Memo to White House: Bridge Failure Determined to Strike in U.S.

by angryindian | August 2, 2007 at 07:53 pm

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It seems that the White House was fully aware of the fact that this very bridge was shaky, and still cut the necessary funds to address it so they can continue to do what they feel the French didn't have the balls for in Algeria:

Read on, from Attywood: (Update appears below.)

WASHINGTON -- President Bush yesterday proposed deep cuts to federal healthcare, education, and transportation programs, searching for new money in the federal budget to pay for increasingly costly defense programs and the war in Iraq.

-- Boston Globe, Feb. 6, 2007.

WASHINGTON - The White House said Thursday that an inspection two years ago found structural deficiencies in the highway bridge that buckled during evening rush hour in Minneapolis.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the Interstate 35W span rated 50 on a scale of 120 for structural stability.

"This doesn't mean there was a risk of failure, but if an inspection report identifies deficiencies, the state is responsible for taking corrective actions," he said. The bridge was 40 years old.

-- Aug. 2, 2007.

A 2005 federal study found that the bridge was "structurally deficient."

"A structurally deficient bridge might be one not adequate for the traffic it takes, but not necessarily dangerous," Burnett said. "But a lot of structurally deficient bridges are dangerous."

Burnett said he believed it would be the state's responsibility to check on the bridge in light of those reports. But he conceded that there could be a federal role and an issue of whether fed standards are adequate.

-- Scripps News, Aug. 2, 2007.

That would be Jim Burnett, former chairman of the National Transporatation Safety Board, who -- in what some might find as an irony -- happened to be in Minneapolis for a meeting of the Republican National Committee.

The story today is an awful tragedy -- my heart goes out to the people of Minneapolis. But the story in the days ahead will be the spending priorities of two "cost-cutters," Bush (who didn't cut costs, but is in the process of shifting $1 billion to Iraq) and Minneapolis Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

Hopefully there will be some lessons learned here.

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Update: Crooks and Liars dug up some more inconsistencies from The Decider:

Full text availble here from the White House: (Many thanks to Diane from Greatscat!)

As would be expected, Bush held a press conference (video here (.wmv)) expressing sympathy for the people of the Minneapolis area the day after the massive bridge collapse. As should be expected, Bush used it as an opportunity to slam and blame the Democrats.

We also talked about — in the Cabinet meeting talked
about the status of important pieces of legislation before the
Congress. We spent a fair amount of time talking about the fact that
how disappointed we are that Congress hasn’t sent any spending bills to
my desk. By the end of this week, members are going to be leaving for
their month-long August recess. And by the time they will return, there
will be less than a month before the end of the fiscal year on
September the 30th, and yet they haven’t passed one of the 12 spending
bills that they’re required to pass. If Congress doesn’t pass the
spending bills by the end of the fiscal year, Cabinet Secretaries
report that their departments may be unable to move forward with urgent
priorities for our country.

This doesn’t have to be this way. The Democrats won last year’s
election fair and square, and now they control the calendar for
bringing up bills in Congress. They need to pass each of these spending
bills individually, on time, and in a fiscally responsible way.

The budget I’ve sent to Congress fully funds America’s priorities.
It increases discretionary spending by 6.9 percent. My Cabinet
Secretaries assure me that this is adequate to meet the needs of our
nation.

Unfortunately, Democratic leaders in Congress want to spend far
more. Their budget calls for nearly $22 billion more in discretionary
spending next year alone. These leaders have tried to downplay that
figure. Yesterday one called this increase — and I quote — “a very
small difference” from what I proposed. Only in Washington can $22
billion be called a very small difference. And that difference will
keep getting bigger. Over the next five years it will total nearly $205
billion in additional discretionary spending. That $205 billion
averages out to about $112 million per day, $4.7 million per hour,
$78,000 per minute.

Put another way, that’s about $1,300 in higher spending every second
of every minute of every hour of every day of every year for the next
five years. That’s a lot of money — even for career politicians in
Washington. In fact, at that pace, Democrats in Congress would have
spent an extra $300,000 since I began these remarks.

And President Bush, how much have we spent in Iraq since you began
your comments? Nevermind the crassness and insensitivity to the
Minneapolis residents of turning this into an opportunity to play
partisan politics–after six years, we’ve come to expect that. But to be
so tone deaf as to chastise the Democrats for fiscal irresponsibility
when he is responsible for the largest budget deficit in the history of
this country and due to his wrong-headedness on Iraq, literally
bleeding money into the sands of Baghdad just shows how completely out
of touch with reality this President is.