I'm a sucker. I admit it.
One of my failings is believing people who firmly shake my hand while looking me squarely in the eye. Indeed, it is a normal tendency many people have, which makes us vulnerable to being duped by those who prey upon our confirmation biases. We selectively hear what we want to hear, and disregard the rest.
And so I had high hopes for President Donald Trump's new 10-year $1.5 trillion infrastructure proposal. I should have known better.
Modernization of America’s infrastructure is a favorite cause of mine. I don’t think I am dreaming of a utopian paradise when I imagine a nation that has well-paved roads; bridges and tunnels that are in better than fair condition; a reliable and hack-proof electrical grid, with widely available broadband; a water and sewage treatment system that ensures public health; and a safe and efficient port system. And oh, the places you would go if only we had modern airports and an advanced flight-control system.
Given the overwhelming need for a major upgrade to the country’s aging backbone of commerce, I assumed that a feasible and reality-based infrastructure plan would be forthcoming from the Trump White House.
There is bipartisan support for it; it is popular among voters (at least the 2017 version was); even reliably conservative groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have come out in favor of raising the federal gas tax to help pay for road improvements.
Then there is the proposal put forth by the White House. It starts out well enough, noting:
Our infrastructure is broken. The average driver spends 42 hours per year sitting in traffic, missing valuable time with family and wasting 3.1 billion gallons of fuel annually. Nearly 40 percent of our bridges predate the first moon landing. And last year, 240,000 water main breaks wasted more than 2 trillion gallons of purified drinking water—enough to supply Belgium.
It turns out that was mere lip service. The administration proposes spending a measly $20 billion a year -- or $200 billion of the $1.5 trillion total -- for a decade. Forget modernizing America’s infrastructure; this number is deeply inadequate to the task of even doing basic maintenance on bridges, highways and roads. And it is light years away from closing the almost $5 trillion shortfall in infrastructure investment.
The most fanciful part of the plan is that it looks for increased contributions from cash-strapped cities and states, which, unlike the federal government, don't have the ability to borrow what's needed to fund multidecade infrastructure projects. Many states also will be wary of raising taxes, since the Trump administration's new tax plan limits the ability to deduct local and a state taxes from federal tax bills.