By Mike Papantonio

Last year, 13 people were killed in Minneapolis when a bridge collapsed because our government couldn’t spend the money on critical repairs. Two years before, New Orleans was destroyed and 1,500 people were killed because there was so little money to go around to fix the levees.

The system of maintaining America’s infrastructure in the last eight years has been referred to as “patch and pray.” The no-regulation, no-tax approach to government was unleashed on all of us in 2000. It was as if a giant clown car pulled up to a curb somewhere in our nation’s capital and unloaded a gaggle of politicos who had no real understanding about why tax revenues matter. They called themselves fiscal conservatives.

America’s infrastructure is crumbling because no-tax demagogues have some Americans believing that they can have quality bridges, roads, police and fire departments, schools, libraries and national parks without ever making a sacrifice. The math is not complicated. We can’t maintain bridges and roads while we have a debt of $9 trillion.

When we’re spending $12 billion a month on a desert war that 60 percent of Americans want behind us, it’s pretty tough to build new airports, or replace decrepit, leaking pipes that deliver our nation’s drinking water.

We have seen what fiscal conservatism really means by GOP standards. It means giving the wealthiest part of America a $300 billion tax break. Now, John McCain, the new GOP presidential hopeful wants to put in place massive corporate tax cuts to the tune of about $2 trillion in the next ten years.

For eight years, the far-right Grover Norquist no-tax disciples have had their chance to show us what GOP fiscal conservationism looks like. Here it is:

Public schools can’t afford to keep their doors open. According to the government’s own numbers, almost a third of America’s bridges not only need serious repair, they are also overburdened with traffic. One-third of our major roadways are in such disrepair that they pose safety risks for drivers. More than a trillion gallons of untreated sewage leaks every year out of our aging underground sewage systems.

Norquist, the poster boy for no-tax, no-government, and no-quality-of-life except for the wealthy has always been McCain’s biggest critic. He once referred to McCain as the “nut job from Arizona” who is a “tax-increasing Bolshevik.”

But now it is clear that the nut job looks much more attractive to Norquist’s wealth class, which has very little to worry about when public schools can’t operate or when our roads crumble—especially as they send their children to private schools and close the gates in their gated communities where roads and bridges are likely to be in good shape.

For eight years, the Bush crowd was spinning a fantasy story by telling us that all those tax breaks for America’s wealthiest population would trickle down to everyone. America would be a better place. But America does not become a better place without sacrifice. We have to pay for war. Bridges, roads, schools, parks and power grids cost money. So let this question trickle down through the minds of the Norquist crowd. Where to we get the money?