What would it cost if the nation’s crumbling infrastructure of bridges, roads, rails, sewer systems, power grids, airports and more is allowed to deteriorate at its current pace? Some 3.5 million jobs and $3.1 trillion in lost economic output by 2020. What would it cost to avoid that? About $1.1 trillion in additional investment.

Sure sounds like a great return on the investment and it is, according to a new report from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). The study, Failure to Act, finds that:

Ninety-two years ago yesterday, U.S. women won the right to vote.

The Indiana State AFL-CIO mentioned in an e-mail yesterday, Rose Schneiderman, who headed the Women’s Trade Union League, explained in 1918:

We want to tell our Senators that the working women of our State demand the vote as an economic necessity. We need it because we are workers and because the workers are the ones that have to carry civilization on their backs.

The anniversary is a good time to reflect on how women would fare under a Romney-Ryan administration.

New data showing U.S. median net worth plunged by nearly 40 percent following the not-so-Great Recession is getting big media play today. Pundits are shocked—which gated communities do they live in again?—but the Federal Reserve figures showing individuals’ net worth dropped from $126,400 in 2008 to $77,300 in 2010 doesn’t come as a surprise to most Americans. They’ve been struggling to find jobs in an economy where there still are more than three job seekers for ever one available.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are holding hostage the America Dream.

The U.S. House yesterday removed a major roadblock to a long-term reauthorization of the Surface Transportation Act when it approved (293-127) funding for highways, roads, bridges and transit systems through Sept. 30.

Uncertainty over whether Congress will fund transportation infrastructure not only endangers drivers and airline passengers, but creates a credit risk for companies involved, according to a new study by Standard & Poor's.

Instead of acting on a long-term, bipartisan surface transportation bill, House Republican leaders today pushed and passed another short-term extension, just hours before they are due to leave town on a two-week recess. Funding authorization expires Saturday, and the Senate is expected to approve the 90-day extension.

A new report sheds light on how the shrinking middle class can be tied to a growing decline of America’s roads, bridges, transit systems and energy grids—because "high levels of economic inequality have distorted our democratic process."

A week ago, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters his plan was to take up the Senate’s bipartisan highway bill, which will create or save nearly 3 million jobs. Now he refuses.

The U.S. Senate today passed (77-22) a bipartisan surface transportation bill. The two-year, $100 billion funding bill will create hundreds of thousands of jobs and help build and maintain the nation’s highways, roads, bridges and transit systems. The current funding runs out March 31. The bill now goes to the House, which introduced a job-killing, partisan version earlier this year.

In an astounding display of economic shortsightedness, House Republicans want to cut transportation and transit infrastructure funding so deeply that it would cost half a million jobs next year alone and send the nation’s highways, bridges and transit systems into even deeper disrepair.