President Biden’s proposed infrastructure plan includes $621 billion for transportation. It would spend $115 billion on accelerated road and bridge repairs, $20 billion for “vision zero” and other anti-auto programs, $85 billion for mass transit, and $80 billion for Amtrak’s backlog and expansion of Amtrak service. It also would spend $174 billion supporting electric vehicle manufacturers, $25 billion on airports, and $17 billion on inland waterways. That’s $104 billion short of $621 billion, but the White House press release doesn’t say where that $104 billion will go.
Non-transportation items in the plan include $111 billion on safe drinking water, $100 billion for high-speed internet service, $100 billion on the electrical transmission system, $10 billion on a Civilian Climate Corps, $213 billion on housing, including retrofitting homes to save energy, $100 billion on new schools, $18 billion on new veteran’s hospitals, $10 billion modernizing federal buildings in Washington DC, $400 billion on care for the elderly and disabled, $180 billion on research, $300 billion on manufacturing and small businesses, and $100 billion on workforce development. News reports call this a $2 trillion plan but by my count it adds up to at least $2.26 trillion.
Instead of calling this an infrastructure plan, the White House calls it “the American Jobs Plan.” This is ironic because the only reason why most unemployed people don’t have jobs today is the lockdowns enforced by mostly Democratic governors. End the lockdowns and there won’t be many unemployed people to take the jobs created by the Biden plan.
That should be okay because most of the plan isn’t really necessary. The money for road and bridge repairs isn’t needed because the condition of America’s roads and road bridges has been improving each year without a Congressional rescue plan. However, Biden’s plan earmarks funds for some major bridges, which will please politicians representing the states those bridges are in. Although the White House press release mentions the cost of traffic congestion, it isn’t clear that any of the money will be spent actually relieving congestion.
The money for mass transit and Amtrak isn’t really needed either because the pandemic has accelerated the decline in the importance of these systems that was already taking place before 2020. Biden’s plan to double funding for transit and quadruple it for Amtrak rewards agencies for doing a lousy job of carrying few passengers. However, Biden’s plan earmarks funds for new Hudson River tunnels and other projects in the Northeast Corridor, which will please politicians in New York and New Jersey.
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Biden proposes to spend part of the $213 billion housing funds bribing local cities to end so-called exclusionary zoning, which has been attacked as causing unaffordable housing even though housing is unaffordable in only a few states. None of it will be spent encouraging states to end growth-management policies that are the real cause of unaffordable housing.
I have less expertise on the other programs in Biden’s bill, but it strikes me that many of them — the electrical grid, high-speed internet, manufacturing, small businesses, and housing — are mostly private and don’t need massive federal subsidies (which will end up being accompanied by massive federal red tape and regulation). What they really need is for government to get out of the way.
While politicians will love it, the huge increase in federal spending proposed by the Biden plan is going to create a serious problem for private employers. Unemployment rates were extraordinarily low before the pandemic and they have quickly declined again in states that lifted lockdowns. Anyone employed with the dollars in the American Jobs Act will be one less person available to employed by private businesses. This will increase consumer costs and could contribute to an inflationary cycle caused by a combination of a labor shortage and printing of money to pay for the federal deficit.
The Biden plan should be renamed the Not Really Necessary Plan. Even the American Society of Civil Engineers admits that it was crying wolf when it claimed that America’s infrastructure deserved a D+ grade, having raised it to a C- in its latest report card. Personally, I would give transit and Amtrak a low grade but give most other infrastructure a B or B+. Biden’s real goal, of course, is to make as many people as possible dependent on federal largess and make them want to re-elect Democrats who will promise to keep the money flowing.
Also in the bill, which I’m sure The AP has a problem with, is $20 billion to reconnect communities that were divided by highway projects. Some of these highways include the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans, I-81 in Syracuse, I-676 in Philadelphia and I-95 in Wilmington, DE.
“the only reason why most unemployed people don’t have jobs today is the lockdowns enforced by mostly Democratic governors” Antiplanner.
While I agree with most of the Antiplanner’s analysis in this article I find the above statement overly simplistic. States such as New York affected by the highest early infections and death rates imposed lockdowns early, and happen to be Democratic. Is the Antiplanner really suggesting that with emergency rooms turning away ambulances with Covid patients close to death, that the state should not have imposed a lockdown? What would the death rate be without the lockdown? It is possible to cherry pick the data carefully to claim lockdowns have no effect. For example, by showing that California and Florida have similar death rates with different lockdown policies. However, North and South Dakota with few lockdown mandates had one of the highest death rates, see:
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-do-california-and-florida-have-similar-covid-19-case-rates-the-answer-is-complicated#Confounders-abound
As the pandemic continued there was a correlation between lockdowns and infection rates so states with few lockdowns had higher mortality, see:
https://www.bakerinstitute.org/media/files/files/fba2e32c/bi-report-121620-chb-covid19.pdf
I feel the Antiplanner is falling into a mistake of confusing lockdowns and death rates as being a political issue between Democratic and Republican policies, rather than as a public health issue that needs very careful analysis in which to understand the best Covid mitigation measures.
Sketter,
Don’t forget that those communities were divided because urban planners saw interstate freeways as a way to do slum clearance. Transportation engineers wanted the interstates to by-pass cities, but city mayors and urban planners demanded that Congress give them a share of the interstate highway monies.
I’m not sure what Biden plans to do with $20 billion for reconnecting communities, but I suspect it will fund more schemes by urban planners who, needless to say, I don’t trust any more today than I would have trusted in the 1950s.
Cities that can’t keep its urban infrastructure in shape are bad candidates for even more expensive programs at federal expense. The maintenance debacles of Boston, New York, Chicago is proof enough, Transportation infr. should be paid for out of user fees not taxes. Stimulus, Stimulates more waste.
@ AP
So who is responsible and advocating for and proposing highway widening that further destroys neighborhoods in cities today? Engineers or City Planners?
If I lived next to I-45 in Houston today I would surely trust City Planners before I would trust engineers at TXDOT when it comes to deciding if they should widen I-45.
I thought I had caught the Antiplanner in a gotcha but he’s right. This proposal actually would spend *substantially* more money on electric cars ($174 billion ) than on the highways that transport them ($115 billion)!
How did such a clueless moron get elected to POTUS?!
Well, let’s be honest. Ron Klain is more the president than Biden is.
And the lockdowns are a complete scam. I was pleasantly surprised to see the Antiplanner dare to write this. Anyone find it interesting that officially, the flu is apparently, for all intents & purposes, “gone”?
I won’t speak for Randal, but I have a problem with this. The highways to which you’re referring were built by state and local units of government. It is not the business of the federal government to spend tens of billions of dollars on aesthetics for these projects.
If state and local governments want to fund that kind of thing, that’s their business. They can make decisions about whether their money is better spent on keeping their infrastructure in decent condition and operational, as opposed to urban beautification. Incidentally, The Biden Administration hasn’t mentioned what it plans to do with this money specifically. It’s basically an 11-figure blank check.
Being that the federal government funded 90% of highway funding I think it would make sense that they provide some funding to help reconnect communities those highways seperated. I’m not sure I would categorize removing the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans or capping I-676 in Philly as “Beautification” projects so we may differ on that. I’ve yet to hear a better approach to reconnect these communities other than let’s just sit on our hands and do nothing or we can’t trust anyone with this money so we should do nothing.
The Dakotas have fairly old populations, even by US standards. Variations in age structure are one of the most important predictors of COVID mortality rates.
That Baker Institute data dump to which you linked did not account for this when looking at mortality. Moreover, it used a very loose measure of restrictions (produced by that renowned epidemiological research center, WalletHub) which applied arbitrary weights to a variety of policies that were applied simultaneously. The correlation between this index of restrictions and death rates was not only inconsistent in magnitude over time, but it didn’t even maintain the same sign(!), as is indicated in Figure 1. Also, its analysis period ended in late Fall, before the second wave had ended in many parts of the US.
New York adopted a lockdown during the first wave of infections, but it was too late to have had any effect, as the number of infections had already peaked. Adopting restrictions early on, when some NYC hospitals were close to capacity, may have been understandable, but there was no excuse for continuing to have them in place later in summer, after hospitals had largely emptied out and cases had fallen to much lower levels. Not to mention the fact that much more was known about the virus by that point. And of course, none of this prevented New York from experiencing a second wave later in the year.