You Call That 'Infrastructure'?
You Call That 'Infrastructure'?
Emergency workers stand near a giant sinkhole caused by a busted 24-inch water main in Los Angeles, Dec. 22, 2018.
Photo:
mark ralston/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
As the new Congress is gaveled into session, the question is what a Democratic House and a Republican Senate can possibly accomplish. One common answer, or at least hope, is that perhaps America’s builder-in-chief, President Trump, can push through a blockbuster infrastructure bill. Yet finding middle ground even here is going to prove difficult.
Take a gander at the “jobs and infrastructure” proposal that Senate Democrats floated last March. At $1 trillion it’s a blueprint of Trumpian proportions. But if you’re envisioning the next Hoover Dam, think again. It’s more akin to the Barack Obama-Nancy Pelosi “stimulus” of 2009, in being larded with every Democratic interest group’s favorite pork and income-redistribution scheme:
• $25 billion for “resiliency programs,” with potential line items such as “habitat restoration,” “oil spill research” and “baseline data collection on the effects of sea level rise.”
• $40 billion in “direct federal funding to connect all of America to affordable high speed internet.” (Speeds must be adequate, the proposal says, to meet “modern challenges” like “completing homework assignments.”)
• $25 billion for mass-transit grants “to build or expand subway, light rail, commuter rail, streetcar and bus rapid transit.” Liberals love these projects, though they often turn into boondoggles, like the DC Streetcar. Think of this as a bailout for California’s over-budget bullet train.
• $3 billion for “charging and refueling” stations to accommodate electric cars and other green vehicles. “Without a reliable coast-to-coast network for zero emission and alternative fuel vehicles, lack of consumer confidence will limit adoption,” the plan says.
• Unspecified funds for “locally driven initiatives to preserve and expand affordable housing.”
• A tax credit of “up to $1 per gallon” for production of “clean transportation fuel.”
• A tax credit of 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour for “clean electricity” production.
This is political logrolling disguised as public necessity. Do Democrats think it’s what Mr. Trump has in mind when he imagines a bargain on infrastructure? Biofuel tax credits, charging stations for Teslas, and light-rail lines that probably will run mostly empty?
This wish list illustrates the problem of trying to engineer a coast-to-coast construction spree from a city on the Potomac. Much of the money in the Democratic plan would be given out as grants. Many of the numbers appear to be made up almost at random: “$1 billion for Indian Irrigation projects.” (Why not $2 billion, or $500 million?)
The proposal is also full of stipulations—on the share of subcontracts that must go to small companies (33%), the percentage of employees who must be “workers with disabilities” (14%), the importance of hiring “Women-Owned Businesses (WOBs),” and so forth. Bureaucratic friction like this burns taxpayer money, and the plan also mandates union prevailing wages, which raises costs.
A real compromise on public works would leverage some taxpayer money to raise more private funds to build the most urgent projects while easing permitting rules and political red tape. But since that isn’t what Democrats have in mind, the most likely outcome is that old Interstate 95 standby: gridlock.
Appeared in the January 4, 2019, print edition.
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