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hatrack

(59,439 posts)
Wed Feb 19, 2020, 08:23 AM Feb 2020

This Is What Four Years Of "Infrastructure Weeks" Does To Your Infrastructure, Planet

President Donald Trump’s 2021 budget request describes a $810 billion, 10-year surface transportation reauthorization bill as part of a proposed $1 trillion infrastructure investment. But the budget also calls for a 13 percent cut to discretionary spending for the U.S. Department of Transportation, the largest infrastructure-building agency in the cabinet. That, in a nutshell, has been the persistent theme of the Trump administration when it comes to infrastructure: big talk, little action, and plenty of mixed messages in between.

Like many politicians—including the quartet of Democratic presidential candidates who held a first-of-its-kind “infrastructure forum” in Nevada on Sunday—Trump talked up a storm about America’s crumbling infrastructure in his first campaign. “We have bridges that are falling down,” he told Fox News in August 2016. “We have many, many bridges that are in danger of falling.” While his then-rival Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton proposed a $500 billion infrastructure raft, Trump upped the rhetorical ante to $1 trillion a few days before the election. Once he got into office, Democrats in Congress viewed the issue as a rare patch of potential common ground with the ultra-divisive chief executive, and hoped to build something on it.

But no such bridges were built. Although this year’s budget repeats that familiar $1 trillion infrastructure commitment, policy experts don’t expect Trump to stump for it in his 2020 re-election campaign. As it is, the White House has made only half-hearted attempts at turning its road-raising rhetoric into reality. At the same time, Congress has infused highways, airports, and other such programs with extra cash since Trump entered office, but that’s been in spite of the president, not because of him. Here’s a brief guide to what Trump has talked about in his budgets, and where federal dollars have actually gone.

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Meanwhile, as the president talks about building bridges and Congress continues funding fresh highways, the planet is burning. Transportation overtook energy generation to become the largest U.S. source of atmosphere-warming greenhouse gas emissions in 2017, and under Trump, America has only become more car-reliant. TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery), a popular Obama-era DOT grant program that supported mass transit expansions and pedestrian-friendly road projects, has turned into a “rural highway building machine,” as my former colleague Andrew Small put it last year. Meanwhile, vehicle-miles traveled are on the rise. Combined with Trump administration efforts (so far stymied) to roll back fuel efficiency regulations, the past three years of feeding America’s voracious driving habits represent yet another blow to the world’s chances of meeting its climate goals.

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https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2020/02/trump-infrastructure-transportation-budget-highway-transit/606412/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAtlanticCities+%28CityLab%29&utm_content=FeedBurner

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