Infrastructure cliche crumbles under facts
because a truck driver carrying an oversized load ignored posted warnings. It would have collapsed if it had been brandnew. And the Minnesota collapse was the result of a construction defect.
Meanwhile, the conditions of our bridges have been improving consistently for the last two decades.
Of course some American infrastructure could use updating. The problem, however, isn’t under-investment. In 2014, according to the Congressional Budget Office, federal state and local governments spent $416 billion on infrastructure. The real problem is that we don’t spend money on the right problems.
A recent expose by The New York Times showed that politicians and the unions that own them are to blame for the Big Apple’s deteriorating subway system. For years they’ve raided transportation funds for pet projects, like failing upstate ski resorts.
Beyond New York, a perfect storm of ribbon-cutting fetishizing, environmentalism and envy of other countries has led to high-speed-rail mania. Although zippy trains are nifty, they zoom past the fact America has the best rail system — for our needs. In Europe, trucks move goods and trains move people. In America, we do it the other way around.
Trump’s proposal does include a few worthwhile ambitions, such as streamlining the approval process for public works and improving incentives to come in under budget.
The Trump plan, however, would leave it to Congress to figure out how to deboondoggle-ize infrastructure projects, which is not a cause for optimism.
Trump sees infrastructure investment pretty much the same way Democrats do — as a jobs program. That doesn’t work either (see: Japan). But if Trump had begun his presidency with building as his top priority, he would have won a lot of bipartisan support and turned the GOP into a big-government party much sooner.
Alas — or, depending on your point of view, lucky break — he spent his capital, political and fiscal, elsewhere. And now there’s none left for the riot of ribboncutting he wanted.