“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” – John Adams

The numbers are in and the results are staggering. The United States is falling behind its Western peers. Now rated thirteen in overall infrastructure, the United States needs to rethink its funding priorities. In two previous articles, the Reform Party talked about rural infrastructure and the need to fully fund America’s infrastructure, but there is still much to consider.

One thing to reconsider is the appropriation of infrastructure funds. In many cases, those that allocate funding towards America’s infrastructure, specifically the Senate Transportation Committee, like to allocate money to projects in their states – funneling taxpayer money to their home. Former Chairman of the Transportation Committee Robert Byrd was notorious for this behavior.

Wasteful spending in this matter is not uncommon, such as the Alaskan bridge to nowhere.

In other cases, money was placed in limbo through typos and still sits there, twenty to thirty years later. There is still money sitting in an account for the 1996 Olympic games.

In other cases, our methodologies are outdated. Recently the Government Accountability Office found that the United States could save tens of billions of dollars by the way it treats low level radiation, this is tens of billions of dollars that could be spent on America’s outdated power grid.

By reducing the fraud, waste, pork barreling and error in our system, we could free up billions of dollars to improve our infrastructure and regain the top ranking. To do that we need to clean up the culture of Congress.