Democrats and Republicans once agreed that building rail would create jobs in our construction industry and lead our nation into the 21st century. As a recent article in The New York Times points out, Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich once spoke out in favor of building a national rail network, admiring the work done by China and France in this regard. Even Congressman Ron Paul, and Governor Rick Perryonce advocated for rail—or at least paid lip service to the concept.
This brings us to the point: all of the current Presidential candidates talk about creating jobs, but none have committed to making the investments needed to create them. Why have none of the candidates so much as mentioned infrastructure investments, even though many have supported the idea in the past? The only answer is that they have become captive to the far right extreme of their party. This is no longer the party of Lincoln or Eisenhower—it’s the party of Alice’s Wonderland, where down is up and up is down.
Now is the time to get to work rebuilding America so that we can compete with Europe and Asia and lead the world into the 21st century. That’s why Democratic governors have made these investments—whether it’s Illinois Governor Quinn building high-speed rail from St. Louis to Chicago or California Governor Jerry Brown continuing his state’s commitment to infrastructure investments.
Now is the time for the Republican field to start putting jobs and opportunity first. The future of our nation depends on it.
Jobs. Opportunity. Now.,
Martin O’Malley
Read the full article from the New York Times here: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/michael_cooper/index.html?inline=nyt-per
