Our country is literally falling down around us. Meanwhile, the best our politicians have managed to come up with is the expensive, cumbersome, complicated, and jam-packed legislation passed during the Biden administration.

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First, let us unequivocally say that we're all for spending money on our deteriorating infrastructure. The U.S. transportation system has over 13 million miles of highway; 20,031 airports; 204 ports; 8,042 cargo handling docks; 112,505 miles of railroad; 1,769,566 miles of pipeline; 621,581 bridges; and 25,000 miles of navigable waterways. Every year, this labyrinth carries passengers almost 3 trillion miles in their vehicles, over 6 billion miles in the air, and 1.3 billion miles by rail. It also transports, literally, a boatload of merchandise. Eight years ago, the American transportation system was moving over 2 billion tons of freight, valued at $3.8 trillion. Twenty-five years from now, that number is expected to be $7.9 trillion.

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Practically every one of these categories has been neglected for decades, and it shows. Big time! In 2021, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave U.S. infrastructure an overall grade of C-. At the time, the group warned that, if we continued to underinvest in infrastructure, by 2039 the costs to society will equal $10 trillion in GDP, over 3 million jobs, and over $2 trillion dollars in exports.

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Our declining infrastructure is a textbook example of how critical it is that we are proactive versus reactive. This is happening. We can’t twitch our noses and wish a new bridge to appear, and we can’t afford to keep slapping Band-Aids on gaping wounds.

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It’s bad enough that things are about to collapse, but our outdated infrastructure also makes us look bush-league. We all know you can’t exactly be the shining city upon the hill if everything is falling down.

 

We’re not talking about a third world country; we’re talking about the United States of America!

 

There is no excuse for the world’s largest national economy to lack state-of-the-art airports, subways, railways and ports; sophisticated fiber-optic lines, bandwidth and wireless networks; modern schools, roads, bridges, levees, dams and water systems; hi-tech oil and gas pipelines and electricity-distribution grids; and extensive high-speed rail systems.

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So, yes, modernizing our infrastructure creates a safer nation, helps revitalize hard-hit sectors like construction and heavy manufacturing, and makes our economy more productive and efficient. Investment in infrastructure also produces jobs, both directly (jobs involved in the actual projects) and indirectly (jobs created by the need for supplies and support for the projects). This, in turn, sparks a cycle of growth that will eventually create even more jobs – employed people spend money in the economy so more people will be needed to handle the higher demand.

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Further, we cannot ignore the fact that our infrastructure is vital to our global competitiveness. These two are intricately intertwined because infrastructure is one of the main things global and domestic companies evaluate when they choose locations for their business operations, not to mention the absolute necessity of safely and swiftly moving the people, goods and services that are already here. Time is money, people!

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Enter President Biden, who was determined to hit a legislative trifecta right out of the gate. When he first introduced his legislative agenda, under the name Build Back Better, it was divided into three parts: The American Rescue Plan, a COVID relief bill; the American Jobs Plan, which was supposedly a physical infrastructure bill; and the American Families Plan, which was supposedly focused on social services. The original Build Back Better agenda called for $6 trillion in spending. < As a comparison, the United States spent just over $4 trillion (in 2021 dollars) to fight the entire Second World War, which lasted four years. We would also like to add that, at the time, we were already $31 trillion in debt, a fact that, as far as we can tell, was completely ignored by Congress and the Biden administration. >

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Although President Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan into law in March 2021, the American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan did not pass in their original forms. In the end, these two bills transitioned into three massive bills that focused on infrastructure, semiconductors and science, and the climate. The final three spending bills called for between $1.7 and $2.2 trillion in investments over the next ten years – $1.2 trillion for infrastructure thanks to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act; $280 billion for the CHIPS and Science Act to help increase our semiconductor manufacturing capabilities; and $738 billion for the Inflation Reduction Act, a name that is suspect because, from the beginning, multiple economic analyses, including ones from the Penn Wharton Budget Model and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), showed that the bill had zero chance of reducing inflation. In fact, the CBO said it may even increase it.

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As usual, these bills turned out to be cumbersome, complicated, and jam packed but, to be fair, it could have been A LOT worse. In the original American Jobs Plan, for example, money was allocated for roads and bridges; airports; public schools; the U.S. freight system; public transit; Amtrak and other railways; ports and airports; universal broadband; the electric grid; electric vehicle chargers; lead pipe replacement; affordable housing improvements; the modernization of community colleges, Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics and child-care facilities; and even the electrification of 20 percent of our yellow school buses. But wait! There’s more! This one bill also covered investments in the manufacturing sector; the improvement of working conditions; increasing road safety for cyclists and pedestrians; worker training; refilling our Strategic National Stockpile; and expanding community-based or home care for older and disabled Americans.

 

Good grief!  Where’s the kitchen sink?

 

Now, we know some of you may think we're being hypocritical since we have used the word “comprehensive” a thousand times throughout this website, and Lord knows Biden’s bills are comprehensive in the truest sense of the word.

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Yes, we use the word comprehensive often, but only as it pertains to looking at our entire policy agenda to ensure that seemingly disparate policies work together for the biggest bang for our buck, not as a way to load so much into a bill that there is zero chance for proper oversight and smooth implementation. Plus, sweeping bills like these tend to be Trojan Horses that give lobbyists yet another way in. For instance, if the American Jobs Plan was really meant to address our physical infrastructure, why was only 5 percent of the funding allocated to roads and bridges but almost 20 percent allocated for expanding elderly and disabled care?

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We're certainly not against our elderly and disabled getting the very best care we can offer – we assure you, we're very much for protecting our elderly and disabled – but $400 billion for their “home or community-based care” being in a bill supposedly focused on physical infrastructure is highly suspect. As was the Biden administration’s explanation for it. After being grilled over this, they explained that elderly and disabled Americans are indeed infrastructure, just in human form – which is just a ridiculously silly thing to say and makes the entire thing even more questionable.

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The Biden administration also explained that the jobs involved in taking care of our elderly and disabled are disproportionally filled by women of color, and women of color should be making more money …something that, again, we agree with 100%. But this justification instantly lost credibility with us when we found out that the $400 billion allocated for “home or community-based care” – which constitutes a fifth of the cost of the entire bill – was included mainly because special interest groups like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lobbied hard for it to be. Of course, it makes perfect sense that the SEIU would get special treatment from a Democrat-run White House and Congress since the organization has given $193,083,745 in political contributions since 1990 and spent $27,856,604 on lobbying since 1998. This is in addition to spending $95,637,585 in so-called outside spending, which are political expenditures made “independent” of candidates’ committees (i.e., party committees, Super PACS and 501(c) “dark money” groups.)  Combined, the SEIU contributed $47,218,658 during the 2020 election cycle alone. President Biden obviously owed them a big one, right?

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What is that brilliant phrase that the wise sage Sarah Palin used about lipstick and pigs?

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Without question, $1.2 trillion is a ton of money, but infrastructure is expensive. After all, in 2021 the American Society of Civil Engineers said it would take $2.59 trillion for us to upgrade to a grade of even B. But the sad truth is this: It’s not so much the amount of money we have a problem with regarding this legislation; it’s who we are entrusting the money to.

 

It’s funny how these colossal bills never include any sort of detail beyond an obscene dollar amount. Wouldn’t it be helpful to know who is ultimately in charge of each of these infrastructure categories? Who will manage them? What the bidding process is and what the bidding parameters are? What is each of their budget, scope, targets, timelines, risks, and expected outcomes? Who will authorize funding, contracting, or changes to the original scope? Is this going to be one of those deals like we talked about in the Operation Overhaul section, where seven separate federal agencies administer 92 different programs, with practically zero coordination between them?

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Congress and the president (whoever it may be) expect us to just trust them to handle everything, and we don’t. And for good reason…

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After President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 – the stimulus package passed in the wake of the 2007-2009 Financial Crisis – he signed the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (the DATA Act), partly in response to a severe deficit of proper oversight and transparency. The goal of the DATA Act was to require agencies to prepare and submit clear, standardized information on the money they spend.

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In 2020 – six years after the DATA Act passed and a year before the American Rescue Plan – the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that “47 (out of 51) offices of inspectors general (OIGs) reported control deficiencies related to system limitations, quality control procedures, data from external systems, and other issues. Further, 44 OIGs made recommendations for agencies to help improve data quality.” 

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Does it really seem like these agencies were ready for billions and billions of more dollars to be thrown on the pile?​​​