TV reporter Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes got interested in the politics of US infrastructure in 2008 when covering Senator Obama’s run for presidency. It was a big issue for Obama. The Senator said at the time, “If we don’t help create jobs, make sure that peoples’ incomes are going up, revitalizing our economy with innovation, investment and infrastructure, unless we take some of those structural steps over the next few years, we are going to keep slipping behind.”
Fixing roads and bridges cost money and, according to Kroft, “people in Congress generally don’t like to raise taxes, because they’re afraid they’ll lose the next election.” Kroft reports that the US used to rank first in infrastructure but has slipped to sixteenth behind Iceland, Spain, Austria, Portugal and the United Arab Emirates, and a lot of countries you wouldn’t think would have that great an infrastructure.” 60 Minutes will air Kroft’s report on May 17 at 7pm on CBS.
