Control + 1 – Block Headings

1NC – “Infrastructure Investment” = Physical Assets / No Repairs (1/1)

( ) Infrastructure Investment includes only the support for large infrastructure projects – repairs, maintenance, and minor projects aren’t topical

Chang, et. al. 10

(Diana Chang, Sheryl Pankhurst, Matthew Schneer, and Daniel Schreiner, Monitoring and State Improvement Planning Division Recovery Act Facilitators “MSIP ARRA Monitoring and Technical Assistance” leadershipmega-conf-reg.tadnet.org/.../original_S3-105-ARRA_Technical-RAF.ppt)

Financial support for a physical asset or structure needed for the operation of a larger enterprise. Therefore, infrastructure investments include support for tangible assets or structures such as roads, public buildings (including schools), mass transit systems, water and sewage systems, communication and utility systems and other assets or structures that provide a reliable flow of products and services essential to the defense and economic security of the United States, the smooth functioning of government at all levels, and society as a whole. However, an infrastructure investment does not include “minor remodeling” as defined in 34 CFR §77.1(c).’ 
Universal Design is modification, not large infrastructure projects.

Vote negative for limits and ground – they expand the topic by allowing affirmatives that alter transportation instead of increasing it – destroys ground because it makes the topic bidirectional and jacks DA links

States CP

CP Text: The 50 states should cooperate and coordinate to substantially increase investment in Universal Design transportation infrastructure by acquiring all necessary financial resources, infrastructure, personnel, and other resources. The 50 states should hold a press conference to create disability awareness.
States solvency in the status quo – already funding and implementing most projects.

Transport politic 12 [ “Clearing it Up on Federal Transportation Expenditures” Yonah Freemark: February 16th, 2012 : http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2012/02/16/clearing-it-up-on-federal-transportation-expenditures/]
» The federal government has already devolved most of its transportation powers to local and state governments. And there is little evidence that further reducing the power of Washington will produce better transportation investments. The reaction to President Obama’s 2013 budget for transportation has ranged from the dismissive — “it’s too big to be part of the discussion” — to the supportive (myself, among others), most of the commentary revolving around the proposed program’s large size. Another theme, however, has reemerged in the discussion: The role of the federal government in funding transportation. It’s not a new conversation, of course; in American transportation circles, the roles of the three major levels of government are constantly being put into question. The argument goes something like this: The federal government, because of its national power and ability to collect revenues from the fuel taxes it administers, is a wasteful spender and it chooses to invest in projects that are inappropriate enough that they wouldn’t be financed by local governments if they were in charge. Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser argues for the de-federalization of transport spending, suggesting “Whenever the person paying isn’t the person who benefits, there will always be a push for more largesse and little check on spending efficiency. Would Detroit’s People Mover have ever been built if the people of Detroit had to pay for it? We should move toward a system in which states and localities take more responsibility for the infrastructure that serves their citizens.” He also suggests, somewhat contradictorily, that federal funding “tie spending to need or performance.“* USC’s Lisa Schweitzer asserts that if cities want improved sidewalks or public transportation, they should pay for them themselves. ”The typical arguments [are] that “those things are good for us!”,” she writes. “Of course they are. Why can’t you fund them at the city, or in the case of transit, the state level?” [She adds that she will defend federal investment in a future discussion.] Bruce Katz of Brookings chimes in. “The states and metropolitan areas are once again playing their traditional roles as “laboratories of democracy” and centers of economic and policy innovation,” he adds. “An enormous opportunity exists for the next president to mobilize these federalist partners in a focused campaign for national economic renewal.” The federal government, it is implied, is just too intrusive to make the right decisions. Here’s the thing: The large majority of decisions on transportation spending with federal dollars is already made at the state and local levels. And state and local governments already contribute huge sums to the operation, maintenance, and expansion of their transportation programs. Once the federal government collects tax revenue, it distributes funding to the states based on formulas agreed upon by members of Congress. For the most, part, the money goes back to the states and to metropolitan areas, which then fund projects based on the priority lists that they generate. It is true that Washington allocates some money for transit and some for highways, but within those categories, states and local governments generally have power to pay for the projects they want. Washington does run very competitive grant programs — exactly the type of performance-based financing Mr. Glaeser demands — for transit investment projects and for programs like TIGER (and, indeed, for the much-hated high-speed rail program). Federal guidelines require most of these projects (unlike those funded by formula) to meet cost-effectiveness and ridership standards. This was not true at the time of the Detroit People Mover (a project I admit I abhor), but it is certainly true now.*** While earmarks (now out of the equation entirely) got a lot of attention as being wasteful, even at the height of the process they only accounted for about 5% of transportation spending from Washington. I can think of plenty of expensive and arguably inappropriate transit projects paid for by local governments that would not meet the guidelines to be funded by the federal government under its competitive programs. Should we hail Mr. Katz’s “laboratories of democracy” that produced these? Would Mr. Glaeser have these federal grant programs dismantled so states or localities could fund underperforming transit? Meanwhile, states and local governments are contributing massively to transportation funding already, just as Ms. Schweitzer asks them to. I studied Oregon and Illinois a year and a half ago and found that only about a quarter of Oregon’s Department of Transportation budget comes from Washington; about a third of Illinois’ comes from the national capital. What about those profligate transit agencies that are egged on by the federal government’s wasteful spending? Their operations spending comes from local, state, and fare revenues — not Washington. And expansion projects — especially the big ones — are mostly financed by local revenues, like dedicated sales taxes that voters across the country have approved repeatedly over the past twenty years. The six largest transit expansion projects currently receiving or proposed to receive funding from the Obama Administration this year each rely on the federal government to contribute less than 43% of total costs. Perhaps Detroit would have p aid for the People Mover even if it had had to use its own revenues to do so.

Impact Framing

Must evaluate consequences.

Issac 2 [Jeffrey, professor of political science at Indiana University, Dissent, Spring, ebsco]
As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one’s intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is why, from the standpoint of politics—as opposed to religion—pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with “good” may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of “good” that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one’s goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.

Extinction from nukes is qualitatively different – standard calculus doesn’t apply.

Sandberg 8 [Anders, (PhD in Neuroscience and Postdoc Research Fellow @ Future of Humanity Institute), Jason G. Matheny, (Dept. Health Policy and Management @ Johns Hopkins School of Public Helath), and Milan M. Cirkovic, (Senior Research Associate @ Research Observatory of Belgrade, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “How can we reduce the risk of human extinction?” 9-9, http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/how-can-we-reduce-the-risk-of-human-extinction]
Such remote risks may seem academic in a world plagued by immediate problems, such as global poverty, HIV, and climate change. But as intimidating as these problems are, they do not threaten human existence. In discussing the risk of nuclear winter, Carl Sagan emphasized the astronomical toll of human extinction: A nuclear war imperils all of our descendants, for as long as there will be humans. Even if the population remains static, with an average lifetime of the order of 100 years, over a typical time period for the biological evolution of a successful species (roughly ten million years), we are talking about some 500 trillion people yet to come. By this criterion, the stakes are one million times greater for extinction than for the more modest nuclear wars that kill "only" hundreds of millions of people. There are many other possible measures of the potential loss--including culture and science, the evolutionary history of the planet, and the significance of the lives of all of our ancestors who contributed to the future of their descendants. Extinction is the undoing of the human enterprise. There is a discontinuity between risks that threaten 10 percent or even 99 percent of humanity and those that threaten 100 percent. For disasters killing less than all humanity, there is a good chance that the species could recover. If we value future human generations, then reducing extinction risks should dominate our considerations. Fortunately, most measures to reduce these risks also improve global security against a range of lesser catastrophes, and thus deserve support regardless of how much one worries about extinction. These measures include: * Removing nuclear weapons from hair-trigger alert and further reducing their numbers.

Only risk analysis of multiple alternatives can provide a stable rational basis for decision-making

Fitzsimmons 6

Michael Fitzsimmons is a defence analyst in Washington DC. Survival | vol. 48 no. 4 |

Winter 2006–07 | pp.131–146The Problem of Uncertainty in Strategic Planning http://pdfserve.informaworld.com/845968_731197592_759314294.pdf
For all of its importance, however, recognition of uncertainty poses a dilemma for strategists: in predicting the future, they are likely to be wrong; but in resisting prediction, they risk clouding the rational bases for making strategic choices. Over-confidence in prediction may lead to good preparation for the wrong future, but wholesale dismissal of prediction may lead a strategist to spread his resources too thinly. In pursuit of flexibility, he ends up well prepared for nothing. A natural compromise is to build strategies that are robust across multiple alternative future events but are still tailored to meet the challenges of the most likely future events. Recent US national security strategy, especially in the Department of Defense, has veered from this middle course and placed too much emphasis on the roleof uncertainty. This emphasis, paradoxically, illustrates the hazards of both too much allowance for uncertainty and too little. Current policies on nuclear-force planning and the results of the recent Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR)are examples of overreaching for strategic flexibility. The record of planning for post-war operations in Iraq, by contrast, indicates that decision-makers, in enlisting uncertainty as a rationale for discounting one set of predictions, havefallen prey to overconfidence in their own alternative set of predictions. A more balanced approach to accounting for uncertainty in strategic planning would address a wide range of potential threats and security challenges, but would also incorporate explicit, transparent, probabilistic reasoning into planning processes. The main benefit of such an approach would not necessarily be more precise predictions of the future, but rather greater clarity and discipline applied to the difficult judgements about the future upon which strategy depends.

Last printed 9/4/2009 7:00:00 PM