Internal Improvements I
I want to get back into this subject as we have time, because the whole idea that the government can only spend dough on building stuff in a national emergency, was a long time being born in this country and wasn’t really accepted until the New Deal, and even then has gone into frequent hibernation since. Hence the Interstate system was sold by President Eisenhower as a defense project, not an economic one.
This new effort will start slowly. Today’s Washington Post notes that we aren’t getting anything great out of the new POW (Public Obama Works) at first:
President-elect Barack Obama calls it “the largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s.” New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg compares it to the New Deal — when workers built hundreds of bridges, dams and parkways — while saying it could help close the gap with China, where he recently traveled on a Shanghai train at 267 mph. Most of the infrastructure spending being proposed for the massive stimulus package that Obama and congressional Democrats are readying, however, is not exactly the stuff of history, but destined for routine projects that have been on the to-do lists of state highway departments for years.
I like the Bloomberg quote because it underscores an interesting change in American governance over the years–it used to be thought uncool and/or dangerous when the Communists had better toys than us (see “Sputnik”). To paraphrase Clausewitz, in today’s world, economic policy is warfare by other means, and having a 21st century transpo infrastructure is definitely part of having a working economic policy. Choking to death in traffic jams ain’t productivity:
Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak is proud that his city was able to quickly rebuild the Interstate 35 bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River in 2007 while making sure to include capacity for a future transit line on it. But he worries that many of the road and bridge upgrades around the country will not be done in a similarly farsighted way, given the time pressures.
“The quickest things we can do may not be the ones that have the most significant long-term impact on the green economy,” he said. “Unless we push a transit investment, this will end up being a stimulus package that rebalances our transportation strategy toward roads and away from [what] we need to get off our addiction to oil.”
Mayors say there would be a better chance for a long-term impact if the money were focused on metropolitan areas where investments could make the most difference in reducing congestion and lessening dependence on cars. They doubt that will happen if infrastructure funding goes directly to state capitals.
In Seattle, Mayor Greg Nickels said that the list of projects submitted by Washington state included only one in Seattle, for a ferry dock, while the city has ambitious hopes for removing a hulking highway ramp in a revitalized neighborhood and accelerating a light-rail expansion.
“Metro areas really are the engines of the economy, and to the extent that this can go directly to the metro areas rather than a cumbersome state process, it will have more effect,” Nickels said. “States can do a nice job in rural counties, but in metro areas it’s not always a good relationship or very nimble.”
You’re damned skippy, Nickels. We don’t need endless, graft-ridden repaving of county roads to nowhere. We’ve had plenty of that kind of make-work. We need things that will actually grow the country, and it has to be directed with equanimity from the federal level by officials beholden to the nation as a whole, not any particular locality. We’ve never had a continuing policy of doing that.
