Apr
6
2021

URLs du Jour

2021-04-06

It's Infrastructure Day at Pun Salad! Please don't run over construction personnel.

  • Or. More Accurately, 'Gargantuan'. Brian Reidl at the Dispatch: Biden's Infrastructure Proposal Is a Giant Boondoggle.

    President Biden has unveiled a $2.2 trillion grab bag of liberal spending projects creatively branded as an “infrastructure” initiative. The words “invest” and “investment” may appear 160 times in the American Jobs Plan, yet its largest proposal is $400 billion for long-term care for the elderly and disabled, which—whatever its merits—has nothing to do with infrastructure. Same with the proposed billions to support community violence prevention programs, a $10 billion “Civilian Climate Corps” (duties include “advancing environmental justice”), and a proposal to eviscerate state right-to-work laws. Highways, roads, and bridges would receive just $115 billion, or 5 percent of all spending. 

    Unfortunately there's no "investment" in support of individual cranky bloggers.

  • Also, Since We're Doing Titles: a Road to Perdition. Robert Krol makes a kind-of pun, so he's in: Biden’s Infrastructure Package is a Bridge Too Far.

    “The American Jobs Plan” proposed last week by the Biden administration is a very large ($2.3 trillion over eight years), ambitious and complex proposal. Much of it is also misguided and unnecessary.

    To begin with, the emphasis on job creation is odd. Doesn’t the administration remember that the unemployment rate was only 3.6% right before the pandemic? The country had experienced continued employment growth since 2010. This was even true for the manufacturing sector. In addition, wage growth among lower-wage earners had accelerated and was increasing faster than growth among high-wage earners. The U.S. labor market was not the basket case implied by the plan.

    Another flaw in the plan involves its considerable confidence in the government’s ability to control large swaths of the economy. Simply increasing funding to government agencies and programs often fails to produce the desired outcomes. Is there the manpower and technology available to implement the policies? History shows that in a large, geographically heterogeneous country the central management of big, complex programs is often very difficult.

    Especially that last paragraph. I was struck by how much the sales pitches sounded like the Five-Year Plans put out by the bad old Soviet Union. For example

    The President’s plan will create a more resilient grid, lower energy bills for middle class Americans, improve air quality and public health outcomes, and create good jobs, with a choice to join a union, on the path to achieving 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035.

    Da, comrade. You can't make a carbon-free omelet without breaking some free market eggs, понимать?

  • It's Not Arrant Corruption, Because They're Unions. Graham Piro notes that Biden's Infrastructure Plan a Boon for Unions. No foolin'.

    President Joe Biden's multitrillion-dollar infrastructure proposal includes a major union handout that would overhaul labor law in the United States.

    The White House released a fact sheet Wednesday detailing Biden's proposed $2 trillion infrastructure package that includes a call to pass the PRO Act, which is currently languishing in the Senate after passing the House. The law would overturn right-to-work laws in 27 states and expand the ability of the National Labor Relations Board to fine employers that violate employees' organizing rights.

    New Hampshire is possibly going to pass right-to-work legislation this year. Biden would overrule that.

  • Did You Notice Their Lips Were Moving? That Means… Robby Soave notes a rare surrender to truth at the White House: Biden Administration Retracts Claim That $2.25 Trillion Infrastructure Plan Would Create 19 Million Jobs.

    In pitching his $2.25 trillion infrastructure spending proposal, President Joe Biden said last week that if the plan was passed, "the economy will create 19 million jobs—good jobs, blue collar jobs, jobs that pay well" over the next 10 years.

    That's a technically accurate description of an analysis of the American Jobs Plan published by Moody's Analytics, an economic forecasting firm. But it leaves out a major caveat: Without the passage of the American Jobs Act, Moody's projects that the economy will create 16.3 million jobs in the next decade.

    Politicians try to take credit for things that would have happened anyway. It's an evergreen story.