The fifty states of the United States should
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- Innovation is modeled – states copy infrastructure successes
- The counterplan doesn’t link – states operate below the federal political radar
- Only states can account for local infrastructure needs
- States can handle doing the plan – they already account for 75%
- States solve better because they work locally – infrastructure affects single states
- States can better identify specific needs on a local level
1NC States cpThe fifty states of the United States shouldLocal oversight solves best – innovation and flexibility create efficient solutionsEdwards ‘11 (Chris Edwards, Joint Economic Committee United States Congress, CATO Institute, “Federal Infrastructure Investment,” November 16, 2011, http://www.cato.org/publications/congressional-testimony/federal-infrastructure-investment, SSR) The U.S. economy needs infrastructure, but state and local governments and the private sector are generally the best places to fund and manage it. The states should be the "laboratories of democracy" for infrastructure, and they should be able to innovate freely with new ways of financing and managing their roads, bridges, airports, seaports, and other facilities.¶ It is true that — like the federal government — the states can make infrastructure mistakes. But at least state-level mistakes aren't automatically repeated across the country. If we ended federal involvement in high-speed rail, for example, California could continue to move ahead with its own system. Other states could wait and see how California's system was performing before putting their own taxpayers on the hook.¶ A big step toward devolving infrastructure financing would be to cut or eliminate the federal gasoline tax and allow the states to replace the funds with their own financing sources. President Reagan tried to partly devolve highway funding to the states, and more recent legislation by Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) and Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) would move in that direction.15 Reforms to decentralize highway funding would give states more freedom to innovate with the financing, construction, and management of their systems. Innovation is modeled – states copy infrastructure successesRoth ‘10 (Federal Highway Funding “Federal Intervention Increases Highway Costs” June 2010 by Gabriel Roth, civil engineer and transportation economist at the Independent Institute http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/transportation/highway-funding) Such reforms would give states the freedom to innovate with toll roads, electronic road-pricing technologies, and private highway investment. Unfortunately, these reforms have so far received little action in Congress. But there is a growing acceptance of innovative financing and management of highways in many states.¶ With the devolution of highway financing and control to the states, successful innovations in one state would be copied in other states. And without federal subsidies, state governments would have stronger incentives to ensure that funds were spent efficiently. An additional advantage is that highway financing would be more transparent without the complex federal trust fund. Citizens could better understand how their transportation dollars were being spent.¶ The time is ripe for repeal of the current central planning approach to highway financing. Given more autonomy, state governments and the private sector would have the power and flexibility to meet the huge challenges ahead that America faces in highway infrastructure. States no-link politicsThe counterplan doesn’t link – states operate below the federal political radarCelli 1 – Chief of the Civil Rights Bureau, New York State Attorney General's Office (Andrew, 64 Alb. L. Rev. 1091, Lexis) I also saw that state enforcement officers, like me and like Peter Lehner, with our small and agile offices operating below the national political radar, that we can use these federal laws in creative and aggressive ways and perhaps in a way that is insulated from the kinds of political pressure that, say, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department faces. States solve – genericOnly states can account for local infrastructure needsChristman and Riordan ’11 (Anastasia Christman and Christine Riordan, National Employment Law Project, “State Infrastructure Banks: Old Idea Yields New Opportunities for Job Creation,” http://nelp.3cdn.net/fadb21502631e6cb79_vom6b8ccu.pdf, December 2011, SSR) The fact is that infrastructure is a profoundly local issue and is a key determinant of a community’s standard of living. As former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell noted in a U.S. Congressional hearing on infrastructure, “Visible or not, properly functioning infrastructure provides us with the reliability and predictability that we as Americans have come to expect from modern daily life.” Everyday Americans feel the effects of deteriorating physical assets close to home in the form of traffic delays, unsafe drinking water, inadequate public transportation and unpredictable electrical power. Local lawmakers recognize this: in a 2011 survey, more than three-quarters of U.S. mayors identified the need to prioritize maintenance of current roads and streets over building new highways, and almost half indicated a need to grow public transit capacity. State and local governments and their constituents already carry much of the burden of funding these critical resources. Nationally, “transportation” is typically the third-largest state expenditure after “education” and “public welfare.” Since the Cold War era, local governments have invested more than $1.25 trillion in water and sewer investments. As the National Conference of State Legislatures has pointed out, “Local governments—including counties, townships and municipalities—provide approximately 30 percent of total surface transportation funding and own 77 percent of the nation’s roadway miles.” Yet, federal funding streams through the National Surface Transportation Act or the Federal Highway Trust Fund send money to the states without requirements to consider the infrastructure needs of cities and metropolitan areas. States can handle doing the plan – they already account for 75%Congressional Budget Office ’10 (The Congressional Budget Office has produced independent, nonpartisan, timely analysis of economic and budgetary issues to support the Congressional budget process, “Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure,” http://www.cbo.gov/publication/21902, November 17, 2010, SSR) The composition of public spending on transportation and water infrastructure can be represented in three ways: by the level of government providing the funding or other form of financial support; by the nature of the spending (whether it is designated for capital projects or for operation and maintenance); and by the type of infrastructure. State and local governments account for about 75 percent of total public spending on transportation and water infrastructure—even after subtracting from their gross spending the value of grants and loan subsidies that the federal government provides for such purposes—and the federal government accounts for the other 25 percent. That split has remained roughly constant over the past two decades. States solve better because they work locally – infrastructure affects single statesGlaeser 2/13 (Edward Glaeser, Bloomberg News, “Spending Won’t Fix What Ails U.S. Infrastructure: Edward Glaeser,” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-14/spending-won-t-fix-what-ails-u-s-transport-commentary-by-edward-glaeser.html, Feb 13, 2012, SSR) We could build more roads to deal with traffic, but the work of Gilles Duranton and Matthew Turner casts cold water on that approach. They devised a “Fundamental Law of Road Congestion”: highway miles traveled increase almost one-for-one with highway miles built. If you build it, they will drive. The better approach to ensure that a scarce resource is used efficiently is to charge higher prices during peak use periods.¶ DE-FEDERALIZE TRANSPORT SPENDING: Most forms of transport infrastructure overwhelmingly serve the residents of a single state. Yet the federal government has played an outsized role in funding transportation for 50 years. Whenever the person paying isn’t the person who benefits, there will always be a push for more largesse and little check on spending efficiency. Would Detroit’s People Mover have ever been built if the people of Detroit had to pay for it? We should move toward a system in which states and localities take more responsibility for the infrastructure that serves their citizens. States can better identify specific needs on a local levelDilger ’11 (Robert Jay Dilger, Senior Specialist in American National Government, “Federalism Issues in Surface Transportation Policy: Past and Present,” http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40431.pdf, Jan. 5, 2011, SSR) In recent years, state and local government officials, through their public interest groups (especially the National¶ Governors Association, National Conference of State Legislatures, National Association of¶ Counties, National League of Cities, U.S. Conference of Mayors, and American Association of¶ State Highway and Transportation Officials) have lobbied for increased federal assistance for surface transportation grants and increased flexibility in the use of those funds. They contend that they are better able to identify surface transportation needs in their states than federal officials¶ and are capable of administering federal grant funds with relatively minimal federal oversight. They also argue that states have a long history of learning from one another. In their view, providing states flexibility in the use of federal funds results in better surface transportation policy because it enables states to experiment with innovative solutions to surface transportation problems and then share their experiences with other states. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 327.41 Kb. Share with your friends:
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