President Biden's Infrastructure Bill—"A Bridge Too Far"

 

There is scarcely anything in President Biden’s proposed infrastructure plan I don’t agree with, even though, as many Republicans and some Democrats and economists are properly pointing out, some elements go well beyond any traditional definition of infrastructure.

 

But almost without exception, they are needed:  refurbished bridges, roads, tunnels.  Improved airline terminals.  All needed to bring us up to where China, for example, already is. 

 

And I agree there should be some incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles and funding to provide an electrical charging grid across the nation, just as the federal government contributed to the building of the nation's railroads and highways in decades past. 

 

And no one could believe more than I do in the importance of preschool education being available to all families who seek it as well as improved child care. 

 

My problem with this proposal is not what it’s proposing to fund—it is all strategically important--but how it is proposing to fund it.  I have long felt, for example, that preschool education should be funded in part at the federal level but even more at the state and local levels. There needs to be joint ownership at every level including the community because only there can one bring the tailored leadership needed for the programs to be effective and learn over time.   The same line of reasoning applies to improved child care. 

 

I worked closely with President Obama’s first Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, trying to persuade him and the Obama administration to change their proposal for universal preschool education—not to have it rest entirely on the federal government but rather have it be a shared funding and implementation responsibility at federal, state and local community levels. 

 

The Biden administration should pull back on this infrastructure bill to get bipartisan agreement to the essential elements of it and ensure careful thought is given to the apportionment of costs among the federal, state and local governments as well as private industry.

 

There is an undue rush about advancing this legislation based on the feeling that there is an opening to make it happen. The proposed legislation is sweeping together a disparate group of initiatives under one umbrella (infrastructure) without careful and prudent thought on how they should be funded and how much money should be spent.  This nation’s capacity to assume more debt is not infinite.  My advice to the administration is “Slow down.  Get committees together to study this. Achieve a bi-partisan outcome.”  I hope the Biden administration follows this course of action.