Cleveland Plain Dealer...
President Obama returning to Ohio next week, with a bridge on the agenda
By Stephen Koff
9/17/11 

WASHINGTON -- Let’s skip the jokes about someone trying to sell you a bridge. 

President Barack Obama is returning to Ohio next week, traveling to Cincinnati on Thursday, Sept. 22, to talk about his new jobs proposal and the Brent Spence Bridge. 

That’s the freeway bridge (I-75 and I-71) that crosses the Ohio River from Covington, Kentucky, to Cincinnati. It’s getting worn out. “Functionally obsolete” is how Cincinnati leaders and the White House put it. The community wants it replaced. 

Enter Obama, with a plan to fix the nation’s infrastructure, among other things. In his $447 billion jobs package, a sum that would cover school repairs, money for teachers and cops, tax cuts for businesses and individuals, and so on, is $50 billion for transportation and infrastucture grants. On top of that, he proposes $10 billion for an infrastructure bank that could leverage additional investment, though that could take a long time to set up. 

Obama used a Columbus visit on Tuesday to tout the $30 billion part of the package that would pay for school and community college repairs and upgrades. 

This next Ohio visit raises the stakes. First, there’s the political beauty in this Cincinnati trip. Once again, Obama will be close to House Speaker John Boehner’s district, which starts with the Cincinnati suburbs. 

Obama also will be in the front yard, so to speak, of Republican U.S. Reps. Steve Chabot and Jean Schmidt, not to mention the hometown of U.S. Sen. Rob Portman. When Portman was a young lawyer in downtown Cincinnati, he worked near the Brent Spence Bridge. It’s safe to say he’s crossed it hundreds of times. As the Business Courier, a Cincinnati newspaper, noted recently, he’s called its long-desired replacement “a critical project for Ohio.” 

But none of these lawmakers so far is supporting Obama’s proposal, even though, based on today’s White House announcement, Obama’s jobs package could include money for the Brent Spence Bridge. 

The Ohio Republicans appear to prefer using regular transportation-funding bills, like the big one that’s been stalled in Congress, to pay for transportation projects. The federal gasoline tax typically pays for a big share of these projects. 

Portman today said there are parts of the president’s jobs plan that merit discussion, but not the president’s proposed way of paying for it.

Obama would curtail income tax deductions for people earning $200,000 a year and more, and cut other exemptions or loopholes that benefit oil companies, hedge fund managers and corporate jet owners. 

Portman, a member of the debt “supercommittee” working to trim deficits by $1.5 trillion over ten years, said in a conference call with reporters today that tax changes should be considered, but only in a broader discussion of tax reform, not in a piecemeal fashion like the president proposes. 

“He ought to work with us on tax reform, because the economics of this are pretty simple,” Portman said. “If you raise taxes on the economy right now without reforming the tax code, it’s likely to have a negative impact on the economy. If you reform the tax code, including getting rid of some of the deductions and credits and exclusions that the president’s talking about, but by tax reform that also uses that to lower the rates, then you’re going to see more economic activity.” 

A lot more details could come next week, but the numbers in Obama’s jobs plan and the cost of the bridge project pose some additional questions. The bridge is expected to cost $2.3 billion. 

Of Obama’s $50 billion bridge-and-infrastructure package, only $27 would go toward highway and bridge replacement, according an analysis by Transportation Weekly. It would have to be spread across the states. That could make bridge funding problematic, because the Brent Spence alone would eat up 8.5 percent of the nationwide total. The rest of the $50 billion in Obama’s plan would go for airports, mass transit, rail and other projects. 

It’s much more likely that the White House will propose using jobs money for only part of the bridge costs. It also is possible Obama will propose using the infrastructure bank to pay for the new bridge. That would require setting up a new government structure and arranging for outside financing, since infrastructure banks are typically designed to leverage additional investment by providing low-interest loans and loan guarantees. If you say “sounds good,” Republicans come back with two words to describe a similar government structure: Fannie Mae. 

Infrastructure banks also require revenue streams to pay back the “bank.” 

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, has proposed a bigger infrastructure bank, at $20 billion, paying for it by ending tax breaks for hedge fund managers. And he has already stood in front of the Brent Spence Bridge, pointing to it as a potential beneficiary. 

“If there’s any location more symbolic of the need to create jobs by investing in infrastructure, it’s the Brent Spence Bridge,” Brown said today. 

It’s agreed, then: Democrats and Republicans alike want to see the Brent Spence Bridge replaced. 

Beyond that, nothing is agreed. 

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