Topicality Core – Papered Version – Voss DDI 2012
Topicality – Dartmouth 2012
The United States federal government should substantially increase its transportation infrastructure investment in the United States.
***“Transportation Infrastructure Investment” – Negative 5
1NC – “Transportation Infrastructure Investment” = Private Investment (1/1) 6
Ext. Must Be PPP (1/1) 7
1NC – “Transportation Infrastructure Investment” = Asset Networks (1/1) 8
***“Transportation Infrastructure Investment” – Affirmative 9
“Transportation Infrastructure Investment” – General (1/1) 10
AT//Must be PPP (1/1) 11
***“Transportation Infrastructure” – Negative 12
1NC – Not Water/Energy/Social/Communication Infrastructure (1/2) 13
1NC – Not Water/Energy/Social/Communication Infrastructure (2/2) 14
Ext. “TI” Excludes Other Forms (General) (1/4) 15
Ext. “TI” Excludes Other Forms (General) (2/4) 16
Ext. “TI” Excludes Other Forms (General) (3/4) 17
Ext. “TI” Excludes Other Forms (General) (4/4) 18
AT//Water (1/1) 19
AT//Coastal Defense (1/1) 20
AT//Farming / Agriculture (1/1) 21
AT//Timber / Forests / Desalination (1/1) 22
AT//Communication Infrastructure (1/1) 23
AT//Space (1/1) 24
AT//Satellites (1/1) 25
AT//Postal Services (1/1) 26
AT//Energy Infrastructure (1/1) 27
AT//Electricity Generation (1/1) 28
AT//Pipelines (1/2) 29
AT//Pipelines (2/2) 30
AT//Social / Soft Infrastructure (1/1) 31
AT//Military Infrastructure (1/1) 32
***“Transportation Infrastructure” – Affirmative 33
General Inclusive Definitions of “Transportation Infrastructure” (1/4) 34
General Inclusive Definitions of “Transportation Infrastructure” (2/4) 35
General Inclusive Definitions of “Transportation Infrastructure” (3/4) 36
General Inclusive Definitions of “Transportation Infrastructure” (4/4) 37
Pipelines = “Transportation Infrastructure” (1/5) 38
Pipelines = “Transportation Infrastructure” (2/5) 39
Pipelines = “Transportation Infrastructure” (3/5) 40
Pipelines = “Transportation Infrastructure” (4/5) 41
Pipelines = “Transportation Infrastructure” (5/5) 42
Green Infrastructure = “Transportation Infrastructure” (1/1) 43
Military = “Transportation Infrastructure” (1/1) 44
***“Infrastructure Investment” – Negative 45
1NC – “Infrastructure Investment” = Physical Assets / No Repairs (1/1) 46
Ext. Must Be Physical Assets (1/2) 47
Ext. Must Be Physical Assets (2/2) 48
AT//Green Projects (1/1) 49
AT//Environmental Cleanup Projects (1/1) 50
1NC – “Infrastructure Investment” = Sector-Specific Investment (1/1) 51
Ext. Must Be a Specific Sector (1/1) 52
1NC – “Infrastructure Investment” = Environmentally Friendly (1/1) 53
***“Infrastructure Investment” – Affirmative 54
General Inclusive Definitions of “Infrastructure Investment” (1/2) 55
General Inclusive Definitions of “Infrastructure Investment” (2/2) 56
***“Investment” – Negative 57
1NC “Investment” = Capital Expenditure (1/1) 58
Ext. “Investment” = Capital Expenditures (1/2) 59
Ext. “Investment” = Capital Expenditures (2/2) 60
Ext. Capital Expenditure = New Assets (1/1) 61
AT//Training / R&D (1/1) 62
AT//Maintenance / Repairs (1/1) 63
AT//Short-Term Fixes (1/1) 64
***“Investment” – Affirmative 65
Investment = Spending (1/1) 66
Investment – Can Be Nonprofit (1/1) 67
***Infrastructure – Definitions 68
Infrastructure – General Definitions (1/1) 69
***“In the United States” – Definitions 70
“In the United States” – General Definitions (1/1) 71
“United States” – General Definitions (1/1) 72
“In” – Throughout (1/1) 73
“In” – Within (1/2) 74
“In” – Within (2/2) 75
“The” – General Definitions (1/1) 76
***“Should” – Definitions 77
Should – General Definitions (1/2) 78
Should – General Definitions (2/2) 79
***“Substantially” – Definitions 80
Substantial / Substantially – General Definitions (1/2) 81
Substantial / Substantially – General Definitions (2/2) 82
***“Increase” – Definitions 83
“Increase” – General Definitions (1/2) 84
“Increase” – General Definitions (2/2) 85
***Negative Topicality Theory 86
Err Negative – 1st Line (1/1) 87
Competing Interpretations Good – 1st Line (1/1) 88
Fairness 1st (1/1) 89
Limits Good (1/1) 90
Ext. Limits Good (1/1) 91
Framers’ Intent Good (1/2) 92
Framers’ Intent Good (2/2) 93
Grammar’s Good (1/2) 94
Grammar’s Good (2/2) 95
AT//Aff Flexibility (1/1) 96
AT//Breadth > Depth (1/1) 97
AT//Literature Checks Abuse (1/1) 98
AT//Clash Checks Abuse (1/1) 99
AT//Disclosure Checks Abuse (1/1) 100
AT//Not a Voting Issue (1/1) 101
AT//Reasonability (1/1) 102
AT//Critiques of Topicality (1/1) 103
***Affirmative Topicality Theory 104
Err Affirmative – 1st Line (1/1) 105
Competing Interpretations Bad / Reasonability Good 2AC (1/2) 106
Competing Interpretations Bad / Reasonability Good 2AC (2/2) 107
Competing Interpretations Bad / Reasonability Good 1AR (1/1) 108
Competing Interpretations Bad / Reasonability Good 2AR (1/1) 109
AT//Reasonability is Arbitrary (1/1) 110
AT//Potential Abuse / It’s What They Justify (1/5) 111
AT//Potential Abuse / It’s What They Justify (2/5) 112
AT//Potential Abuse / It’s What They Justify (3/5) 113
AT//Potential Abuse / It’s What They Justify (4/5) 114
AT//Potential Abuse / It’s What They Justify (5/5) 115
AT//Offense-Defense (1/1) 117
AT//Framers’ Intent (1/2) 118
AT//Framers’ Intent (2/2) 119
AT//Limits (1/1) 120
AT//Grammar (1/2) 121
AT//Grammar (2/2) 122
***“Transportation Infrastructure Investment” – Negative
1NC – “Transportation Infrastructure Investment” = Private Investment (1/1)
( ) Transportation infrastructure investment requires private-sector participation
Khasnabis and Mishra ‘9
[Professor of Civil Engineering and Graduate Student of Engineering – Wayne State. “Developing and Testing a Framework for Alternative Ownership, Tenure and Governance Strategies for Proposed Detroit-Windsor River Crossing. Feb 2009. http://www.utoledo.edu/research/ututc/docs/UTUTC-IU-1_Final_Report1.pdf]
Transportation infrastructure investments typically undertaken by the public sector, has recently attracted private entities, thereby forming a joint participation commonly referred to as Public Private Partnership (PPP). Financing techniques are developed to provide various forms of ownership, tenure and governance (OTG) strategies. There are a number of reasons for the growing trend of private participation in public projects. These include, the scarcity of fiscal resources at the public sector level, the perception that the private sector is more efficient in managing (construct, operate, and maintain) large projects, and sharing risks and uncertainties with the private sector, thereby reducing exposure levels to financial losses for both entities. Most investment decisions share three important characteristics in varying degrees. First, the investment is partially or completely irreversible in that the funds invested are completely “sunk” in the project. Thus the agency or agencies responsible for managing the project, must be fully committed to the project once the investment is made. Second, there are uncertainties over the future outcome from the investment. One way to address this is to assess the probabilities of the alternative outcomes that can mean greater or smaller profit (or loss) for the investment. The third characteristic is related to timing of the investment. With proper planning, investment decisions can be postponed until credible information about future outcomes may be available. These three characteristics interact to determine the optimal decision of investors (Weston and Brigham 1976).
Vote negative for limits and ground – private-sector participation sets a limit on the topic by trimming down the number of potential affirmatives and ensures stable market-based disadvantage ground.
Ext. Must Be PPP (1/1)
( ) Investment must include public-private partnerships – anything else distorts the topic
Heller 9
(Peter S., Former Deputy Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department – International Monetary Fund and Currently Senior Adjunct Professor of International Economics – Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at The Johns Hopkins University, “Public Investment: Vital for Growth and Renewal, But Should it be a Countercyclical Weapon?”, http://www.unctad.org/en/Docs/webdiae20091_en.pdf)
While any capital outlay of a government would be defined as “public investment” in normal budgetary classification terms, this approach sidesteps a number of important conceptual issues. First, from a normative public finance perspective, the reason that governments spend on public assets is because some form of market failure is present that either leads to inefficient provision by the private sector or entails excess rents to a private producer. Specifically, the asset gives off externalities, positive or negative, or the asset is a “public good,” whose services are subject to “nonrivalness” in consumption or where it is difficult to exclude potential consumers. Or, there are economies of scale involved, such that a natural monopoly situation would be entailed, justifying either public provision or regulation of a private monopoly. Many kinds of infrastructural networks are subject to such natural monopoly conditions. Moreover, the public sector’s role in public investment is not limited to its own budgetary spending. A simple focus on government outlays may yield too narrow a picture of the level of public investments and more importantly, a too restricted perspective on the potential role played by governments with regard to the provision of public infrastructure. Most obviously, when the government collaborates in a public-private partnership (PPP), most outlays will normally be made by private sector entities. Yet the purpose of these outlays would be to provide goods or services for which there is justified public involvement. And the government’s role in relation to the PPP arrangement—in terms of monitoring, regulation, risk bearing, and ultimately purchaser of the asset (long in the future perhaps but part of the PPP contractual terms)—will still remain prominent. Similarly, in cases where the private sector invests in the production of goods characterized by natural monopoly conditions, government regulatory involvement is called for. In other spheres of private investment, a government regulatory or planning role may also be fundamental in order to take account of public policy objectives (in the case of externalities), though such investments would still be recognized as private. The challenge of classifying public investment is rendered even more complex in the context of privatization efforts, where the sale of a government asset is classified, in budgetary terms, as a “negative investment,” though in fact the transaction simply represents a reclassification of ownership. The complexities of measuring public investment and the changes in the definitions that have occurred over time has led the OECD, in its recent effort to analyze the linkage between public investment and growth, to rely on indicators of physical stock rather than measures of the financial value of public investment or the net value of its capital stock. Rather than being misled by a narrow budgetary classification, what is important to recognize are the ways in which governments have a responsibility in the creation of capital goods and their need to intervene, particularly when market failure leads to underspending on goods vital for the realization of public policy objectives.
( ) More evidence – “infrastructure investment” is a term of art that excludes pubic investment
Kappeler and Valilia, 07
[Director of the Institute of East European Studies University of Vienna and **Senior economist at the European Investment Bank ( 2007, *Andreas and **Timo, “ Economic Financial Report: Introduction,” http://www.eib.org/attachments/efs/efr_2007_v02_en.pdf)
Public investment has received only limited academic attention as an aggregate variable, and its composition has to our knowledge received none at all, at least in the European context. This paper seeks to fill that gap at least in part by presenting some stylised facts about the composition of public investment in Europe and by presenting an empirical analysis of what drives different types of public investment, with a special focus on the impact of fiscal federalism. Perhaps because of lack of academic attention, misconceptions abound concerning the nature, drivers, and impact of public investment. Most notably, there is often confusion about what it is in the first place. Perhaps the most prominent example of this type of confusion is the customary synonymous use of “public investment” and “infrastructure investment” in much of economic literature. There is, however, a great deal of infrastructure investment that is not public, and there is a great deal of public investment that is not infrastructure investment. While it is well-known that many roads, water and sanitation networks, and municipal swimming pools are publicly funded and provided, neither economic theory nor empirical analyses have really distinguished between them when studying what determines “public investment” or how productive “public investment” is. As a starting point for a more nuanced analysis and understanding of public investment, we first break it down into different types with distinctly different economic characteristics in section 2. We then propose to use the traditional theory of fiscal federalism and some of its more recent extensions, reviewed in section 3, to derive hypotheses about the link between fiscal decentralisation and the composition of public investment. Section 4 seeks to articulate empirical tests of the hypotheses, and their results are interpreted from an economic perspective in section 5, before concluding in section 6. 3
1NC – “Transportation Infrastructure Investment” = Asset Networks (1/1)
Transportation infrastructure investment must generate productive asset networks
Hulten ‘4
(Charles R. Hulten, Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Member of the Advisory Committee of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, 08/2004, Revised 02/2005, http://econweb.umd.edu/~hulten/WebPageFiles/Transportation%20Infrastructure,%20Productivity,%20and%20Externaliti.pdf)
The idea that transportation infrastructure is a type of capital investment distinct from other forms of capital is an accepted part of the fields of economic development, location theory, urban and regional economics, and, of course, transport economics. In his classic treatise, Albert O. Hirschman (1958) classifies transport infrastructure systems as “social overhead capital (SOC)” to distinguish it from the type of capital that is used directly by industry to produce their goods and services (e.g., plant and equipment), which he calls “directly productive assets (DPA).” 1 Hirschman points to four characteristics that distinguish SOC from DPA: (1) SOC is basic to (and facilitates) a great variety of economic activities, (2) it is typically provided by the public sector or by regulated private agencies, (3) it cannot be imported, and (4) it is “lumpy” in the sense of technical indivisibilities. He also argues that the function of SOC investment is to “ignite” DPA, and that “Investment in SOC is advocated not because of its direct effect on final output, but because it permits, and in fact, invites, DPA to come in (page 84).” A more modern treatment of these issues would frame in terms of the economic theory of partial public goods, or “clubs,” modified to include network theory. Roads and highways, for example, are lumpy joint use networks with many different simultaneous users and uses. Unlike “private good” DPA investments, the conditions for optimal provision involve the summation of benefits across the different users (“members of the club”), adjusted for congestion effects. Moreover, the benefits associated with any one segment of the network (or ‘mini-club’) depend on the size and configuration of the entire network, and not just with that segment. Spillover externalities between network segments are therefore potentially important. So are Hirschman’s “igniting” effects, since the addition or expansion of key networks effects can have a magnified effect throughout the network. The example in the U.S. of the intercontinental railroads which opened up the western regions
***“Transportation Infrastructure Investment” – Affirmative
“Transportation Infrastructure Investment” – General (1/1)
( ) Transportation Infrastructure Investment involves the purchase and construction of facilities
Department of Transportation 03 (U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, "Transportation Investment-Concepts, Data and Analysis," draft, compiled based on data from U.S. Department of Commerce (USDOC), Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), "Fixed Assets and Consumer Durables," and personal communications with BEA; and USDOC, U.S. Census Bureau, "Value of Construction Put in Place Statistics," Detailed Construction Expenditure Tables, available at http://www.census. gov, as of February 2003. http://www.bts.gov/publications/transportation_statistics_annual_report/2003/html/chapter_02/figure_109.html )