The Only Questions that Matter on Infrastructure
President Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure proposal reminded me of my military service in WWII. I was an 18-year-old soldier in the China/Burma/India theater. Our unit, the 835th U.S. Army Signal Corps Battalion mission was assigned to build the first telephone line connecting India, Burma (now Myamar), and China. We completed our mission in June, 1945, a few months before the end of the war.
I did not get to China until 1977, on a trip with a delegation of Northwestern University trustees and faculty. At that time, less than a year after Mao’s death, we saw a primitive state. Its airports, roads, bridges, houses, trains, hotels, schools, and hospitals were decades behind the West.
While we have been spending trillions on military action Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, reading about the Kardashians, and mired in political gridlock, China has been leapfrogging us. Their telecom makes the then state-of-the-art lines we installed in India look like two tin cans on a wire. Today their infrastructure is far ahead of our crumbling airports, transportation, schools, and roads. They are at the top of the list of infrastructure expenditures as a percentage of GDP, while we are far down on the list, one tenth of their infrastructure spending. We spent our time and money on fighting — military and political, while they were building a new quality of life and preparing to trounce us economically. The rest of our time is spent fighting with each other and our media concentrates its attention on controversy between the extremes instead of focusing on the priorities we share.
The issue is not what it costs to strengthen highways and bridges that have not been significantly updated for more than half a century and to create new jobs that will transition our economy away from outmoded technology to systems that will save the environment and create new jobs. The true issue is what it will cost if we do not do it.
For the answer, start with Texas, which just this year suffered devastating losses as a result of infrastructure failure caused by system failures in government and industry that both put cheap prices ahead of reliability. The Texas Tribune estimated that the grid failures and storm damage due to inadequate, yes, infrastructure, could cost its citizens more than any previous disaster in the history of the state, more than the $125 billion in 2017 from Hurricane Harvey. In addition to the incalculable loss of life, with dozens dead from exposure, millions were without water and power. Energy cost fluctuations imposed 7,400 percent increases in bills sent to Texans already reeling from the storms. So that’s $250 billion in expenses for just two weather-related costs in one state in four years. How many more do we have to live through before we learn that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?
How much is it worth to prevent a bridge from collapsing? Currently 42 percent of our bridges are over 50 years old. More than 46,000 bridges in this country have been rated as “structurally deficient” by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Are those bridges closed to traffic? They are not. 178 million trips cross them every day. If we do not repair these bridges, a disaster will happen. What would the people crossing that bridge consider more expensive, fixing it now or playing Russian roulette each time we drive across?
Every dollar spent on infrastructure more than pays for itself in what economists call a return on investment. There is a reason transportation is the foundation of the Biden proposal. If we can get more people where they need to be for jobs, the economy gets stronger. And one of the lessons we have learned from the pandemic shutdown is that it is just as important for the world to reach us at home as it is for us to go to schools and offices and health care providers. That is why a key part of the infrastructure proposal is strengthening broadband and making sure information and education are available to everyone. That is an investment in our workforce, our consumers, and our democracy. Another critical part of the proposal will help us transition from 19th century jobs and products to the 21st century.
When I first went to China in 1977, they were where the US was in the early 1800s, with (putting aside the issue of how it was acquired) vast, undeveloped land that could be allocated with a long-term vision of what was best for the country, free from the squabbling of the entrenched interests responsible for the frustrating gridlock we are mired in.
In the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln showed his faith in the nation conceived in liberty by signing two key pieces of legislation in the same day: to establish land grant colleges and the cross-country railroad. That is the kind of vision and commitment to the future we need today.
As we begin the infrastructure debate, we should reflect on the message Congressman John Lewis wrote to be published in the NY Times on the day of his funeral last year, callingon us to come together to keep the promise of a better future: “When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war.”
