Foter / Gage Skidmore

Foter / Gage Skidmore

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.

Continue reading “Hillary Clinton Wants $275 Billion in Additional Federal Infrastructure Spending—But Won’t Say How She’d Pay For It”