Tough sell
The problem for the Obama administration is to make the president’s $50 billion plan to jump-start transportation projects look like something other than a stimulus package, say a job-creation measure or an investment in infrastructure. The proposal is both, actually, but even the hint that it’s stimulus could be enough to kill it in the current toxic political environment. And both House Republican leader John Boehner and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell quickly labeled it as such. “A last-minute, cobbled-together stimulus bill,” McConnell called it – worse yet, financed with “more than $50 billion in new tax hikes.”
And McConnell was not totally off the mark about it being cobbled together. The White House wanted something to announce over Labor Day weekend to show that it was taking the 9.6 percent unemployment rate seriously.
The plan calls for a first-year infusion of $50 billion to build or repair 150,000 miles of roads, 4,000 miles of railways and 150 miles of airport runways. The White House says it will create jobs and strengthen the economy now and increase growth and productivity in the future.
The first-year cost would come from phasing out the oil and gas depletion allowance and a manufacturing-tax deduction. Under Republican doctrine, allowing any tax loophole to expire is “a job-killing tax hike.”
The infrastructure measure would be meshed with the huge six-year transportation bill, which expired in 2009 and still must be reauthorized. Congress has passed a series of temporary extensions. That must-pass bill must be paid for, although by the time Congress gets around to it, paying for the bill may be the Republicans’ problem.
President Barack Obama’s plan would set up a government-run infrastructure bank that would use both public and private money to finance cutting-edge transportation projects. The idea has the support of several big-state governors and has some support in Congress.
Done right, addressing – and paying for – the nation’s huge backlog of infrastructure repair is not a bad idea. But there’s the problem of the political environment.
In normal times, Congress would jump on a project like this. But Republicans don’t want to hand Obama anything that looks like a legislative victory in advance of the November elections.
And Democrats are leery of being trashed for spending projects that run up the deficit. And labeling something like the bank as “government-run” is also not the strongest selling point at the moment.
Scripps Howard News Service