The transportation departments of a number of States are backing away from transportation projects, infrastructure projects that they have been claiming are desperately needed. Their excuse? They “need” more Federal aid. The already allocated $15 billion isn’t enough, they’re bleating.

The States have this backward. They don’t need Federal aid—the dollars of taxpayers in other States—they need to let their own citizens get back to work, including, perhaps beginning with, infrastructure projects like these road projects.

The States will then get all the “aid” they need: directly, in the form of income and business tax revenues from those businesses and employees working on those projects, and indirectly from the general, vast pickup in overall economic activity that would result from releasing American citizens from homebound gaol.