No Excuse to Oppose Infrastructure Jobs

This week, the Senate is expected to vote on the President's infrastructure jobs plan, which is paid for by scaling back tax giveaways for people who make more than a million dollars a year.

CORE MESSAGE

The choice is clear: jobs rebuilding our roads and bridges OR tax giveaways for millionaires.

Connect: We need to fix the roads, bridges, and airports that keep America's economy running.

Define: The President's plan will put Americans back to work right away rebuilding them -- putting money in the pockets of working Americans and more customers in our stores.

No excuse: These are bipartisan ideas that Republicans in Congress have supported before and admit will create jobs.

Discredit: Choosing millionaire tax giveaways instead may fit the Republican political strategy of keeping the economy from getting better on Obama's watch, but it doesn't put their constituents back to work.

Contrast: They can choose more jobs for their constituents fixing bridges and roads in their own states OR more millionaire tax giveaways that reward their campaign donors.

ATTACKS AND RESPONSES

"The last round of infrastructure spending failed to deliver on jobs as promised."

• They should try telling that to the millions of Americans who have jobs because of the stimulus - including over a million workers in construction and manufacturing.
• Economists say President Obama's jobs plan will put hundreds of thousands of construction workers back to work fixing our crumbling roads, bridges, and airports.

"Infrastructure spending is a union bailout."

• Jobs are jobs. Politicians who would keep Americans jobless and our roads crumbling just for political reasons are putting their ideology ahead of what's best for our country.
• Construction workers should be paid a fair wage for their work and the decent benefits they need to take care of their families. When they join together through unions, they can make sure that happens.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

• Nearly 3 out of 4 Americans support federal funding to rebuild our infrastructure -- and the Rebuild America Jobs Act would do just that by investing in roads, railways, and airports and spurring more private sector investment in our infrastructure.
• If we don't invest in our crumbling roads, bridges, and airports now, it will cost nearly 1 million Americans their jobs and our economy nearly $1 trillion over the next ten years.
• We don't want America to fall behind, but America spends only half of what Europe spends and just a quarter of what China spends on improving their railways, bridges, and highways.
• Washington Republicans oppose the President's plan to create millions of jobs by rebuilding America's infrastructure -- even though the roads, bridges, and highways in their home states and districts are falling apart and they have supported similar proposals in the past.

We develop messaging by aggregating, analyzing and distilling polling, tested messaging, and expert recommendations, and monitoring the media to identify what is and isn't working. See here for some of the experts and organizations we draw on.