President Joe Biden’s handlers scheduled a White House signing ceremony for the estimated $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending bill for Monday, a little more than a week after Congress finally cleared the legislation.
The legislation could not garner enough Democratic votes in the House to pass and had to rely on 13 Republicans to get it over the line. The final composition of the bill was thus more favorable to business and other Republican priorities than previous versions of the legislation.
The Association of American Railroads had been supportive of a transportation bill, though the organization sounded various cautions about provisions in it. When asked about the final version of the bill, spokesman Ted Greener told the Washington Examiner that it “includes several valuable policies and funding streams that affect railroads, including a historic level of funding for upgrading or separating grade crossings (those areas where highways and railroads interact). Freight-focused grant programs, including those used by ports and smaller railroads, will also pay dividends over time in enhancing the supply chain.”
Asked about where the bill might have gone wrong, he said, “Long term, railroads would like to see a return to the ‘user pays’ principle, meaning that highways are funded more directly by those using them, versus general taxpayer funds.” Still, even on that, he sounded a hopeful note.
The bill has funding for a highway cost allocation study, Greener said. “The first since 1997, this study will help Congress better ensure different highway users, including commercial motor vehicles, cover their fair share of costs to maintain our nation’s roads and bridges.”
But just because Republicans got some of what they want from the bill does not mean that all policy scholars and stakeholders are unambiguously happy with the outcome.
Marc Scribner, a transportation policy analyst at the Reason Foundation, was happy that the bill doubled the amount of legally allowed facility private activity bonds from $15 billion to $30 billion. This, he explained, “will allow states to leverage private financing to support more than $55 billion in additional project activity without putting taxpayers on the hook.”
He argued that the worst part of the bill was something that wasn’t there: any way to address, as opposed to just studying, “the long-term solvency of the Highway Trust Fund.”
“As has been the case since 2008, Congress has continued to bail it out with general fund revenue. Total bailouts are now approaching $300 billion with no end in sight. We are beginning the reconstruction of the entire interstate system, which will take two decades, with a broken funding system,” he explained.
Heritage Foundation analyst David Ditch was even more unhappy with the outcome.
“The infrastructure bill’s primary accomplishment is codifying some Trump-era regulatory reforms that will reduce the amount of red tape that needlessly adds cost and delays to an infrastructure project,” Ditch told the Washington Examiner. “However, the bill leaves far too much red tape intact, and increasing federal spending will mean increasing the waste that results from federal rules and bureaucracy.”
“The bill will inject social justice concepts and left-wing approaches into law, moving federal infrastructure policy permanently to the left. Repeatedly invoking ‘equity,’ funding ‘traffic calming’ projects inherently designed to increase congestion, and using taxpayer dollars to subsidize broadband internet for prisoners are just a few examples of why the bill should have been scrapped rather than receiving bipartisan support,” Ditch added.
In a more extended analysis, Ditch charged that any estimates for its costs rely on “budgetary gimmicks” that make it look cheaper than its actual costs.
“The bill front-loads the spending while spreading tax hikes across the decade, meaning it would increase deficit spending significantly in the first few years, especially the first year,” he explained.
Ashley Nunes, director of competition policy for the R Street Institute, was happy about the bill’s “$65 billion allocation to improving broadband in low-income communities,” which he described as “smart, timely, and long overdue.” He explained that “internet connectivity improves economic mobility by giving communities access to many services” and suggested to the Washington Examiner that “the Biden administration should be commended for this.”
Nunes was less enthusiastic about $7.5 billion that the bill allocates for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, which “seems like a waste given consumers don’t want to stand on the side of I-95 for hours topping off their batteries. They want to charge their EVs from the comfort of their home.”
Adie Tomer, a fellow for the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, agreed with Nunes’s praise and Scribner’s concern.
“This bill, finally, marks the first major federal commitment to bridging the digital divide,” Tomer told the Washington Examiner. “It invests tens of billions of dollars in connecting network gaps, making service more affordable, and funding digital skills training at the local level. It’s a clear recognition that digital equity is a key to long-run American competitiveness.”
As for America’s decaying highway infrastructure, Tomer said, “Once again, the federal government failed to adopt a ‘fix-it-first’ policy within the federal highway program. Even after years of evidence about the deleterious effects of prioritizing expansion over long-run maintenance needs, the new law will continue to allow states this flexibility.”
Before the bill’s passage, Tomer also told the Washington Examiner that “the country will have the challenge of implementing so many new and expanded federal programs. That’s going to require herculean coordination between local governments, their neighbors, states, and federal partners.”
It also introduces the possibility of mismanagement of projects and funds on a herculean scale.
