Interstate Highways

When President Obama discovered much to his chagrin, that there were no shovel ready projects, I was reminded of the Interstate Highway project as an example of how government is supposed to work. In 1956 a Republican President Dwight Eisenhower with a democratic house and senate passed The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. The vote in the senate was 89 to 1 and in the house it passed 388 to 19. At the time it was the largest peace time government project in history. It was paid for by a fuel tax. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act (Public Law 84-627), was enacted on June 29, 1956, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law. With an original authorization of 25 billion dollars for the construction of 41,000 miles (66,000 km) of the Interstate Highway System supposedly over a 10-year period, it was the largest public works project in American history through that time.[1]