This guy does not stop with bad policy.
President Donald Trump is expected to unveil a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan today.
But only $200 billion of the $1.5 trillion would come from federal money. The rest from state and local governments.
“Every federal dollar should be leveraged by partnering with state and local governments and, where appropriate, tapping into private sector investment to permanently fix the infrastructure deficit,” he said in his State of the Union.
Problem 1. There is no infrastructure problem to fix. SEE: Donald Trump and The Perennial Myth Of Crumbling Infrastructure.
Problem 2. Trump becomes even more of a Federal dictator with his program which requires participation by state and local governments.
Problem 3. He is launching a new crony public-private crony program by this plan.
-RW
So, this infrastructure bill only spends $1.5T if State and Local governments take advantage of the $200B in subsidies made available by the Federal Govt? State and Local govts can't just print their own money, so if they don't raise taxes, or don't have the money appropriated for projects, then this bill likely won't actually result in much more infrastructure spending. It's not like the stimulus package that just dumped $800B into infrastructure projects. Correct me if i'm missing something here.
ReplyDeleteWe are going to build some big, beautiful roads. And some yuge new bridges. The poorly educated will love it.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the infrastructure is that the government owns it. As us Northern Californians learned last year, government dams could collapse at a moments notice. That would seem like a pretty big infrastructure problem that a lot of voters in Northern Cali (blue state, mind you) would like to see resolved.
ReplyDeleteThis somewhat reminds me of the open borders vs closed borders argument we see on the daily here. Government owns the infrastructure so government should maintain it. Yes, they suck at everything, but as it stands, this is how it is. Should they just let it all deteriorate? Since its never going to be privatized, what is the solution? In this post, you said that they should 'tap' into private sector investment... Sounds a lot like asking for a crony public/private partnership.
It's amazing -- no, pathetic -- what a low standard statists are willing to accept when they acquiesce to the state. If a private sector firm built something and it was "crumbling," do you think that its customers would put up with that, or investors/lenders would be sympathetic to the firm's requests for more money? But when the state is the supplier, statists just roll over. I get that there are many pigs at the trough who are motivated to make the infrastructure problem sound real, but the gullible taxpayers?
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