Talk about penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Is infrastructure gonna get defunded? While Washington washes around in speculation about who will fill out President-elect Donald Trump’s next cabinet, an article in Roll Call observes that many of the politicians who will occupy key committee chairs in the U.S. Senate are skeptical of federal infrastructure spending.
They’re gonna get a shot at slashing it because the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which passed in 2021, expires in 2026. And Republican lawmakers, who in short order will control both branches of Congress, may not be keen on reauthorizing anything close to its current funding levels.
The surface transportation reauthorization bill in 2021 became the so-called bipartisan infrastructure law when $550 billion in new spending was added for roads, bridges and public transportation. Although 19 Senate Republicans voted for it, President-elect Donald Trump’s stated intention to scale back the government could mean lower funding levels the next time around.
“It remains to be seen if the next bill will be a capital ‘I’ infrastructure bill or a surface transportation reauthorization bill,” Susan Howard, director of policy and government relations at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, said in August at a state legislative summit. “You probably would get different answers across the spectrum from folks on that, but I think we don’t quite know yet what that focus will be.”
The dust has settled, so we can better guess where the focus will be now. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who will head the Commerce Committee that oversees the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Federal Railway Administration and Amtrak, “has questioned the use of taxpayer money for Amtrak and high-speed rail projects.” Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), likely the chair of the Banking Committee, has emphasized local solutions to public transit problems. Sen. Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV), who voted for the 2021 law, has since criticized its implementation.
To be clear, the Alliance for American Manufacturing was strongly in favor of the 2021 law, and particularly of the significant expansion of the Buy America procurement rules contained in it. That bill was long overdue: By the year it passed, approximately 230,000 bridges were in a state of disrepair. More than 40 percent of public roadways were in dangerous condition. The accumulation of deteriorated assets was predicted by 2039 to cost the United States $10 trillion in GDP, 3 million jobs, and $2.4 trillion in lost exports due to increased business expenses, lost time and wasted fuel.
Rebuilding these assets with American-made materials and manufactured products has been a positive economic double whammy: It improves the logistics network upon which our economy is built and simultaneously supports American manufacturing industries. A direct line can be drawn from reliable infrastructure to the competitiveness of our manufacturing base.
Letting inattention erode our infrastructure, on the other hand, makes manufacturing in America that much harder. Rolling back infrastructure spending in the name of deficit reduction would be penny-wise and pound-foolish.