Smoking Gun Over A Smoking Bridge

"We never could have anticipated that bridge would fall"

That's not a real quote, but it might as well be. Check it out:

Via Rick Perlstein:

This excellent diary on Daily Kos lays out the story. The summary:

1. In May 2005, bipartisan transportation bill which would have added an extra $300 million a year to MnDoT was shot down by Pawlenty to avoid raising taxes.

2. This move effectively bankrupted MnDoT until early this year (and this year, of course, there have still been snags in getting the funding).

3. Minnesotans approved the spending by ballot in November 2006...

4. ...but even that spending was insufficient to cover the expected problems.

But nobody could have predicted the levees would... oh, wait, wrong infrastructure disaster.

By the way, this May another transportation bill went through the legislature... with a vetoproof majority. Pawlenty proceeded to veto it anyway. Congress failed to override the veto. So, in addition to there being no money to watch out for problems, there's still no money to fix the problems. Comforting, isn't it?

The cause of the failure still hasn't been conclusively decided. But I don't think there's much doubt.