It’s hard to govern effectively when you’re crazy, and that’s the most basic way of understanding why the Republican-led Congress is simply incapable of funding the federal highway system. Follow the link if you want a more granular understanding of the problem and how it might all shake out in the near term. What I’m going to do here is give you a couple of excerpts. These are comments from Republican senators, but the translation for both of them is: “I’m trying to fund the roads but my colleagues are insane.”
“There’ll be something done,” Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, told reporters this week about the May 31 deadline. “I’m not saying it’s going to be the solution that we’re all ultimately hoping will happen.”
…
“Most everybody knows I’m sincere in trying to get this done,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), one of the lawmakers charged with finding the revenue for construction projects. “We’re so sick and tired of these doggone patches all the time. But there’s no quick answer to it.”
What they’re saying is that no matter what they try to suggest, they cannot find the votes from their Republican caucus to pave a fucking road or bolster a goddamned crumbling bridge. They’re assuring us that, despite this inability to overcome the lunacy that has taken over their party, there will be some money for our highways by the end of the month.
Yet, the best they can honestly offer us is an assurance that they’ll try to bridge the gap over how long the doggone patch will be this time. Some want a long patch because they don’t want to deal with this every two months for the rest of time, while others want a short patch because they think it will force the issue and result in some kind of long-term funding. Pretty much no one thinks they should risk putting the funding into some omnibus appropriations process because no can see any agreement on an omnibus package being in our future.
And the cause of this is pretty simple. The Republicans want roads, but they refuse to pay for them. They don’t want to raise the gas tax and they don’t want to repatriate offshore profits. They don’t want to govern, basically.
And yet the people keep giving them more chances to try.
