We must maintain our existing infrastructure while we build more of it; and we need to agree on how to do that. One guiding principle for those decisions is “TANSTAAFL”. That’s the acronym for “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”. Infrastructure is expensive.
The report card on American infrastructure published by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) is probably the most comprehensive analysis available. It identifies a multitude of current and anticipated concerns. Our Congress has paid only scant attention to ASCE warnings about our backlog of maintenance and construction needs.
President Trump has proposed spending $1 Trillion on infrastructure over the coming decade and has pointed out that a lot of new jobs could be created through such a program. He has yet to clarify how projects would be selected, who would own them and how they would be funded.
Our existing infrastructure has been built and is owned by a sometimes bewildering mix of local, state, regional and national government entities along with utility companies, railroads, airport authorities, and various kinds of public-private partnerships. Sometimes, as in the case of abandoned dams and waste disposal sites, ownership is not clearly identified.
Even if the congress could agree on a way to standardize and prioritize our infrastructure ownership and financing, it would probably be a bad idea. The ways of doing things that work well in rural America are often different from the best ways to do things in urban areas. The process of deciding what to build, how much government money to spend and how to organize the effort will necessarily be complicated, messy, and sometimes controversial. Despite that, it’s worth doing.
We should look back at the last serious effort to renew our infrastructure in hopes that this effort will succeed where the last one failed – in the United States Senate. In 2011, President Obama proposed a more modest and more specific infrastructure plan that called for $50 billion in federal spending on highway, rail, airport and transit improvements plus another $10 billion to start a “National Infrastructure Bank” intended to spur public-private partnerships. The proposal passed the Senate by a 51-49 vote but was blocked by a Republican filibuster – as were most Obama initiatives.
President Obama proposed to pay for his plan by imposing a surtax of 7/10 of one percent on incomes in excess of $1 million. President Trump’s more ambitious proposal appears to call for $200 billion in federal spending plus unspecified local and state spending and unspecified private spending accounting for the rest of the $1 trillion price tag. He has not announced a plan to pay for it other than by mentioning that our low interest rates make this an inexpensive time to borrow money.
This complicated but important issue is the kind that our traditional Congressional procedures were designed to address. Advice from experts will be needed, followed by a great deal of negotiation and compromise. There is no perfect plan for such complex needs. There will be negotiations to determine which states and communities get their projects approved. Every decision will be subject to criticism and second-guessing. That’s how it was with big federal projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority and facilities for NASA, our armed forces and other federal departments. The planning was complex and controversial but certainly worth the trouble.
Leaders in both political parties know that our national infrastructure needs renewal and expansion. Both parties have proposed it when they were in power. Are they up to the task of responsibly designing a way to achieve and pay for that ambitious goal? Their predecessors in the 1930s through the 1960s figured out how to establish a national power grid, phone service, interstate highways, NASA, hydroelectric dams, public water and sewer systems, national parks, airports, hospitals, schools…the list goes on. They facilitated public-private collaboration in ways that worked for American citizens – things like blending rural utility co-ops, private utility companies, and municipally owned utilities into national electric, gas, and phone systems.
Today about 18 million Americans are served by water systems that violate lead safety standards. That’s just one example of our problems. There are similar concerns in every category of infrastructure and there are no simple answers. We need a congress that is willing to do their homework and make hard decisions on behalf of the citizens who elected them. That can happen if voters demand it. TANSTAAFL.