Obama to announce $50 billion infrastructure spending

President Barack Obama plans to announce a plan for new infrastructure work amounting to at least $50 billion in an effort to boost the economy.  He will also push for the creation of a permanent national infrastructure bank to prevent the nation's road, bridges, runways and other infrastructure from falling again into its present sad state of disrepair.

Democrats lost the culture wars over the last few decades allowing Republicans to create the mindset that "big government" is bad.  One of the consequences of that defeat was that America's infrastructure has deteriorated badly.  The four year "report card" issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the country a "D" grade in 2009. In 2007, the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis collapsed killing 13 people, and last year the Lake Champlain Bridge between Vermont and New York had to be closed and demolished for safety reasons.