LET THEM JUST WALK...OR CRAWL

Even as sanity stirs in part of the House, the Senate Republicans have voted to screw the people once again. Not even 24 hours after it was reported that 100 House Republicans and Democrats banded together, and signed a letter urging the debt supercommittee to consider new revenue and entitlement cuts as deficit reduction ideas, all of the Senate Republicans, Democrat Ben Nelson (Neb.), and Libertarian Joe Lieberman (Conn.), banded together to kill the $60-billion infrastructure bill.

This afternoon, The Washington Post reported that the measure designed to repair our crumbling bridges and roads, and spur private investment in construction died in a 51-49 vote, short of the 60 needed to dodge a filibuster.

Why? Because the $60-billion in spending was to be paid for by a surtax (let's just call it a plain-old tax) on the wealthy. It wouldn't be paid for by more borrowing. It would be paid for by earners bringing in better than $1,000,000 per year in income.

How would this spending have broken down? Of the $60-billion, $50-billion would have gone to highway, railroad, public transit, and airport repairs, and $10-billion to the infrastructure bank, which is designed to encourage private investors to put money into other construction projects.

Do you want to fly into or out of an airport in need of repair? I don't. And, judging by just the first couple pages of the 1500+ comments on this vote, not many other people do either. Nor is anyone buying the argument that the tax revenue is a real non-starter, as House Speaker Boehner is suggesting.

It seems there could be some real truth to David Axelrod's and others' suspicions that the Republicans are purposely tanking the economy to make President Obama look bad going into the 2012 election. The question is, how successful will their strategy be once voters angry at the Party of No get to the polls in 2012?

Also, if they succeed in destroying the economy even further, and manage to turn the presidency over to their own party again, would the Republican president be able to pull the economy out of the trash heap again, or will the deficit increase to unimaginable levels and unemployment rates get even worse than just the 9% it is right now?

--Penn, forum contributor and co-author of Toasted Filberts