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  3. It is hard to pinpoint the date at which Americans developed an Indian—or perhaps British fatalism about the declining quality o

It is hard to pinpoint the date at which Americans developed an Indian—or perhaps British fatalism about the declining quality o

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问题     It is hard to pinpoint the date at which Americans developed an Indian—or perhaps British fatalism about the declining quality of their infrastructure. When my British mother spent several months in the US in the 1950s, it was dazzlingly futuristic. There was air conditioning, an icebox in every fridge, ubiquitous neon lights and an open road on which even the working class could afford to drive. But bit by bit over the past 30 years, the world’s first truly modern infrastructure has shown its age. It has been starved by a generation of under-investment. And Americans have adapted around it.
    At some point in the next 12 months, we will discover whether the US has the will to bring its infrastructure into the 21st century. If all goes well, Congress will take steps to avert a fiscal cliff before January 1. As part of that deal lawmakers will schedule another ticking time bomb for late 2013, before which they will have to strike a larger bargain or hit another fiscal cliff. The likelihood is that Congress will shrink the already meagre federal investment budget. The hope, as the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Center puts it, is that Congress will "cut to invest" rather than doing so crudely across the board.
    There are three reasons to worry. First, there is remarkably little public outrage over the dilapidation in the power grid, public roads, domestic airports and waterways. This means that lawmakers will be feeling stronger pressures in other directions(such as defending the existing low level of capital gains tax, for example, or maintaining job-creating defence budgets). It is hard to fly domestically in the US and not at regular intervals face heavy delays, cancellations or being bumped off your flight. It is also hard not to miss the impressively stoical reaction of most passengers.
    Second, most Americans are unaware of how far behind the rest of the world their country has fallen. According to the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness report, US infrastructure ranks below 20th in most of the nine categories, and below 30 for quality of air transport and electricity supply. The US gave birth to the internet the kind of decentralised network that the US power grid desperately needs, yet according to the OECD club of mostly rich nations, average US internet speeds are barely a 10th of those in countries such as South Korea and Germany. In an age where the global IT superhighway is no longer a slogan, this is no joke. The budding US entrepreneur can survive gridlocked traffic, but a slow internet can be crippling.
    Third, it may be asking too much of Washington in its present state of polarisation to give the green light to an ambitious infrastructure plan. In a departure from their party’s traditions, many Republicans are now ideologically opposed to any serious federal role in infrastructure and want to decentralise it to the states. It is thus also a stretch to imagine Congress setting up a public infrastructure bank, as President Barack Obama has requested. The bank would use $ 10bn in seed money to leverage a multiple of that in private money for cross-state projects much like the European Investment Bank. The chances are it will stay on the drawing board.
Which one of the following is not a reason to worry about the US’s will to bring its infrastructure into the 21st century?
选项 A、Most Americans are remarkbly tolerant over the di lapidation of their infrastructure.
B、Most Americans have no idea how far behind the rest of the world their country has fallen.
C、The two parlies could not reach an agreement on an ambitious infrastructure plan.
D、President Obama opposed to any serious federal role in infrastructure.
答案D
解析 第二段讲到美国是否能让其基础设施也步入21世纪，关键是看能否将其纳入未来国会财政预算，关于此，有三个原因值得担忧，作者接下来用三段分别解释，每一段的第一句就是原因的总结。ABC分别就是这三个原因，只不过是换了种说法。需要注意的是。本题不是“选是”，而是“选非”，正确答案应该是文中所述三个原因之外的说法。D不是原因之一，而且，D的说法本身就是错误的，在第三个关于两党不能就基础设施建设的宏伟计划达成一致的解释里面，作者提到“与共和党传统相悖的是，许多共和党人如今在意识形态上反对联邦在基础设施建设上履行任何重要职能”，而奥巴马总统是民主党，且是支持联邦政府在基础设施建设上发挥作用的，因此C描述错误，C是本题正确答案。
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