In Trump's America, Infrastructure Is Not for the People

President Trump’s 2018 budget proposal warns that ongoing neglect of America’s roads, bridges, and trains will have consequences. “If the United States continues to underinvest in infrastructure, we will continue to fall further and further behind our peers,” it states.

In the distant universe of nine months ago, such talk might have rallied Americans on both sides of the political aisle. Public money for stuff everyone uses! Huzzah! But the year is 2017, and America’s worst landlord sits in the Oval Office. When the White House clucks its tongue at the state of the nation’s failure to invest in infrastructure, it does not then go on to suggest that government should pay for infrastructure: “[S]imply providing more Federal funding for infrastructure is not the solution.”