House Republicans today plan to unveil a new transportation bill that would spend about $50 billion per year, setting the House GOP at odds with the Senate, which passed a bipartisan bill out of committee last year that would dedicate about $54 billion annually to transportation. The bills also have some significant policy differences — and Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the GOP’s bill a “march of horribles” for the environment and public transit — and according to many experts, neither piece of legislation comes close to meeting the critical infrastructure needs of the nation:

Neither bill comes close to the $262 billion a year that a panel of 80 transportation experts said the nation should spend to rebuild roads, bridges, water lines, sewage systems and dams that are reaching the end of their planned life cycles…The gap between what experts and most members of Congress would like to spend and what’s included in the two bills exists because the Highway Trust Fund no longer takes in enough gas tax revenues to sustain surface transportation needs.

“Clearly this level of funding is inadequate to support our needs as a nation,” said Joshua Schank, president of the Eno Center for Transportation. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the shoddy state of America’s surface transportation infrastructure will actually cost the U.S. economy more than $3 trillion in lost gross domestic product over the next decade. The ASCE found that “if the nation’s infrastructure were free of deficient conditions in pavement, bridges, transit vehicles, and track and transit facilities, Americans would earn more personal income and industry would be more productive.”

Not only do House Republicans want to pass a bill woefully underfunding the nation’s infrastructure, they also want to attach approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline to the legislation, preferring political theater to actually addressing one of the country’s most urgent needs.

Senate Republicans yesterday, with the help of Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), blocked the latest piece of President Obama’s jobs act, which would have provided for $60 billion in infrastructure spending. Instead, the Senate GOP submitted a bill that would supposedly create jobs by crippling the government’s ability to regulate.

House Republicans, of course, won’t even bring up Obama’s jobs plan, instead deciding that the best way to address America’s crumbling infrastructure is to let loose with “drill, baby, drill“:

House Republicans plan to pass a bill by year’s end that would tie new infrastructure funding to federal revenue generated from an expansion of domestic energy production, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced Thursday.

Dubbing it the “opposite of stimulus,” Boehner said the new energy production plan would provide “a new devoted revenue stream” that could pay for the kind of infrastructure spending that President Obama is demanding as part of his jobs package.

Even with the unemployment rate barely creeping down and the U.S. facing a $2 trillion deficit in terms of infrastructure, the GOP refuses to move forward with funding unless it is also allowed to soil the environment through more oil drilling.

And its not as if Boehner’s own state of Ohio couldn’t use some help when it comes to infrastructure. In fact, 27 percent of the bridges in Boehner’s state are either “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.” Ohio’s share of the national highway system has 171 bridges that are structurally deficient. 10 of those bridges are even located in Boehner’s own district.

Boehner this week tried to claim that “nobody” has crafted a bill that would fund infrastructure projects, even as Senate Democrats were bringing a bill to the floor that would pay for those projects with a miniscule surtax on the very wealthiest Americans. Instead, Boehner and the rest of the House GOP want to hold the nation’s infrastructure hostage to their Big Oil agenda.

Earlier this week, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) told a Kentucky audience that, in his view, “everybody believes” that the country should be doing more to upgrade its aging, crumbling infrastructure. The problem, he said, is that “nobody wants to pay for it”:

“Everybody believes we have infrastructure deficiencies and more needs to be spent to repair, replace and in some cases build new infrastructure,” Boehner said in a speech. “The problem is nobody wants to pay for it.”

Boehner did not specifically mention the region’s bridge problems, but spoke broadly about transportation needs in his speech as part of the McConnell Center’s fall lecture series at the university.

However, it’s simply not true that “nobody” has tried to craft a bill that both invests in infrastructure and is paid for. President Obama’s American Jobs Act included money for infrastructure and was paid for by higher income taxes for the wealthiest Americans. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, plan to hold a vote this week on a bill that combines $50 billion in direct infrastructure spending with another $10 billion to start a national infrastructure bank.

The Senate Democrats’ bill is paid for by a surtax on the very wealthiest Americans that, as Citizens for Tax Justice has found, will affect no more than 0.1 percent of the residents of most states. Far from jumping on board with this plan, Senate Republicans are gearing up to derail it:

A senior Senate Democratic aide predicted Tuesday that not a single Republican would vote for the latest jobs package of $50 billion in infrastructure spending combined with a $10 billion national infrastructure bank.

Senate Democratic leaders hope to vote Thursday on the jobs bill, but they expect the outcome to follow the same lines as the previous two jobs measures Republicans voted unanimously to block.

As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent noted yesterday, “a number of GOP Senators in the past have explicitly endorsed infrastructure spending — in different contexts — as a good way to spur economic growth or maintain economic competitiveness.” For instance, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has said that “if you’re a Republican and you want to create jobs, then you need to invest in infrastructure that will allow us to create jobs.” But now that Obama is proposing just that, the GOP is lining up against him.

Boehner is trying to deflect attention from the GOP’s constant obstruction of infrastructure bills. But tomorrow will provide the perfect test case as to whether “everybody” agrees that infrastructure is a priority, or whether the GOP thinks it’s more important to protect super-low tax rates for the very wealthy.

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) toured the Waterloo, Iowa factory of OMJC Signals Inc. yesterday, where she told the workers that her policy plan for building job growth — lower taxes, less government spending, and fewer government regulations — would help companies like OMJC succeed and “grow, grow, grow, grow, grow” in ways they haven’t been able to under President Obama.

There was only one problem. OMJC builds and assembles traffic lights, and its business and profits depend on the types of government investments into roads, bridges, and infrastructure that have been consistently proposed by Obama and Democrats and consistently opposed by Bachmann and Republicans, as the Los Angeles Times reports:

Standing before a row of shiny orange trailers carrying portable solar-powered traffic lights, she said her plans for a smaller government with fewer rules and lower spending would help OMJC Signal Inc. “grow, grow, grow, grow, grow.”

“That’s my goal — to see you succeed wildly,” the Minnesota congresswoman told a gathering of OMJC workers on the plant floor here in the central Iowa town where she grew up.

But OMJC thrives on the kind of road and bridge spending that Obama has promoted as a key remedy to the nation’s economic slowdown. As much as 80% of OMJC’s revenue comes from government, according to the company’s chief executive, Arlen Yost.

OMJC’s owner told the Times that business has remained stable throughout the recession as the government has maintained investments in infrastructure projects in an attempt to spur the economy. But while Bachmann claims she wants to help OMJC “grow, grow, grow, grow, grow,” her voting record tells a different story. Before Bachmann voted against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, she and her Republican colleagues worked to reduce the amount of infrastructure spending contained in the package. Bachmann and the GOP opposed a Democratic infrastructure spending plan in 2010. And of Obama’s recent jobs plan, Bachmann said it was full of “temporary gimmicks” and that Congress shouldn’t pass it.

Not only would Bachmann’s policies hurt the business she claimed she wanted to help, they continue to hurt the nation she wants to lead. As ThinkProgress has reported, more than a quarter of America’s bridges are rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. In Minnesota, 13 percent of bridges are deficient or obsolete, and nearly a third of the state’s roads are considered poor or mediocre. In Iowa, Bachmann’s birthplace and center of her presidential campaign, 27 percent of the bridges are rated deficient or obsolete, and more than 40 percent of its roads are poor or mediocre. According to recent studies, the U.S. needs as much as $2 trillion just to bring its infrastructure up to date.

Despite their recent exclamations of support for improving American infrastructure, House Republicans circulated a memo this weekend informing members that the caucus would oppose the majority of President Obama’s jobs plan, particularly the proposed infrastructure bank that would make large investments into the nation’s crumbling roads, bridges, and other forms of infrastructure.

In the memo, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) laid out opposition to Obama’s proposed $30 billion to keep teachers and law enforcement officers in their jobs, rejected money for school construction, and again claimed Republicans supported spending on infrastructure. But Boehner wrote that the GOP opposed the way Obama’s plan would make those investments, as Republicans continue to base their opposition to new stimulus plans on the misguided, false belief that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act didn’t work, as The Hill reported:

“Rather than adding more money to a broken system,” Boehner and his deputies wrote, “Congress and the president should spend the next few months working out a multi-year transportation authorization bill that fixes these problems.”

Despite those claims, there is little evidence that Republicans actually support spending the money necessary to bring the nation’s infrastructure up to date. In fact, this is the third major infrastructure investment plan Republicans have opposed since Obama took office in 2009, after it lobbied to reduce the amount of infrastructure-centered spending in the Recovery Act and derailed Democrats’ infrastructure spending plan in 2010.

As ThinkProgress reported last week, roads and bridges in the states and districts represented by GOP leadership are rated “structurally deficient” or “fundamentally obsolete” at rates that outpace the national average. Even knowing that, Republicans continue to make their priorities clear when it comes to creating jobs by fixing America’s infrastructure, as they have again chosen to do nothing while millions of American workers remain unemployed and ready to work on the roads and bridges that are crumbling around them.

Take action and tell Congress it’s time to rebuild America.

President Obama’s recent jobs plan has reignited a fight over infrastructure investment, a priority for Democrats who see investing in improvement projects as a way to address both the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and high unemployment. Republicans have also claimed to support infrastructure improvement, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) saying it was important to bring the country’s roads and bridges “up to 21st century standards.”

Despite McConnell’s rhetoric, Republicans have steadfastly opposed actual attempts to bring America’s infrastructure to 21st century standards, since that would require actually spending money. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) blasted the GOP’s opposition to infrastructure investment under the guise of saving money today, saying if the U.S. didn’t invest in its crumbling roads, its failing bridges, and other areas of infrastructure development, the country is “destined to become a second-rate nation”:

RENDELL: Infrastructure is important in everything that we do. The World Economic Forum, which rated our infrastructure best in the world as early as 2005, has now placed us 15th. In air transport infrastructure, we’re 32nd behind countries like Panama and Malaysia. In port infrastructure, so important to our economy, we’re 18th. In rail infrastructure, we’re 22nd. That’s embarrassing. This country used the be the greatest country in the world, and I believe it still is. But we were the greatest country in the world because we met our challenges. We knew what we had to do. We didn’t worry about what it was going to cost, we worried about how it was going to benefit our people. [...]

Yes, you spend money to build the infrastructure, to make it safe, to improve the quality of our lives, to increase our economic competitiveness. Stop doing it, and America’s destined to become a second-rate power.

Watch it:

Republicans got an example of exactly what Rendell is talking about this week, when the 50-year-old bridge Sherman Minton Bridge spanning the Ohio River between Louisville, Kentucky and New Albany, Indiana closed because of a crack in its structure. The closure is costing both private businesses and the government, as local economies suffer from lapses in productivity and the states divert funds from other programs to fix the bridge.

Putting off investments like one that could have prevented the Sherman Minton’s closure doesn’t save the country money. The longer Republicans continue to prevent the types of meaningful infrastructure investments the country needs, the more expensive it promises those projects will become, and the farther behind the rest of the world the U.S. will fall.

Take action and tell Congress it’s time to rebuild America.

Sherman Minton Bridge in Louisville, KY

The Sherman Minton Bridge, one of three major bridges spanning the Ohio River between Louisville, Kentucky and southern Indiana, was closed Friday after cracks were found in its structure. Roughly a quarter of America’s bridges, and more than a third of Kentucky’s, are considered structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, a problem highlighted by recent reports that the country needs an immediate $2 trillion investment just to bring its infrastructure up to date.

The bridge closure came just days after Sen. Mitch McConnell (R), whose Kentucky home is less than 13 miles from the bridge, derided President Obama’s jobs plan — largely based on infrastructure investment — as a “re-election plan.” McConnell doubled down on those claims Tuesday, saying the plan contained proposals both parties had “already rejected.” Kentucky Rep. John Yarmuth (D), who represents Louisville, slammed McConnell’s lack of leadership last night, telling Rachel Maddow that McConnell should “come back to the district” and tell Louisvillians himself that America can’t afford to invest in its roads and bridges:

YARMUTH: What he needs to do is he needs come back to the district, he needs to stand there and talk to the people who are waiting in line and say, ‘You know, we don’t need to be investing in infrastructure, we can’t afford it right now. And ask them to make the sacrifice.’ He’s not willing to do that. Again, to portray what the president has said as just another political act defies reality. He’s staring in the face of something that is of enormous consequence to hundreds of thousands of his constituents. … This affects everybody. Mitch needs to take a leadership role in the Senate to help get this kind of investment adopted by Congress. If he doesn’t step forward, I don’t know how we can get it done. But he needs to. These are his people.

Watch it:

Despite claims that he supports investing in infrastructure, McConnell has continually opposed proposals to do just that. And while he chides Democrats for pushing a plan he claims won’t stimulate the economy, the closing of the Sherman Minton Bridge highlights the costs of not investing in such projects, as it is already extracting huge costs from state governments and private companies.

Industrial trucking companies have estimated the closure is costing them as much as $4,400 a day, while local companies have had to accommodate employees whose commute times have increased by more than an hour in some instances. Extra costs and potential drops in productivity will have an untold negative impact on the local economy. Kentucky and Indiana, meanwhile, may pay for repairs by diverting funds from other infrastructure projects, including a new Ohio River bridge.

Republicans, under the leadership of McConnell, have claimed that America simply can’t afford to pay for roads, bridges, and infrastructure. In reality, however, putting off such investments costs rather than saves money. America’s roads and bridges must be fixed. The only question is how long Republicans will put off such investments, and how costly the economic impact of their intransigence will become.

Take action and tell Congress it’s time to rebuild America.