Hillary's Rebuild America Plan

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton takes another cheap shot at gaining support by playing on people's fears after the Minnesota bridge collapse. Clinton blames the tragedies of Hurricane Katrina and the Minnesota bridge collapse on our "underinvestment" in America. Meaning, we clearly don't pay enough taxes.

Hillary has jumped on this tragic opportunity to make people think that she is the only candidate that cares. In her "Rebuild America Plan" she pledges billions of dollars to improve public transit, intercity passenger rail, seaports, congestion and traffic growth, and broadband. Most of these issues are that of state and local governments, which she is planning to squeeze out by increasing "federal investment in public transit." This is yet another example of Hillary trying to pull our country from its founding principles of limited central government and state's responsibility.

This plan stresses an underinvestment in public transit, which she will solve by increasing federal investment by $1.5 billion per year. When I was going to school in Seattle, I had to pay for a bus pass, actually my parents had to pay for my bus pass. Why should we have to give more tax dollars to pay for people, who are already paying their own fee, to ride the bus or train when we may never ride it ourselves?

Hillary's Rebuild America Plan is also geared toward decreasing mythical global warming. Currently about 5% of Americans commute by public transit, but she figures doubling this amount will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 25%. But the only way Hillary could sweeten the public transit pot for people like me is to increase gas taxes even more, which she is working on. Even then, I would still drive. I will not be riding public transit with a fussing ten month old and a very energetic three year old. Its just not going to happen.

The disasters that happen on public thoroughfares are truly saddening, but if they are state and local governments' responsibility, then they need to find the solution -- not the federal government. And no, the bridge in Minnesota did not collapse because of Bush's war in Iraq.

There will always be people like me who cannot or will not use public transportation, so why should we have to pay even more for something we may never use?