No political party has a monopoly on transportation. Democrats can point to President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal; Republicans can point to President Dwight Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System. In modern politics, conservatives have resisted backing federal transportation initiatives because they’re expensive and can be managed by the states. Progressives usually back rail and transit, but resist building roads and bridges for environmental reasons.
But what have these ideological positions wrought? Crumbling bridges, massive bottlenecks, missing links, and heavy congestion.
Republicans are in control and have an unprecedented chance to lead the country’s roads and bridges into the future. While President Trump’s plan needs to be further developed, his willingness to fund infrastructure is an economic opportunity and a political winner for Republicans. Transportation is how a job gets to work and how economies connect to each other. If Trump and Congress want more than 2 percent GDP growth, it’s time to create more routes for trade and development using transportation.
First, to ideological conservatives, it’s important to remember that road infrastructure is one of the constitutional roles of government listed in Article 1, Section 8. Few powers are given to the federal government, and one is roads. That doesn’t necessarily mean the federal government should build all roads, but they certainly can. The feds are best situated to help fund large projects across multiple states or jurisdictions.
Does that mean bridges to nowhere? It shouldn’t. Conservatives have seen infrastructure waste like this throughout the years, but it doesn’t have to be this way. It all depends on how projects are selected. The difference between an effective transportation package and a wasteful stimulus bill is the difference between putting a log in your fireplace versus a crumpled-up newspaper. The first is economic development, and the second is a temporary jobs program. The first has lasting benefits, and the second burns out quickly.
So, what should a bill look like? What makes a transportation project qualify as economic development versus empty stimulus? It can be measured qualitatively and quantitatively.
Qualitatively, it means focusing on projects that connect or improve connections to economic corridors. It means focusing on new projects, not repaving current routes.
Think of a new road or bridge connection as a free trade agreement; it should make travel faster and more affordable. For commuters, this means relieving congestion; for cargo routes, it means shorter times; for businesses, it saves money and allows for expansion. Nationwide, dozens of “missing link” projects exist where trade and travel between states or cities could be exponentially opened up with a new project.
Quantitatively, a metrics matrix should be created that ranks projects based on: increase of access to jobs, employees, and markets; hours of congestion relieved; the number of projected permanent jobs added; and improvement of connectivity among and within areas of concentrated development. These are all common measures used by localities and states to judge the value of projects, and the federal government should use similar measures.
How is this different from President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus that Republicans hated?
What most people also do not know is that very little funding actually went to transportation in the $787 billion 2009 stimulus bill — less than $30 billion went to roads and highways. If he had dedicated the entire $787 billion to roads and highways, infrastructure may have actually seen some improvement.
That $30 million was mostly distributed through federal TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grants. The goals of the criteria for these grants are “safety, economic competitiveness, state of good repair, quality of life and environmental sustainability.” The TIGER criteria isn’t terrible, especially if fixing bridges in disrepair is a primary goal of the president and Congress. Safety as the leading metric is great if you want to fix bridges and old roads, but isn’t ideal for economic development.
We don’t know how much of the Trump plan will be dedicated to TIGER projects. Trump’s team has discussed using public-private partnerships, utilizing tax reform and repatriation to fund the bill, and making the total impact $1 trillion of investment with $200 billion of spending.
Trump would be best-off taking a three-pronged approach. Dedicate at least $200 billion to projects using economic development criteria. Dedicate some amount less than that to TIGER grant project to repair crumbling infrastructure. Create financing opportunities for public-private partnerships where they make sense.
How could it be funded? One idea is to use tax breaks to incentivize investors to repatriate their money, which would create tens of billions in annual revenue according to most estimates. Another idea is to use the $54 billion that Trump wants to add to the annual defense budget by cutting other departments. That $54 billion would be better spent on transportation and fit his promise to rebuild infrastructure instead of continuing foreign entanglements.
Those two funding sources alone would pay for a $350 billion five-year investment in transportation, which is bigger than the one being advertised, and still deficit-neutral.
Republicans should embrace this plan and reclaim Eisenhower’s legacy. It’s not just good economics; it’s also good politics. Swing voters in the suburbs deal disproportionally with traffic congestion. This plan would help them, while most Democrats in these same areas try to force drivers out of their cars and into transit.
Republicans can stand for choice in transportation, while most Democrats stand for forcing commuters onto rail and buses. More roads and bridges mean shorter commutes, more affordable goods, and better access to jobs. This is an agenda the Republican Party can be proud of.
Ron Meyer (@Ron4VA) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is editor of Red Alert Politics (a sister publication to the Washington Examiner). Meyer is also a Loudoun County supervisor who serves on the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board.
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