Posted on 03/23/2006 3:35:25 PM PST by Willie Green
VANCOUVER -- Under a roof where World War II Liberty ships were built, Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., urged the Bush administration on Tuesday to insist that California award the contract for the center span of the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge to a U.S. company.
Skirting the Buy America law and sending family-wage jobs overseas to save "a couple of dollars" will undermine the U.S. economy, destroy the domestic steel industry and compromise national security, Baird told about 60 union members at Oregon Iron Works Inc.'s plant at the old Kaiser Shipyards in Vancouver.
Once the country's steel industry is gone, the cost of replacing that industry will be prohibitive, and the U.S. will be dependent on paying foreign companies to build roads and bridges, he said.
~~~SNIP~~~
A leaked Oct. 5 Federal Highway Administration memo has given the California Department of Transportation the green light to avoid the Buy America law, Baird said.
The law states that U.S.-made steel is supposed to be used in federal transportation projects unless its use would raise the total project cost by more than 25 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at oregonlive.com ...
ping
Jorge does not care about American jobs.
In order to make US steel more competitive, oil prices need to go up significantly. Then it will be cost-prohibitive to ship steel or other goods from elsewhere. Flexible, local production will carry the day.
Of course, I believe in free markets and free trade. But energy prices are the achilles heel of globalization.
Obviously the US fabricator of the span can't compete because of Bush's steel tariffs.
We waited a long time, so we can probably wait longer. In the old days (1930's) it only took a few years to simultaneously build this bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. Now it takes five times as long just to deal with the politics. If not for the politics, it would have been much cheaper to build 10 years ago!
I worry because my daughter drives over the Bay Bridge every day for her job. Hopefully the Big One won't strike anytime soon.
I have an idea. Wind powered boats!
Or people powered boats... they could row steel here from abroad on massive tankers with enormous oars.
Skirting the Buy America law and sending family-wage jobs overseas to save "a couple of dollars" will undermine the U.S. economy, destroy the domestic steel industry and compromise national security, Baird told about 60 union members at Oregon Iron Works Inc.'s plant at the old Kaiser Shipyards in Vancouver.
There's so much wrong with this it's not even funny. First why is a US representative asking that the President interfere into the internal affairs of a state (the method in which the state chooses to build a bridge). Being a Republican (and considering their origin), I doubt Bush will have much problem with that.
Secondly the issue of why the government is even in the business of wasting tax dollars in building bridges in the first place. A bridge is not a 'post road'. Let the state turn it over to a private industry (whoever will do the best job, regardless of 'American' jobs), build the bridge, and allow the private company to recoup their costs from tolls collected in crossing the bridge.
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