Yet another infrastructure bill is making its way through Congress — and this one is a classic example of what a bloated bureaucracy will do while Democrats are in power. H.R. 3684, the Invest in America Act, proposes a whopping $550 billion in new spending.
Pitched as a “bipartisan” effort to aid the United States, the 2,000-plus page Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was crafted by a group of Republican and Democratic senators, and it is rumored to pass.
It sounds so helpful. What could possibly go wrong?
Some of us have been reading the bill. It’s a shining example of government spending gone wrong. A friend who tweets anonymously — and who isn’t in politics or journalism but has made a habit of poring over these bills — has been raising the alarm. Turns out, the bill is chock-full of pork, “equity” oriented grants, and millions of dollars of “hard” infrastructure that seems neither necessary nor similar to infrastructure.
Here are a few more examples of things in the infrastructure bill:
- $50 million for Central Utah Project Completion
- $5 billion for low/zero emissions school buses
- $2.5 billion for a carbon storage commercialization program
- $21.5 billion for clean energy demonstrations
- $75 million for the Denali commission
- $14.2 billion for the Federal Communications Commission
- $3.4 billion for the Federal Buildings Fund
- $3.5 billion for Indian Health Service
The descriptions of these payouts — I mean, grants — are ludicrous: $250 million for reducing truck emissions at ports. A $500 million grant for the Healthy Streets Program allows cities to “provide funding to deploy cool and porous pavements and expand tree cover to mitigate urban heat islands, improve air quality, and reduce flood risks.”
The bill includes $75 million for the Open Challenge and Research Proposal pilot program, which provides grants for proposals to “research needs or challenges identified or determined as important by the Secretary.” And it proposes a “federal system funding alternative advisory board” that must appoint “advocacy groups focused on equity,” among other things.
There are also some kickbacks for politicians tucked into the bill. The bill grants $1 billion for the Appalachian Regional Commission and $150 million for the Delta Regional Authority. Conveniently, West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin’s wife is co-chairwoman of the Appalachian Regional Commission.
A few Republicans have objected to the egregious spending in this bill. In a speech, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee argued the Constitution does not give Congress the right to “go out and spend money on anything that we deem appropriate.”
“Shame on us for making poor and middle-class Americans poorer so that we can bring praise and adulation to ourselves and more money to a small handful of wealthy, well-connected interests in America,” Lee said.
Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said he would vote against the bill. Chairman of the Republican Study Committee, Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, also opposes the bill.
Still, despite some opposition, it sounds like it’s too little, too late. The infrastructure bill will likely pass and dictate a spectacularly gross amount of spending spearheaded by our own members of Congress. Who do they think foots the bill? They know who — the problem is they don’t care. This is evidenced by the massive pork stuffed into the bill and the fact drafters design these bills to be so overwhelmingly long and complicated that few have the time to read them and protest.
Infrastructure is, of course, vital to the U.S. economy. It is one of the things Congress has the right to allocate taxpayer funds toward. However, this bill shows we’ve come a long way from funding decent roads. Examples such as those above hardly seem like a wise and vital use of taxpayer dollars.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
