A key component to President Trump’s pledge to “make America great again” is to make our infrastructure stronger than ever. While we’ve spent about a trillion dollars on infrastructure during the last seven years, America is ranked No. 11 among the nations of the world. Trump is right: This is an abomination, and it needs to be fixed immediately.
After eight years of federal stimulus programs and claims of shovel-ready jobs, many understandably view federal spending projects with suspicion. Trump’s plan, however, appears to be vastly different from the various federal spending projects passed during the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Rather than rely on federal taxpayer outlays, the Trump plan will rely mostly on private investment to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure.
Libertarian economist Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation says that Trump wants to treat infrastructure like a public utility. Poole has mentioned three infrastructure plans proposed by advisers to Trump, including a $1 trillion plan for an “investor-funded P3 infrastructure” contained in a 10-page report written by Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro. The plan derives much of the funding from user fees, rather than tax revenues, and would quite effectively fund infrastructure projects such as toll-based bridges and highways, airports, seaports, electricity transmission lines, as well as water and wastewater systems.
Trump’s nominee for Transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, a critic of the Obama stimulus spending approach, agrees with the infrastructure building ideas proposed by Trump advisers. During her confirmation hearings, Chao expressed skepticism about the traditional big government approach of rebuilding infrastructure via large spending bills, and supporting ideas involving private funding and public-private partnerships for infrastructure rebuilding.
Many ideas likely to become part of the Trump administration’s infrastructure policy are highlighted in a recent article by Michael Sargent of the Heritage Foundation. Reducing red tape and delays in permitting as well as reforming environmental review policies will speed the process of gaining approval for major infrastructure projects.
Additionally, reforming cost and discriminatory labor rules will save a lot of money on projects. Under federal policy enacted by an Obama executive order, federal contractors must operate under Project Labor Agreements on federally funded projects. This drives up costs by nearly 20 percent because it requires contractors to hire union-only labor. This, along with the Davis-Bacon Act, which mandates that contractors pay 22 percent higher wages than market average, forces much higher labor costs for infrastructure projects.
Infrastructure policy will be just one of many areas where Donald Trump will bring an entirely different approach to the federal government. Knowing that we have nearly $20 trillion in national debt, and that it is important to seriously address out-of-control federal spending, Trump will rebuild our nation’s infrastructure in an innovative way that will rake in $167 billion from the private sector.
The president knows that strongly rebuilt infrastructure is needed to make America great again, but that reducing federal spending is also imperative. His infrastructure plan will accomplish both and help to bring about the strong economic prosperity that we need and deserve.
