Does it? More broadly, what else is in the infrastructure bill?
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When I heard Biden in Pittsburgh asserting that all bridges would be fixed, I chalked it up as the usual political puffery. No big deal.
But, his claim prompted another self-reaction: I should know what’s in the lauded Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill … and, I don’t.
“Millions of us have grown too comfortable pronouncing ourselves passionate about a problem we don’t bother to understand.” Holman Jenkins, WSJ
So, I did some retrospective digging.
First. the numbers …
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The price tag for the infrastructure bill: $1.2 trillion.
About $650 billion of the $1.2 trillion law is earmarked for existing transportation and highway programs.
Think of that portion as routine annual maintenance expense.
That leaves about $550 billion in “new” spending … most of which will be doled out over the next five years.
click chart to enlarge it
Drilling down on the $550 billion of new spending:
> Roughly 2/3’s goes to 5 spending categories: roads & bridges, trains, broadband, electrical grid and water grid
> $110 billion goes to the top category roads & bridges.
An estimated 173,000 miles of roads and 45,000 bridges are in major need of maintenance
Assuming that category’s money is evenly split between roads and bridges, that works out to about $300,000 per mile for needy roads and about $1.25 million per needy bridge.
> About $100 billion (about 20%) of the $550 billion in new spending is sprinkled across initiatives (some specifically listed, some not) that don’t fall in one of the top 10 spending categories listed above.
Call me cynical, but the words that come to mind are “earmarks”, “pet projects”, “kickbacks” and “slush funds”.
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Those are the top-line numbers.
Keep reading for the gory details…
The Homa Files 