"How to Repair America's Bridges With No Debt"

By Stephen Geffre for USA TODAY

The fatal collapse of a bridge in Minneapolis a year ago jolted states into better inspections of the nation's 600,000 bridges, but they aren't coming up with the billions of dollars needed to ensure that all of them are sound.

The plunge that killed 13 people when the span crumpled into the Mississippi River on Aug. 1 was "a wake-up call" to take care of aging bridges, says Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. "We can't wait for another Minneapolis."

Since the tragedy, Pennsylvania has approved $350 million in bonds to repair 411 bridges. Road tolls will go up next year.

It would cost $9.4 billion a year for 20 years to eliminate all bridge deficiencies in the USA, according to the latest estimate, made in 2005, by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Twelve percent of the nation's bridges are structurally deficient, according to the Federal Highway Administration, meaning they are not unsafe but are so deteriorated that they must be closely monitored and inspected or repaired. That percentage has crept down. In 1997, it was 15%.

States are fixing bridges that are in the worst shape, but long-term repairs and upkeep will still suffer unless funding increases, says Kent Harries, a University of Pittsburgh engineering professor.

"We will see more bridge collapses," says Harries, who specializes in bridge engineering.

States are facing cuts in federal funding next year because of a projected $3.2 billion shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund. The gap is expected to grow because Americans are driving less.

Thursday, the House of Representatives sent to the Senate a bill that would give states $1 billion in emergency funds for bridge repair.

States are looking for other financing. Nine are issuing bonds — taking on debt — raising taxes, hiking fees or shifting funds from other road projects.

The power to create money is an awesome power – at times stronger than the Executive, Legislative or Judicial powers combined. It’s like having a “magic checkbook,” where checks can’t bounce. When controlled privately it can be used to gain riches, but more importantly it determines the direction of our society by deciding where the money goes – what gets funded and what does not. Will it be used to build and repair vital infrastructure such as the New Orleans Levees and Minneapolis bridges to protect major cities? Or will it go into warfare or real estate loans, creating asset price inflation - the real estate bubble.

Thus the money issuing power should never be alienated from democratically elected government and placed ambiguously into private hands as it is in America in the Federal Reserve System today. Indeed, most people would be surprised to learn that the bulk of our money supply is not created by our government, but by private banks when they make loans. Through the Feds fractional reserve process the system creates purchasing media when banks make loans into checking accounts, so most of our money is issued as interest-bearing debt.

Most Americans think our money is issued and controlled by our government. They are surprised to learn that most of our money is created when people and businesses have to borrow from banks, since this is the main way that money now enters the system. The banks make loans by crediting the borrowers account. This is fiat money, or “purchasing media” created out of thin air, thanks to a special legal privilege granted to them called “fractional reserve banking.” They write a computer credit in the account of those whose needs have driven them to the banking system to borrow money.

Under the Constitution, Article I, Sec. 8, our government has the sovereign power to issue money and spend it into circulation to promote the general welfare through the creation and repair of infrastructure, including human infrastructure - health and education - rather than misusing the money system for speculation as banking has historically done, periodically causing one crisis after another. Our lawmakers must now reclaim that power!

Money has value because of skilled people, resources, and infrastructure, working together in a supportive social and legal framework. Money is the indispensable lubricant that lets them “run.” It is not tangible wealth in itself, but a power to obtain wealth. Money is an abstract social power based in law; and whatever government accepts in payment of taxes will be money. Money’s value is not created by the private corporations that now control it.

Private money creation through fractional reserve banking fosters an unprecedented concentration of wealth which destroys the democratic process and ultimately promotes military imperialism. Less than 1% of the population now claims ownership of almost 50% of the wealth, but vital infrastructure is ignored. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives a D grade to our infrastructure and estimates that it will soon be a D- and that $1.6 trillion is needed to bring it to acceptable levels.

Infrastructure repair would provide quality employment throughout the nation. There is a pretense that government must either borrow or tax to get the money for such projects. But it is well enough known that the government can directly create the money needed and spend it into circulation for such projects, without inflationary results.

The false specter of inflation is usually raised against such suggestions that our government fulfill its responsibility to furnish the nation’s money supply. But that is a knee jerk reaction - the result of decades, even centuries, of propaganda against government. When one actually examines the monetary record, it becomes clear that government has a better record issuing and controlling money than the private issuers have. Inflation is avoided because real material wealth has been created in the process. This would create good jobs across our nation, re-invigorating local economies and re-funding government at all levels.

    At a time when thousands of bridges in America are in desperate need of repair, many states simply don't have the revenue to address these  infrastructure needs. Many of these states will end up borrowing money from the Federal Reserve Banks because in 1913, Congress gave up it's Constitutional power to create money "for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;" and gave that money creating power to the Reserve Banks, which create money by loaning money with interest or to put it another way, by creating "debt based" money. Under the present Federal Reserve System, the bridges would get repaired but never be paid for, thus making bankers, investors and speculators rich from the interest on the bridge repair loans, all over the world. However, if Congress abolished the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Banks and simply created money for bridge repairs and allocated that money to the states to augment their own state revenue, the result would be repaired bridges, new jobs and no damn debt! That's the vision our Founding Fathers had, the  Federal government creating money "for the General Welfare" of the American people, not central banks creating money for the wealth of global financiers and investors, as I see it.

tags: the fed  business  capitalism  american infrastructure  congress  takebackamerica  politics  free enterprise  the economy  

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