In a speech yesterday, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called for an additional $250 billion in federal infrastructure spending over five years, as well as $25 billion to fund a federally run infrastructure bank, saying that the proposed spending would serve as a “down payment” on the country’s future.
The first thing to note about the plan is that Clinton won’t say precisely how she’d pay for it. Her campaign says that she would offset the price of the new spending through some sort of business tax reform, but, rather tellingly, wouldn’t provide any additional details when asked by Bloomberg Politics.
That’s becoming an increasingly familiar part of Hillary Clinton’s policy playbook: As I wrote last week, the candidate’s plans often call for new spending, and new taxes or tax “reforms” (which, given that they are supposed to raise additional revenues would require higher taxation of someone) to pay for it. But she tends to decline to say exactly which taxes, exactly, would be raised or reformed, only that the hikes will not hit families making less than $250,000 annually.
Politically, this sort of tax hike hand waving is a good move, because it allows Clinton to proposed hundreds of billions in new spending while saying, essentially, that of course it will be paid for—by someone else. That vagueness, and the dodge it grants Clinton, is central to her proposal, for this sort of spending would be a much harder sell if she said that the middle class might be on the hook for the bill.
The second thing to understand about Clinton’s proposed hike in infrastructure spending is that, despite Clinton’s pablum about how the spending is necessary to build the country’s economy, the infrastructure projects themselves are hardly pressing.
Yes, the American Society of Civil Engineers frequently gives U.S. infrastructure poor grades, and insists that more spending is necessary. But how surprising is it really that an organization of civil engineers wants more spending on civil engineering?
What these reports tend to downplay, meanwhile, is that on many measures, American infrastructure is actually getting better and safer, and that funding levels have been basically consistent over time.
As Evan Soltas noted in Bloomberg View in 2013, there was a significant reduction in the number of bridges labeled deficient (which is not the same as unsafe) between 1989 and 2009; there’s been a clear decline in the number of both rural and urban roads in poor condition; and traffic congestion on urban interstates dropped from 52.6 percent in 1989 to 26.3 percent. In addition, U.S. infrastructure spending has held at broadly the same rate as a percentage of GDP over the last several decades.
In other words, there’s no urgent need for a significant bump in federal infrastructure funding—much less an ongoing future commitment to higher spending in the category, as Clinton’s “down payment” line implies.
Nor is it a good idea to grant the federal government increased administrative power over the nation’s infrastructure. As Cato’s Chris Edwards noted in a 2011 op-ed for The Washington Post, the history of federal management of major infrastructure projects is rife with cost overruns and poorly managed, poorly chosen projects.
The idea that this is merely the start of some longer-term commitment to higher spending is a big part of what’s worrying about Clinton’s plan. If she won’t even say how she’ll pay for the down payment, then how in the world does she plan to pay for whatever comes next?
No Democrat -extend that to liberals in general- ever say how they will actually pay for their programs other than something unrealistic that appeals to class envy like “tax the rich” (which can be mathematically shown to be a realistic fallacy).
They just don’t understand things actually have to be paid for by someone doing real and productive work having their money taken away from them and then given to those that don’t.
Their minds just don’t work that way.
FWIW, “infrastructure” spending probably employs the fewest people per dollar spent and those are almost always only temporarily employed while the project is in progress (something the left seems to recognize about things like pipeline construction but not about road and building and other such “infrastructure” construction that are in the same category).
Unfortunately, with the current Republican attack on Trump being potentially able to knock him out and replace him with an establishment liberal candidate, Hillary is quite possibly going to be our next President and will have the full cooperation of both Republicans and Democrats in her agenda.
So be wise and be ready for it.
$50 billion a year? Easy. Just tax our biggest growth industries – baby parts, gender reassignment surgeries and hummus.
The Pentagon throws 2 Trillion down a F#^king rathole on wars in the Middle East and never said how they were going to pay for it. They still want Moar…and the Conservatives are okay with that.. So, how do they differ from the Liberals? Simply in the manner in which they want to waste your money. The case can easily be made that wasting money on infrastructure projects is a more productive way to waste money than bombing the shit out of brown people and creating new terrorists.
B
The Pentagon pissing trillions down a rathole is higher under Obama than it was under Bush. You get the best of both worlds from Democrats.
She can pay for it by donating 5% of her campaign contributions from Wall Street. Problem solved.
B,
The liberals (Democrats) are OK with all that war spending to.
They were just as implicit in getting it through as the Republicans.
FWIW.. It’s the Congress that’s to say how it is paid for, not the Pentagon. Congress makes the budgets and appropriates it in accord with the Constitution, the Pentagon simply asks Congress for the money to do what Congress has told it to do.
That curmudgeon bitch should dissolve the Clinton Global Money Laundering Graft Initiative, which would pay for her new spending. Let her put her money where her own dirty mouth is. Twisted elitist hypocrite shitbag.
Politicians like obama or hilary can get away with saying the dumbest shit with no facts at all, because most of their voter base will never ask for facts and are dumber than shit, or they can’t speak the language, take your pick.
Card802, dead people also ask no questions, but they can vote in Chicago. You overlooked a key constituency.
Those who never had to work in a real job with actual performance measures seem to think it is easy to tax just a bit more while they manage (meddle) the economy to death. Money comes to them for doing nothing so they can’t comprehend why we complain.
What difference does it make?…
-Hellary Cunton
Republicans are much worse than Dems on sourcing how they’ll “pay for” proposed projects. But with the neocons war always trumps (pardon the pun) any domestic project.
As I recall, the Iraq war wasn’t going to cost anything according the Wolfowitz, because we’ll “take it out of the oil revenues”. Bullshit; estimates range from $1 to $4 TRILLION for that one. And we’ve never had an accounting of the Pentgram for that missing $2.3 TRILLION Rumsfled announced the day before 9/11. Too bad the plane, er ah missile, took out the beancounters working on the audit.
Finally, the U.S. has 1,000’s of bridges and viaducts that are substandard and failing (i.e. I-10 closed due to a flash flood taking out a bridge in the desert). IMHO let’s take the money we’re spending in our foreign affairs, bring the troops and equipment home and spend that money on rebuilding infrastructure.
So, if we still have those bad bridges and viaducts, where did all that money Obama spent on those economy saving “shovel ready jobs” that were going to fix them go?
Bayh (D-IN)
Biden (D-DE)
Breaux (D-LA)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Carnahan (D-MO)
Carper (D-DE)
Cleland (D-GA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Daschle (D-SD)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Edwards (D-NC)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Harkin (D-IA) Hollings (D-SC)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Miller (D-GA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Schumer (D-NY)
Torricelli (D-NJ)
Or sorry, those are the democrat senators (58%) that voted for the Iraq resolution, with no idea how they would pay for that war. Remember a president cannot declare war, only congress can, and at the time dems ruled congress. Bush would never have had his war with the help of democrats.
I know I know, they were too fucking stupid to know they were being lied to, thought I’d get that out of the way first.
Strange though after no evidence was found and bush wanted to invade anyway, biden, reid, clinton, kerry and a few other “major” democrats all defended the president actions as, lawful.
Of course today all those lying fucknuts will claim otherwise, never thinking we can go back on the interweb and look up how they voted, and what they said.
Right now it is Hillary’s job to get elected. To do that she is willing to say anything to anybody to make that happen. Promises and ideas that seem favorable to whatever group she is speaking to at the time. You want details she doesn’t have and or interest in details, she wants good sound bites. What difference does it make how these things she promises are paid for or get done, seems to be a consistent theme with her.
She claims using taxpayer dollars she can create 13,000 jobs for every $1Billon spent. Not just any job, but “good paying jobs you don’t need a college degree for.”
Taxpayer dollars spent on creating jobs that will generate zero new revenue for the cash starved government is not going to help erase debt, just create more, but help get her elected, so there is that.
Because all good liberal/progressives say it’s past time for a woman, and they think hilary is one….
On the bright side–it’s a lot less than $880 billion for “stimulus”
card802 says: She claims using taxpayer dollars she can create 13,000 jobs for every $1Billon spent. Not just any job, but “good paying jobs you don’t need a college degree for.”
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That’s $76,923.08 per job, if my calculator is correct.
Not defending Democrats, Conservatives, Liberals or anyone. There is no difference between her wasting money and the Republicans. They are just willing to waste money on different things. Nearly every Republican candidate wants to increase defense spending because it goes to the military/Industrial complex who lobbies them. If you think the problem with terrorism will be solved by increasing the spending, bombing and killing, you are a fool. It is like trying to fix everything when the only tool you have is a hammer
The most recent article, “Spreading Democracy the American Way” makes my point
B, We’ve been led by the Democrats for some time now.
So why is the military spending situation the same, and new and escalating wars that way as well?
Things are coming to a head worldwide, every nation on earth is being effected -even Switzerland who has a reputation for staying out of things- and the blame is equally placed on every one of them.
It’s an “evil triumphs when …….” sort of thing, nothing else.