The Reuters piece linked above discusses responses to Larry Summers’ recent editorial (but Reuters can’t seem to make a working link to it), Robert H. Frank responds with gems like:
I’d also have hit harder on the claim by ostensible deficit hawks that extra spending right now would impoverish our grandchildren. Some of the most vivid and easily understood counterexamples involve infrastructure maintenance. According to the Nevada Department of Transportation, repairing a damaged 10-mile stretch of Interstate 80 would cost $6 million if we did the work today. But if we postpone repairs, weather and traffic will continue to damage the roadbed. If we wait just two years, the cost of bringing that same stretch of road up to par rises to $30 million. There are thousands of similar projects crying out to be done.
These are the very same “shovel ready” projects that were supposed to be funded by the so-called “stimulus”. And even if this specific project (I80 in Nevada) was not covered by the stimulus program, these projects should be covered by the road and fuel taxes. Yet Congress, the same institution that Frank seems should help remedy this problem, has been looting these fees and spending them on anything but the roads the taxes were designed to support. So in essence, Frank advocates spending more because Congress hasn’t done its job and spent the money on what it was supposed to be spent on.
Amen brother