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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.
Accraording to the passage, the determining factor for the US’s will to bring its infrastructure into the 21st century is______.
选项 A、federal investment
B、public outrage
C、public awakening
D、bipartisan consensus
答案A
解析 文中有几个地方可以看出美国基础设施能否得到改造的核心问题。首先，第一段最后一句，“经历了二十余年的投资不足之后，这些基础设施已破败不堪，而美国人也已适应了这种现实。”这里第一次提到了投资。其次，第二段在提到未来的一年可以检验美国是否有改造其基础设施的决心之后，接下来一整段都是在解释美国国会的财政预算和投资问题。再次，在最后一段关于第三个担忧的论述中，作者提到由于两党不能达成共识，国会不能按照奥巴马的要求建立一家公共基础设施银行，也不能时基础设施建设计划进行投资。纵观全文，可见联邦投资是决定能否进行基础设施改造的关键性因素。因此A选项正确。BCD分别是影响美国基础设施能否得到改造的三个重要因素，也是作者担忧的三个方面，但是从根源上来说，都不是其决定性因素。
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