The President’s infrastructure plan proposes major investments in affordable housing, smart growth, and affordable transportation that better connects us—with an overall goal of addressing climate change and eliminating racial and economic disparities. But how we target the funding matters as much as how much we spend.
A new opinion piece in the Washington Post from Transportation for America takes a contrarian view of all the talk about money during Infrastructure Week. In short, let’s skip a special infrastructure plan and focus on policy; without good policy more spending could actually do more harm than good.
It’s Infrastructure Week again and politicians are back at it, bemoaning our “crumbling roads and bridges” and insisting we must spend more to fix the problem. But we’ve got some cold water to throw on this pity party: Despite more transportation spending over the last decade, the percentage of the roads nationwide in “poor condition” increased from 14 to 20 percent.
This morning, President Trump released his “Legislative Outline for Rebuilding Infrastructure in America” and “An American Budget” for the next fiscal year (FY19). In response, Geoff Anderson, President and CEO of Smart Growth America, issued the following statement: