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Why Republicans Won't Rebuild America

2021-06-16T19:22:43.776Z


The opposition will not accept public programs unless they offer huge options for speculation Image of a road junction in Rosedale (Maryland), in the USA.JIM LO SCALZO / EFE On June 26, 1956, the US Congress passed the Interstate Highways Act. Dwight Eisenhower signed it three days later. The law allocated $ 24.8 billion of federal funds as an advance partial payment for the construction of a national highway system. It is not a very large amount, by today's standards, but prices are muc


Image of a road junction in Rosedale (Maryland), in the USA.JIM LO SCALZO / EFE

On June 26, 1956, the US Congress passed the Interstate Highways Act.

Dwight Eisenhower signed it three days later.

The law allocated $ 24.8 billion of federal funds as an advance partial payment for the construction of a national highway system.

It is not a very large amount, by today's standards, but prices are much higher now than they were then, and the economy is much larger. Calculated in proportion to gross domestic product, it would be roughly $ 1.2 trillion today. And the interstate highway system wasn't the only great federal investment program; the government also devoted substantial amounts of spending to things like the construction of dams and the creation of the San Lorenzo seaway.

In short, it was a time when politicians were willing to boldly invest in America's future.

And there was a remarkable consensus about the need for those investments.

In the House of Representatives, the highway bill - paid for by raising gasoline taxes and setting tolls - passed unanimously, and in the Senate it received only one vote against.

But it was a different America, or, not to hide what has really changed, a different Republican Party.

More information

  • Mitch McConnell, the Republican Firewall in the Senate

  • Biden Unveils $ 2 Trillion Infrastructure Plan to Create Millions of US Jobs

I had the urge to cheer when President Biden decided to end negotiations with the Republicans on infrastructure. I took it as a positive sign that Biden had reached out to Republicans on form, and that he was simply waiting for the right moment to move on. Because it was clear to anyone who remembered the 2009-2010 health law clashes that Republicans were not negotiating in good faith, that they were simply delaying proceedings, and would ultimately reject anything Biden proposed. The sooner this charade ended, the better.

But when and why did the Republicans become the "no to construction" party? I see it as a mixture of partisanship, ideology and economic speculation. During Barack Obama's tenure, it was considered strident to say that Republicans were deliberately sabotaging the economy. We were supposed to believe that their demands to cut spending at a time of high unemployment, which greatly delayed economic recovery, reflected genuine concern about the impact of the deficit. But the loss of all interest in deficits at the precise moment Trump took office confirmed all that the skeptics had said.

And certainly, a party willing to sabotage the economy during the Obama presidency will be more inclined to sabotage a president deemed illegitimate by many of that party's voters. Increased public investment is popular, especially if it is financed by raising taxes on multinationals and the rich. It would also create jobs. But with a Democrat in the White House, both are reasons for Republicans to block infrastructure spending, not to approve it.

That said, it must be admitted that Senate Republicans, especially Mitch McConnell, did indeed block infrastructure spending even when Trump was in the White House. The main reason why "infrastructure week" became a joke was the ineffectiveness and lack of seriousness of the Trump Administration, its inability to formulate anything like a coherent plan. But McConnell's passive-aggressive resistance also played a role.

What was all this due to? Since Reagan, Republicans have been committed to the idea that Administration is always the problem, never the solution; and, of course, that taxes must always be lowered, never raised. They will not make an exception with infrastructures. In fact, the very popularity of infrastructure spending works against it; they fear that it could help legitimize an increased role for the state.

Finally, the modern Republican Party seems deeply allergic to any kind of program that does not assign an important role to private for-profit actors, even though it is difficult to see what purpose those private actors serve. For example, unlike the rest of Medicare, drug coverage, introduced during George W. Bush's term, can only be accessed through private insurers.

When Trump's advisers unveiled his infrastructure "plan," I realized that he was carefully avoiding hinting that we could build infrastructure like Eisenhower did. On the contrary, it proposed a complex and surely unfeasible system of tax deductions for private investors who would build, it was hoped, the infrastructure we needed. Had Trump's folks ever set out to create an infrastructure plan, it probably would have resembled the only investment program the government put in place, creating “zones of opportunity” that were supposed to help Americans living in zones. low income. What that program ended up doing was bringing wealth to wealthy investors, who took advantage of tax breaks to build, for example, luxury homes.

In other words, the current Republican Party will not accept public programs unless they offer enormous opportunities for speculation.

The truth is that if we succeed in launching the public investment program, it will be through the "reconciliation" system, with little or no support from Republicans.

And the sooner we get to that point, the better.

Paul Krugman

is a Nobel Laureate in Economics.

© The New York Times, 2021. News Clips translation

Source: elparis

All business articles on 2021-06-16

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