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Republican calls for more infrastructure spending than Obama's proposal
Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) called for more infrastructure spending than the amount in President Obama's American Jobs Act on the House floor Wednesday, differing from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who has called for reform before more spending.
"Our roads are crumbling, our bridges are rusting and corroding, our locks and dams are decaying, our water and sewer system pipelines are collapsing," said Murphy, echoing an argument Obama has been making in trips around the country.
However, Murphy was certainly not in support of the jobs bill, criticizing its funding mechanism of raising taxes on the wealthy.
"Raising taxes and creating warfare between classes is not going to do it," Murphy said.
"What we have to do is free up American resources, use our resources, use our funding to rebuild America," Murphy said.
Cantor, on the other hand, has opposed any increase in funding for infrastructure projects, instead focusing on reforming the payment system. Cantor told CNBC following Obama's September 8 address to Congress, "Our ideas are to try and streamline the system, and the permitting process to try and give some relief to the states, to give them flexibility to fulfill their mission and their needs. There's a lot of area for progress there before we go start spending hundreds of billions of dollars more. We have to be smart about it.”
Murphy criticized Obama's plan for having only $27 billion for infrastructure. The $27 billion is only the highway funding portion; the act spends $50 billion on infrastructure when rail, aviation and public transit is included, and spends $30 billion more on school construction.
The full bill is unlikely to be considered by the House, as Cantor told reporters Oct. 3 that the bill in its current form is dead. The Senate failed to advance the package Tuesday night in a 50-49 vote.
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