Both Democratic and Republican congressional leadership alike say they want infrastructure reform. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has decried our “crumbling” roads and stressed the need to “revitalize our deteriorating national infrastructure.” His opposite number, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has concurred: “I hope we can go forward with infrastructure … I think there is a lot of interest.”
But when the libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul offered up a simple plan to pay for infrastructure spending this week, both parties turned their back on the Kentucky Republican.
Congress had to pass a spending bill so the government wouldn’t shut down. Rather than actually do their job and debate appropriations, our representatives decided to just pass a “continuing resolution,” a temporary funding bill that maintains the status quo and pushes the budget fight back a few more weeks. President Trump has now signed the resolution into law, thus avoiding a government shutdown.
The bill is the second stopgap measure that Congress has authored in place of full fiscal 2020 spending bills, which are stalled due to partisan differences in the Senate.
The new deadline will come on December 20th.
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) November 21, 2019
Paul offered up an amendment to the resolution that mirrored his “Penny Plan” for infrastructure to pay for much-needed infrastructure with just a 1% reduction to the budget laid out in the temporary funding bill.
Today I spoke on the floor about my Penny Plan. It would have focused on fixing our infrastructure, cut spending, and balanced the budget in 5 years. The vote results to kill my amendment are a sad example of Washington’s spending addiction. pic.twitter.com/MZAljg7OXg
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) November 21, 2019
His colleagues voted it down. This is disappointing, because Paul’s plan offered a simple, responsible way to reallocate federal resources from endless bureaucratic waste to much-needed repairs without increasing taxes or taking on additional federal debt, which we certainly cannot afford to do, at $23 trillion and counting.
According to Paul’s office, “The amendment would reduce the CR by one percent and move that one percent into infrastructure — a one-time injection of about $1 billion. For the length of the current CR, this new infrastructure funding would pay for: 112 miles of new urban four-lane highway, or 618 miles of resurfaced four-lane highway.” And if this 1% budget reallocation were applied across the entire year — rather than just the short-term duration of the CR — as Paul has also proposed, then it would achieve large-scale results.
As the senator wrote in a Paducah Sun op-ed explaining and making the case for a bill similar to the infrastructure CR amendment but longer-term, “My bill would provide $12.3 billion for 2020 for new infrastructure spending, and it doesn’t touch Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. Based on some estimates, this new funding alone could pay for between 2,500 and 6,200 miles of new four-lane highways, 2,200 miles of six-lane interstates, or resurface nearly 20,000 miles of existing four-lane roads.”
Of course, this would require “the Swamp” to part with some of its beloved government spending, which includes the pork that goes to various home-district companies and crony interest donors. It’s a sad reality of American politics that most of our legislators, from both parties, are too addicted to spending taxpayer money to make even the smallest cut or reallocation, even under the circumstance most favorable for such a reduction.
It seems that everyone in Washington agrees we need to repair our infrastructure, from Trump to Nancy Pelosi to McConnell. So, it’s a damned shame that Paul is the only one trying to do anything about it.
