Agree, especially with the first bullet point. However, maybe they intended to convey they would get started on a long term goal? Will have to see the final bill.
Everyone needs to read our favorite “people should ride trains everywhere” advocate’s blog. He doesn’t think the infrastructure plan goes far enough. As biased as he is, I’m surprised that anyone would hire him as a “consultant”, unless they just want an echo chamber.
Trillion dollars won’t go that far to fix up existing lines for passenger/freight expansion, much less build any HSR. Why should they waste money on rebuilding an un-needed, obsolete, high cost line?
Infrastructure degrades and gets repaired every day, so let’s fix what needs fixing by responsibly getting bids on each individual project. Why does it all have to be done in some gigantic spending spree? That alone ought to be telling of what this is really about.
You throw $2-trillion on the table and it will be gobbled up instantly before any work gets done. It will be long on gobble and short on infrastructure.
Well here’s the thing. Several years ago I was watching a TV special concerning decaying infrastructure (I think it was on PBS, it’s been a while.) where a highway engineer was being interviewed. As far as funding for infrastructure upkeep was concerned the man said there was ALWAYS plenty of money for upkeep but the various state and local politicians used to “pirate” it for vanity projects, such as stadiums, public buildings, or other things they could put their names on. In a word, there was no oversight to ensure the money was being spent as it was supposed to have been.
And if there isn’t going to be any oversight now, well, draw your own conclusions as to where a lot of that two trillion’s going to go.
If the Interstate System had not been authorized as a ‘big ticket boondoggle’ it never would have been built.
Imagine having to go through the voting and approval procedure for every segment to be built.
Recall my Honeymoon from 1969 - Akron to Daytona Beach and return. Many unfinished segments on I-71, I-75, I-10 & I-95. Run for 15 or 20 miles on the Interstate until it ended and spit you out on US 25, US 90 and a number of other two lane US highways going right through towns with stop lights and speed traps.
Trips that today, are one long driving day were two and/or three long driving days then.
One other thing, INFRASTRUCTURE is a whole lot more than just roads and railroads - The Texas Electrical Grid is a prime object of recent vintage of a failing infrastructure - that doesn’t leave the other grids out of being problems in and of their own right. The Flint Water System comes to mind, and we now have the overflowing HAZMAT drainage pond near Tampa. Those things are ALL INFRASTRUCTURE.
I guess the point I was really trying to make is that rebuilding the PCE would hardly be more wasteful than some of the other things that they plan to spend the money on.
Only about 10% of the $2.3 TRILLION is earmarked for transportation initiatives - including highways - that’s a far cry from the revolution in American transportation that the Democrats had insinuated on during the election.
Probably 75% or better is going to education, medicare-related stuff, care for the “elderly and children”, etc. If the American people reach a concensus that this stuff is really necessary, fine. But please don’t call it “infrastructure”. That’s just a tad bit of a stretch.
Your view of ‘infrastructure’ and what infrastructure really is are at variance.
Infrastructure is both above and below ground and in many if not most cases are things we take for granted and never think about.
A healthy and educated population is more productive and less costly than a sick and uneducated population. A healthy working population generates tax income, a sick, unemployed population consumes taxes.
Well, I anticipate that higher motorfuel taxes are a slam dunk on this? Perhaps a federal sales tax? You can just feel the guilt peddling coming to convince us all how selfish we should feel for not wanting to do our share. I guess the idea of cutting “unnecessary” expenses so that the money can be appropriated to new priorities only falls on us little people?
I am frankly astounded that some such coordinated effort has not been done, particularly during certain recent years where fossil-fuel use was implicitly demonized.
Not that $6.60 equivalent per gallon is impossibly costly – Europeans in some countries were paying that decades ago. If it shifts priorities – fine! Free roads as a ‘right’ may have practically disappeared with the elimination of the American middle class that implicitly enabled their construction and subsidized their local maintenance.
The problem, of course, is that being tagged as the source of higher gas prices has particularly been the highest-voltage of political third rails. (Closely followed by being ‘outed’ as supporting any tax that can be shown to have regressive effect.) So you will likely see this follow the time-honored Democratic practice of soaking the rich, usually with vociferous protest that the soaking will only pertain to the presumed ‘1-percenters’ or whatever) and only come later to ease it into becoming a national institution only Draconian on the little guys.
The sure method that works is to gin up some excuse that purports to restrict supply and let “the market” run prices up to where people get used to ridiculous price levels, then quietly impose something like ‘fuel surcharges’ or ‘windfall profits taxes’ to take effect just as the artificial crisis effects end. I doubt any current government lacks either the methods or the motivation to ensure that no adverse ‘expose’ of such a scheme gains any particular mainstream traction.