An Infrastructure Program

In the coming year, the Trump administration intends to push for an infrastructure improvement program for its next major legislative effort.  It’s certainly true that we need much improvement in our roads, bridges, and transportation networks in all mediums, for both economic and national security reasons (bonus points to those who can identify President Dwight Eisenhower’s motivation for pushing the Interstate Highway System like he did).

It’s also true that such a program would be broadly popular among American citizens.

It’s also true that the proposal coming onto offer, rather than being another Federal boondoggle, would only commit $200 billion as seed money, with the States and locals putting up the bulk of the funding and work.

That’s all well and good, but it’s insufficient: the program would remain vulnerable to inflated costs.  To complete the effort and make the overall program more efficient, Congress and President Donald Trump, in parallel with the infrastructure effort, need to get rid of the Federal requirement that contractors pay union prevailing wages instead of competitive wages, and the administration also needs to encourage the States to get rid of their own, similar, requirement.

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