Senator Schumer appeared yesterday at the base of what a press release from his office described as the “iconic and aging Brooklyn Bridge” for an ambulance-chasing press conference following the collapse of a bridge in Minnesota. The senator complained that “For far too long, highways and bridges in New York and across the country have been allowed to degrade to the point of dangerous disrepair.”

Funny, when The New York Sun ran an editorial about the decrepit state of the Brooklyn Bridge, we got a letter to the editor from Mr. Schumer’s wife, Iris Weinshall, who was then the city’s transportation commissioner. “I wanted to let your readers know how we make repair and painting decisions for New York City’s bridges — and assure them that our treasured Brooklyn Bridge does not suffer from ‘neglect,'” Ms. Weinshall wrote in the letter we published September 13, 2006.

“As the Commissioner of the Department of Transportation,” she continued, “I am responsible for not only the Brooklyn Bridge but hundreds of other bridges in our City. And since the mid-1980’s, DOT has spent just under $4 billion on maintaining the four East River bridges alone. … New Yorkers can rest assured that we will continue to do whatever it takes to keep them all in good condition.”

Now we have great regard for Ms. Weinshall and her husband. But Mr. Schumer yesterday complained that not enough money had been spent on bridge repair, announcing he wants to spend $5 billion more than the $5 billion already in the Senate’s version of the 2008 transportation appropriations bill. If the Senate approves it, it’ll be spent on subsidizing unionized workforces that make even a simple paint job of the Brooklyn Bridge cost $85 million.

As we wrote in our August 29, 2006, editorial, “No Way To Treat a Bridge,” the one that prompted the letter from Ms. Weinshall, “an enterprising New Yorker could take the $85 million, hire 50 union painters at $1 million apiece, tell them to work for a year and buy their own paint, and still have $35 million left over in profits to spend on work by less expensive painters, like, say, Pablo Picasso.”

As for Mr. Schumer, so far as we can tell, his main transportation priority for the past few years hasn’t been bridge maintenance but the construction of a one-seat railway ride to John F. Kennedy International Airport from Lower Manhattan. The Minnesota bridge collapse is a disaster to which it would be wise to react to prevent a repetition in New York, and if Mr. Schumer wants to direct more money from Washington in the city’s direction, we’re not going to complain too hard.

At the end of the day, though, no matter how aggressive Mr. Schumer is in bringing home the spending, the city and its suburbs are high-income areas that are going to send more money to Washington than they get back. Money routed through Washington tends to repair not just useful bridges such as the ones over the East River but also bridges to nowhere such as the one championed by politicians from Alaska.

The role of the private sector in infrastructure development and upkeep tends to be overlooked. The Brooklyn Bridge itself, after all, was built, in the first place, by a private company — albeit one in which the cities of Brooklyn and New York were investors. It intended to charge a toll and make a profit. It would be worth going back to that first principle and have Mr. Schumer work to cut taxes in Washington and let New Yorkers take care of our own bridges.