Free Republic

They may not ride in crammed trains or carry angst over potholes but feuding presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both want to fix America's infrastructure. The focus on improving public transit and highways couldn't come soon enough for local commuters, say two experts. "There is a desperate need to invest more into mass transit in Chicagoland," Regional Transportation Authority Chairman and former state senator Kirk Dillard said. "Most states significantly assist in the mass transit arena, but that is not the case today in Illinois," Dillard added, noting New York City budgets about $196 per capita on mass...

Dive Brief: The Illinois Tollway announced Thursday that it had set a preliminary budget for 2017 that includes $951 million for Move Illinois projects, as well as $336 million for a maintenance and operation program, according to Equipment World.Major Move Illinois capital initiatives planned for next year include the Illinois Route 390 Tollway ($374.5 million), SmartRoad upgrades to I-90 ($163.5 million), reconstruction of I-294 ($56.5 million) and expansion and maintenance of the I-PASS system. The remaining funds will go toward development, repair and maintenance.Move Illinois is a 15-year, $12-billion capital project program financed by bonds and tolls. The Illinois Tollway,...

The sudden splurge on Milwaukee’s four major-network affiliates and cable seems to indicate the Hillary Clinton campaign is concerned about winning Wisconsin.

Did you notice the labor that went into painting each and every block of the new sound barrier? On the Pennsylvania Turnpike between Route 83 and the Interstate 283/Harrisburg East exits, recently I have observed contractors on lifts individually spray-painting each and every block on the sound barrier/retaining wall. I was hoping what I was seeing was not what I thought, so wasteful. But the main question is why was this level and type of expense happening at all? Is natural concrete not acceptable for cars on the turnpike traveling 70 miles per hour to see? The concrete barriers in...

Excerpts As Prepared For Delivery Now, in another new report, we are learning that Hillary Clinton’s State Department wasted hundreds of millions of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars on a wild spending binge. Here are some of the shocking revelations about Hillary’s spending habits. These are all State Department expenditures during her tenure:--$5.4 million on a no-bid contract for Crystal Stemware--$167.5 million on cost overruns at the Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan--Over $200 million on mostly unused police training facilities in Iraq--$79,000 to buy copies of President Obama’s books--$53,000 to polish marble at the Brazilian Embassy--$630,000 to try to make State Department...

Total spending by the state of Michigan has increased for five consecutive years. The first state budget Gov. Rick Snyder signed, for 2011-12, authorized spending $47.6 billion from state, federal and local sources. Spending increased in each of the next five fiscal years. For the 2016-17 state budget that began Oct. 1, the Michigan Legislature authorized $54.0 billion in government spending. The current state budget spends more from all sources than ever. State spending from state sources was $25.2 billion in 2009-10 and $31.0 billion in the current 2016-17 budget. Yet tax and spending advocates said there is a need...

WASHINGTON The government ran a $587 billion budget deficit for the just-completed fiscal year, a 34 percent spike over last year after significant improvement from the record deficits of President Barack Obama's first years in office. Friday's deficit news, while sobering, does not appear bad enough to jolt a gridlocked Washington into action to stem the flow of red ink. It came in an annual report by the Treasury Department and the White House budget office. In the presidential campaign, intractable budget deficits and growing debt have been mostly neglected by Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump. The latest...

The controversial 2006 lease of the Indiana Toll Road paved the way for highway projects funded by public-private partnerships in Indiana — including the relatively smooth and nearly finished building of a bridge over the Ohio River at Louisville and the beleaguered construction of a 21-mile stretch of Interstate 69 from Bloomington to Martinsville. Indiana’s next governor — whose road-funding agenda will likely shape discussions at next year’s budget session of the Indiana General Assembly — will have a major role in crafting future deals to fund projects and maintain the state’s infrastructure. The question is whether the state will...

AGENCY LOBBYING HARD FOR MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR BOONDOGGLE South Carolina’s corrupt transportation “leaders” still desperately want to foist Interstate 73 on dirt poor Palmetto State taxpayers … even as government’s embarrassing inability to do basic maintenance continues to be on display all over the state.How desperate are our powerful “roads czars” to get this Interstate built? Let’s recap …First, they’ve spent more than $100 million on an interchange for the highway (even though it’s not clear if it will ever be built).Next they’ve proposed spending millions more on wetlands mitigation related to the road (again, even though it’s not clear if...

Listen up now. You paying attention here? During Obama’s tenure in the White House the federal government collected $20 trillion in taxes. Oughta be enough to pay for all our stuff, you say! Unh Unh! Not so fast pilgrim! Over the same period the government spent $29 trillion. Where did it find the extra $9 trillion? We weren’t taxed to fund that additional expenditure because the proletariat would have stormed the barricades surrounding the White House if taxes went up that much, roughly 44%. How would you behave if every regular purchase . . . milk, bread, etc. . ....

Years before the city had a crisis with lead in its water, the Flint City Council and mayor ran unbalanced budgets by making "fund raids" on budget funds dedicated to specific functions. Among the targets was a fund dedicated to providing uncontaminated drinking water to residents. But there were other budget gimmicks city leaders used to avoid making needed reforms. In addition to the fund raids, Flint officials also relied on state-backed loans, but these came with a requirement that the city develop a plan to climb out of its deepening financial hole. Its 2007 deficit- reduction plan projected a...

After voting to proceed to a bill that didn’t exist earlier this week, the Senate has finally produced text of the continuing resolution, a short-term government spending bill. The bill, written behind closed doors by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, was brought to the floor late Thursday afternoon, and for the majority of Senate Republicans, represented their first opportunity to see the text. According to McConnell, senators will have four days (two of them on a weekend) to review the bill before having to cast their votes next week. As far as conservative priorities go, the bill is a failure....

Hillary Clinton’s campaign and its allies are outspending their Republican counterparts by a factor of about five to one, according to a new analysis released Tuesday. But the former secretary of State has failed to put away Donald Trump, and many anxious Democrats are baffled as to why the race remains so close.

Kansas has more than 140,000 miles of public roads — the fourth most in the U.S. Such a massive network requires substantial public investment in maintenance and new projects, and some transportation advocates are worried that the state’s revenue crisis will prevent much of this necessary work from getting done. For example, the Brownback administration has transferred more than $1 billion from the Kansas Department of Transportation to the state general fund over the past few years. … Earlier this year, $185 million was removed from the highway fund to counteract meager state revenue collections. This sweep was announced alongside...

Gov. Scott Walker is drawing sharp criticism for his plan to delay highway projects, including the Zoo Interchange in Milwaukee. In the past, the governor has hailed the interchange as key to state businesses that transport products throughout the region. Walker mentioned MillerCoors in his 2013 State of the State address. "MillerCoors is in a hyper-competitive industry. They're looking to find a competitive advantage: who can get a cold beer on a bar in Madison or Green Bay or even Chicago, the fastest. Beer trucks are tied up in the Zoo Interchange? The MillerCoors brewery here in Wisconsin is at...

While primary elections for local offices rarely garner much attention, the results of the August election were dramatic for one county in northern lower Michigan. Of seven members of the current county commission, only one will be on the fall ballot. “I did not anticipate such a dramatic and historic turnover on the Emmet County board,” said Commissioner Charlie MacInnis, who ran unopposed in the primary. “The community clearly didn’t support the massive spending projects that were undertaken without adequate planning or voter approval.” Four of the seven incumbents lost primary contests while another two did not seek re-election. Last...

Fresh after Congress and the White House scored the largest transportation spending package in a decade, both presidential candidates this year are proposing billions in funding to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. While both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump—and the parties they represent—agree the nation’s roads, bridges, airports, rail system, and ports are in need of repair, the new proposals invite familiar questions over how the spending would be paid for, and whether the federal government is the best provider to pay for it. Those questions, and the lack of a must-pass infrastructure initiative requiring Congress’ attention in 2017, mean that...

In late June 2016, the state released the long-awaited Michigan Education Finance Study, better known as an “adequacy study.” Twice delayed from its original March 31, 2016, deadline due to errors by different parties, the report purchased by December 2014 state legislation has been greeted with an underwhelming reaction. Colorado-based Augenblick, Palaich, and Associates (APA) secured a $399,000 taxpayer-funded contract to produce the report. Every one of the company’s 13 earlier studies of different states’ school finance systems concluded with the same call: Spend more money. As even the adequacy study shows, a massive increase in spending absent any changes...

Perhaps the most persistent myth about public school funding in Michigan is that low-income communities have low-revenue school districts. According to a report in The Detroit News, even elected members of the State Board of Education sometimes repeat the myth. Board member Kathleen Straus was quoted in the school funding story as saying, “The wealthy get better education, have more funding, when it should be the opposite.” Except, data from the state Department of Education, over which the state board presides, refutes this claim. The neighboring Berrien County cities of St. Joseph and Benton Harbor are often cited by the...

Though the evidence for Michigan spending its way to educational success continues to disappoint, its champions have turned to misdirection and misinformation to keep pressing their cause forward. The release of the $400,000 Michigan Education Finance Study (better known as the adequacy study) was far more of an early summer flop than a box office hit. As Detroit Free Press editorial page editor Stephen Henderson laments, the study “landed with the force of a feather on desks in Lansing.” His call for the adequacy study to start “a bigger conversation” about school funding was echoed a few days later in...