The Trumpian Approach to Infrastructure

As a general organizing principle, if Nancy Pelosi is for something, it's probably a bad idea. What, you ask, could be wrong with chocolate ice cream? And yet, when one learns that the House minority leader has a scoop on a sugar cone every morning for breakfast, the stuff immediately goes from delicious to suspicious.

Just about the worst thing, then, that can be said about President-elect Donald Trump's infrastructure-building agenda is that Pelosi is all for it. Infrastructure spending is "an important priority for us," Pelosi said the day after the election, telling her Democratic House colleagues "we should work together" with Republicans "to pass a bill very fast."

Trump's platform called for transforming "America's crumbling infrastructure into a golden opportunity for accelerated economic growth and more rapid productivity gains." That may all be imminently doable and eminently sensible. But there is always the nagging risk that spending on infrastructure, instead of promoting economic growth, degenerates into boondoggles—boat-anchors dragging on the economy. The stimulus, anyone? Anyone?

Some infrastructure projects are no-brainers. To get the Keystone XL pipeline under construction, the federal government doesn't need to offer money, just regulatory approval. Trump promised, from the early days of his campaign, that if elected president, he would sign off on the pipeline right away.

Read the rest from Eric Felton HERE.

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