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<DIV class=timestamp>November 3, 2011</DIV>
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<H1><NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type=" ">Putting Millionaires Before
Jobs</NYT_HEADLINE></H1><NYT_BYLINE></NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>
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<P>There’s nothing partisan about a road or a bridge or an airport; Democrats
and Republicans have voted to spend billions on them for decades and long
supported rebuilding plans in their own states. On Thursday, though, when
President Obama’s plan to spend $60 billion on infrastructure repairs <A
title="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/67568.html
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href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/67568.html">came up for a vote
in the Senate</A>, not a single Republican agreed to break the party’s
filibuster. </P>
<P>That’s because the bill would pay for itself with a 0.7 percent surtax on
people making more than $1 million. That would affect about 345,000 taxpayers,
<A title="Washington Post report"
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/how-obamas-jobs-policies-would-really-impact-the-rich-hint-not-much/2011/10/24/gIQAVvl3CM_blog.html">according
to Citizens for Tax Justice</A>, adding an average of $13,457 to their annual
tax bills. Protecting that elite group — and hewing to their rigid antitax vows
— was more important to Senate Republicans than the thousands of construction
jobs the bill would have helped create, or the millions of people who would have
used the rebuilt roads, bridges and airports. </P>
<P>Senate Republicans filibustered the president’s full jobs act last month for
the same reasons. And they have vowed to block the individual pieces of that
bill that Democrats are now bringing to the floor. Senate Democrats have also
accused them of opposing any good idea that might put people back to work and
rev the economy a bit before next year’s presidential election. </P>
<P>There is no question that the infrastructure bill would be good for the
flagging economy — and good for the country’s future development. It would
directly spend $50 billion on roads, bridges, airports and mass transit systems,
and it would then provide another $10 billion to an infrastructure bank to
encourage private-sector investment in big public works projects. </P>
<P>Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican of Texas, co-sponsored <A
href="http://hutchison.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=755">an
infrastructure-bank bill in March</A>, and other Republicans have supported
similar efforts over the years. But the Republicans’ determination to stick to
an antitax pledge clearly trumps even their own good ideas. </P>
<P>A competing Republican bill, which also failed on Thursday, was cobbled
together in an attempt to make it appear as if the party has equally valid ideas
on job creation and rebuilding. It would have extended the existing highway and
public transportation financing for two years, paying for it with a $40 billion
cut to other domestic programs. Republican senators also threw in a provision
that would block the Environmental Protection Agency from issuing new clean air
rules. Only in the fevered dreams of corporate polluters could that help create
jobs. </P>
<P>Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, bitterly accused Democrats of
designing their infrastructure bill to fail by paying for it with a
millionaire’s tax, as if his party’s intransigence was so indomitable that
daring to challenge it is somehow underhanded. </P>
<P>The only good news is that the Democrats aren’t going to stop. There are many
more jobs bills to come, including extension of unemployment insurance and the
payroll-tax cut. If Republicans are so proud of blocking all progress, they will
have to keep doing it over and over again, testing the patience of American
voters. </P><NYT_CORRECTION_BOTTOM>
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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana>___________________________</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana>Wayne A. Fox<BR><A
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