Trumps infrastructure plans are empty promises not backed by money
It has been declared “infrastructure week” by the Trump administration. On the face of it, that should be excellent news. The U.S. economy would benefit enormously from an ambitious increase in public investment, including infrastructure investment. Such investment would create jobs and finally lock-in genuine full employment in the near-term, and would provide a needed boost to productivity growth (or how much income and output each hour of work generates in the economy) in the medium-term. Further, infrastructure investments would ensure that we do not leave future generations a deficit of underinvestment and deferred maintenance of public assets.
This clear need is why we at EPI have been such enthusiastic backers of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) plan to boost infrastructure investment. The CPC investment plan is up to the scale of the problem, and it confronts the need to make these investments head-on, without accounting gimmicks or magical thinking about where the money for these investments will come from.
Despite being long-standing and loud proponents of the need for more infrastructure investment, however, we cannot say we expect much from the Trump administration’s infrastructure week. Why not? Because the most common theme in the Trump administration’s approach to infrastructure is pure obfuscation about how it will be paid for. If you’re not willing to say forthrightly how you’re going to pay for infrastructure investments, you really cannot be serious about it. As the old adage goes, “show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value”.
The recently released Trump federal budget plan guts infrastructure, period. The damage the Trump budget would do to public investment and infrastructure is staggering. This alone should make any open-minded person extraordinarily skeptical of their claims to value infrastructure spending.
http://www.epi.org/blog/trumps-infrastructure-plans-are-empty-promises-not-backed-by-money/?utm_source=Economic+Policy+Institute&utm_campaign=45aab75311-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_06_09&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e7c5826c50-45aab75311-59078569&mc_cid=45aab75311&mc_eid=56485f06ea
