How is a potentially 2 trillion dollar or more infrastructure bill going to work
This is a question I've asked myself over and over for years. We all know we need to address it. We all know it will be massive. It could, and probably will, end up being the largest most expensive undertaking this country has ever attempted. If we're going to do it, it better not be half assed like defense spending.
But how are we going to do it? Roughly 60% of the people in this country live in towns of 15k or less, roughly 40% of those in towns of 500 or less. Those folks are going to be expected to be treated fairly on the same field as the bigger metropolises. Good luck high fiving a major project in a big city while those folks are still changing shocks on their cars every year because the roads suck, or are still buying bottled water while the news worthy cities get the improvements all towns need in this country.
Where is this money going to go? Who is going to distribute it and on what grounds? Nobody can expect someone in small town Iowa who needs a crumbling bridge over a small river to not get it fixed because a huge bridge in a major metro area is eating up 10's of millions. There are thousands of small towns nation wide that need the water infrastructure updated, a thousand Flints out there. Who decides which ones get the money and for that matter, make sure that money gets spent properly and fairly? Roads are more than interstates now. What about areas that want infrastructure improvement to continue or introduce trucking and rail service for small companies that say NYC could give a shit but locally might supply 500 jobs?
An infrastructure bill is desperately needed but this isn't the 50's, i.e. the interstates are there. We won't be building new we will be doing badly needed maintenance to what is there first then building anew for the coming century. Throw upgrading the power grid in there. Is Mexico Indiana going to get their grid upgraded? To be honest its the small town folks that make up more than half this country who always feel like they get left out by the big coastal cities east and west and the ones in between. These places are the breeding ground of Former Guyism for that simple fact.
We need to do it but IMO it needs to be done in a way thats never been done before. Unless it's done very precisely, very fairly, very realistically a huge infrastructure bill could go down as one of the biggest boondongles in history.
I do not envy anyone, either side of the political spectrum, anyone who is given the responsibility to make it work, literally anyone involved. It has failure written all over it unless we can be blessed with some extremely intelligent individuals to pull it off. Scary stuff if you ask me. We hire these folks they better pull it off.
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