, load, and maintenance, upkeep is falling behind as those structures age past 50 years.
More than 20% of U.S. roads are now in poor condition, 8% of bridges need replacement or repair, and there were nearly five derailments for every 100 miles of train track in the U.S. between the years of 2015 to 2019, mostly caused by broken rails or welds.
Sen. Young voted against Indiana’s infrastructure
The national bridge inventory shows 19,000 bridges in Indiana, of which 1,111 are in poor
condition. Over five percent of the state’s bridges have been deemed “structurally deficient,” i.e., dangerous.
Indiana experiences both extreme heat and cold, and temperature extremes are expected to worsen with climate change over the next 50 years.
From 2015 to 2019, Indiana had the 11th highest train derailments per 100 miles of track out of 49 states. Indiana’s cycle of freezing and thawing also accelerates natural deterioration of road surfaces. In addition to hazardous conditions on bridges and railways, the condition of over 5,478 miles of Indiana highway was assessed in 2021 as ‘poor.’
Enter Republican Senator Todd Young, who today claims on his official website that his focus for Indiana is — wait for it — infrastructure. Young’s headline is, “Strengthening Infrastructure,” and features a photo of Young engaging with a heavy equipment operator, as if Indiana’s infrastructure were being strengthened before our very eyes. Young’s website announces that Indiana is a transportation hub, and that “modernizing and investing in our infrastructure is critical for us to remain competitive…”
Strange then that Young
voted “No” on the infrastructure bill that promised Indiana, over a period of five years:
$6.6 billion for federal-aid highway apportioned programs.
$401 million for bridge repairs.
$680 million for public transportation.
$100 million to expand EV charging networks.
$100 million to improve broadband coverage.
$751 million to upgrade water infrastructure.
$170 million for Indiana airport repairs.
After initially supporting the bill, Young cited ‘cost’ as the reason he flipped. During his October debate against challenger Tom McDermott, mayor of Hammond,
Young parroted the official Republican mantra that voters “are hurting (due to) the multi-trillion-dollar, tax-and-spend policies of the Biden administration.” Young did not mention how his vote for Trump’s $1.8 trillion tax giveaway to the rich was the foundation of that hurt, or how Trump’s administration left the nation with staggering and unprecedented debt that will take decades to pay down.
The $550 billion price tag Young found objectionable for dangerous
bridges was a fraction of the $7.8 trillion debt he and Republicans ran up under Trump. Apparently tax and spend is painful when it protects everyone, but painless when it protects the wealthy.
Public safety depends on politics
No one debates the public safety necessity of maintaining strong roads and bridges. For decades, political candidates including presidential candidates have promised to deliver a major infrastructure package. Until 2022, none had.
On Aug. 10, the physical infrastructure bill passed on a bipartisan (69 to 30) vote, providing $550 billion for roads, bridges, ports, transit, broadband, rail and water infrastructure nationwide.
Despite undisputed defects and potentially devastating loss of life from collapsing structures, 30 Republican senators including Young voted
“No” on the bill not because they disagreed with the structural defects data — or the need — but because they didn’t want Biden to have the political victory.
Former President
Trump was so enraged at the prospect of Biden’s infrastructure success that he threatened to primary any Republicans who supported it.
Young expresses no regrets for his “No” vote, which he admitted was motivated by political partisanship. Still professing strong support for “investment in core infrastructure,” he shamelessly claims he is committed to helping Indiana communities secure ‘all the money to which they are entitled’ under the infrastructure package, despite his best efforts to destroy it.
Culture wars are sexier than roads and bridges
Instead of a fiscally responsible plan — or any plan — to address the nation’s finances, the GOP’s primary emphasis in 2022 is on authoritarian culture wars, featuring book-banning, state-scripted classroom lessons, and state forced births. In lockstep with his party, Young called abortion and gay marriage “a state issue,” explaining, “The people of Indiana and 49 other states are in the process, consistent with our values and our ideas, of trying to get this right.”
On gay marriage, Young said “I’ll listen to Hoosiers and allow them to weigh in.”
OK, Todd, let’s have everyone in Indiana vote on your marriage, and let’s all weigh in during your next prostate appointment.
Senators who passed deep tax cuts for the wealthy but opposed fixing the nation’s bridges would let our crumbling infrastructure rot, physical danger to the public be damned. They aren’t fiscally conservative stewards, they are authoritarians securing deep-pocket donations.
Hypocrites like Todd Young demonstrate the growing dangers of blind partisan fealty, where party loyalty even trumps public safety. Voters should clarify that their children’s lives matter more than their representatives’ political careers.