Trump's War on Capitalism by David Stockman

Author:David Stockman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510779334
Publisher: Hot Books
Published: 2024-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Better still, Washington merely needs to rescind the earmarks that divert more than half of the existing $40 billion per year of federal fuel tax revenues to state and local roads, mass transit, bike trails, walking paths, weed removal, transportation museums, wildlife crossings, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, intelligent transportation technologies, cybersecurity protections, rural barge landings, waterfront infrastructure projects, privately-owned ferry terminals, and countless other diversions. Absent these earmarks, the pavement and bridges of the Interstate Highway system would be in tip-top shape from the current fuel tax levies, and in short order.

So did the Trumpites make any effort to re-prioritize the use of highway trust fund revenues to the original purpose as envisioned by Ike in 1956?

They did not. In good part that’s because the GOP Public Works Committee members in the House and Senate are all-in on the current smorgasbord of “highway” pork. And The Donald was not about to rock the boat where it needed disruption the most because in his mind the bigger the federal spending monuments to his leadership the better.

Beyond the core Interstate Highway system, moreover, upwards of 95 percent of what passes for infrastructure investment —state and county roads, city streets, local bridges, airports, seaports, mass transit, water and sewer, the power grid, parks and recreation, etc.—are the responsibility of the private sector and should be paid for by users or, arguably, constitute local “public goods” and amenities.

In turn, the latter should be managed by state and local governments and be funded by local users and/or taxpayers. But give the beltway lobbies and infrastructure racketeers an inch and they will take a mile. After decades of federal mission creep, there is virtually no aspect of local “infrastructure” spending that has not wormed its way into the federal budget.

That’s just another reason why the nation has $33 trillion of public debt already. And that’s why Trump’s abortive infrastructure program amounted to little more than political sanction for the massive waste already embedded in the Washington Swamp. That is, the Donald spent four years squandering the GOP’s fiscal sobriety brand by endlessly promoting the quintessence of Big Government.

Back in the day, of course, Republicans were intrepid defenders of Federalism and the notion that the domestic functions of government should be conducted as close to the local level as possible. After all, what’s the point of some eighty-nine thousand units of state, county, city, township, village, and special district government if these taxpayer-funded agencies can’t even provide for-fare box revenues on local bus routes, maintenance of secondary highways and city streets, or water and sewer services to local residents?

When all of this gets federalized on an ad hoc basis as proposed by the Trump infrastructure extravaganza, however, you end up with the worst of all possible worlds. That is, random redistribution of resources among localities; wasteful projects and inefficient pork barrel allocation of funding; and a centralization of politics where Washington’s permanent governing class always wins, and the working taxpayers of Flyover America are left out in the cold.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.