MGW12 - HSR Aff - 1ACs 1AC Policy Version Plan The United...

1ACs

1AC – Policy Version
Plan: The United States federal government should substantially increase its investment in
a national alternative energy powered high-speed rail network.
Contention 1: Inherency
High Speed Rail funding is blocked – transportation sq funding only goes to maintaining
current infrastructure
Goozner
, Award-winning journalist. Has been published by the New York Times, The Washington Post, etc. ,
June 24, 2012( Merrill, House Puts the Brakes on High Speed Rail
, June 24, 2012
,
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/06/24/House-Puts-the-Brakes-on-High-Speed-Rail.aspx#page1, June
25, 2012) pg. 1
(
House Republicans, however, are blocking all new grants arguing that repairing current systems is the priority.
“Funding should go to existing infrastructure needs rather than unrealistic new high-speed rail lines to nowhere,” the
appropriations committee report accompanying the legislation said. The program, now funded by regular
appropriations, was axed from the Transportation Department funding bill last week, drawing a veto threat from the
president. The effort to cage the TIGER grants is only the latest effort by House conservatives to slow down or
eliminate funding for mass transit, freight rail and high-speed rail projects, which they see as a waste of money on
“trains to nowhere.” Last February, the initial House reauthorization of the surface transportation trust fund, which
allocates the gasoline tax, eliminated the 20 percent set-aside for rail projects that was established by President
Ronald Reagan in 1982. Only a revolt by Republican legislators from the suburbs outside New York City,
Philadelphia and Chicago forced House Transportation Committee chairman John Mica, R-Fla., to withdraw the bill.
Now, with a June 30 th deadline looming, the summer road construction season could grind to a halt if Congress
doesn’t at least extend the current law.
A conference committee led by Mica and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Cal., must wrestle with a set of
extraneous provisions attached to the two-year, $109 billion extension pushed by the House. They range from approving the Keystone oil pipeline
from Canada to giving utilities more flexibility in how they dump coal ash.)
Contention 2: Competitiveness
Current transportation investment goes to maintaining the current highway system. This
focus kills US economic competitiveness
BAF
Ed Fund, bipartisan coalition of elected officials focused on US investment in infrastructure,
2011
[Building
America’s Future Educational Fund, “Building America’s Future – Falling Apart and Falling Behind,”
Transportation Infrastructure Report] SM
In stark contrast to our
most agile and aggressive
foreign competitors
, the
U.S. stands increasingly alone in our failure to
reorient our transportation spending according to a new forward-looking vision that could build a
transportation
network fit for a 21st-century economy
.