Bridges That Need to be Repaired in California and the Nation—Taxes and Priorities

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Mary Lyon

The bridge disaster in Minneapolis should finally make us face the bridge we really have to repair. There is another bridge that needs crossing. And it's that unmentionable bridge, that fearsome Bridge-That-Must-Not-Be-Named, The Bridge WAY Too Far, especially for America's loyal, patriotic CONservatives. They fear to tread that way even more than they shrink from accountability. More than they dread bringing an end to their war of choice. More than they even fear bin Laden or Saddam or some boogeyman to be named later. In fact, to them, the worst terrorist of all isn't either of these, or any of their friends or associates. It's the obligation to pay taxes – especially to the federal government.

What much of America still doesn't want to understand or accept is the harsh but necessary reality that comes with a large, sprawling society with many shared needs and demands. Like, say, maybe a bridge about which we can feel secure when we drive onto it. The Minneapolis bridge disaster is just the latest disgrace that illustrates America's refusal to connect the dots. It motivated me to revisit an effort to do just that, written in time for last Halloween – called "The Last Scare Tactic."

The bottom line, there and here, is simply this:

We CANNOT have a successful democracy in which all are created equal and all pledging allegiance to the same flag, nor can we have any semblance of genuine "Homeland Security," without the financial underpinnings that come from tax money. We just can't. In the larger issues and crises that cross state lines (Hurricane Katrina), span every demographic group (universal health care), and otherwise outstrip a community, city, or state's ability to cope (the I-35W bridge collapse), tax money is an essential ingredient.

Just in that last one, the bridge tragedy, the benefits are shared, so the support should also be shared. We are all affected. Every walk of life, with every agenda, reason, destination, and political leaning imaginable drove across that bridge. It was and is a common property, a public work, for everyone's use. It wasn't slipped under some lucky bureaucrat's pillow by the Tooth Fairy one night. Jeannie didn't fold her arms in front of her chest and blink and simply conjure it up. Neither did Harry Potter.

That bridge was born thanks to millions of midwives who covered its construction with taxes paid. The costs to restore it will come from public coffers, every bit as much as its collapse resulted from the penny-wise/pound-foolish wish to shave a nickel here and cut a dollar there, and postpone the rest for someone else to worry about later. Cut corners now so the inevitable failure later will punch out somebody else's ticket. Save a couple of dimes now so that many multiples of dollars later will have to be coughed up – maybe by the Tooth Fairy or somebody.