One More Time..................

O.K., here is our problem, step by step.
1) 15 million Americans are unemployed.
2) 70% of all new jobs are created by small businesses.
3) Small businesses have been going out of business for a lack of customers.
4) Our infrastructure is deteriorating rapidly and that has a major cost.
5) This paragraph from last week's Economist sums up those costs about as well as you can do it.

"FOR decades America has underinvested in infrastructure—even though poor roads, delayed flights, crumbling bridges and inefficient buildings are an expensive burden. Deficiencies in roads, bridges and transport systems alone cost households and businesses nearly $130 billion in 2010, mostly because of higher running costs and travel delays. The calculated underinvestment in transport infrastructure alone runs to about $94 billion a year. This filters through to all parts of the economy and increases costs at the point of use of many raw materials, and thereby reduces the productivity and competitiveness of American firms and their goods. Overall the American Society of Civil Engineers reckons that this underinvestment will end up costing each family in the country about $10,600 between 2010 and 2020.
Yet though investment in infrastructure would bring clear gains in efficiency, there is little money around, and all levels of government are reluctant or unable to pile up more debt. Traditional sources of funding, such as the (flat) tax on petrol, have delivered a dwindling amount of revenue as soaring prices at the pump have persuaded people to drive less. The federal government has been unable to get Congress to agree on other ways to generate new sources of funding for transport, to the point where money for new highways has almost dried up."

6) Interest rates are as low as they can possibly go.
7) Every day we continue to neglect our infrastructure problems, they get more and more expensive to fix.
8) Those costs cannot be avoided forever.  They must be faced sooner or later.

So if we borrowed some money and put unemployed people back to work, it would have these advantages:

1) Reduce unemployment checks.
2) Increase income tax revenues.
3) Put money in small businesses so they could hire even more people and pay more income taxes.
4) Reduce the cost of doing business in the U.S. so there would be even more money available to create new jobs.
5) The Great Recession Ends!!!

What's to not like about that deal?  Nothing!!

So why can't the clowns in Washington see that simple fact?????