The Register's editorial

One of the most popular initiatives promised by President Donald Trump is the rebuilding of America’s aging infrastructure.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s promise to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure appealed to both conservatives and liberals who believe government agencies have a duty to maintain and improve the roads, airports, parks, bridges and public buildings that citizens have entrusted to their care.

Unfortunately, Trump backed away from this promise immediately after the election, two months before taking office. He didn’t have much choice, of course. The “Make America Great Again” crowd wants new infrastructure but also views taxes as government confiscation of their personal wealth. They want to see government spending shrink.

Trump and every member of Congress knows this, which is why no one in the White House or the Capitol — two pieces of infrastructure that are beautifully maintained, by the way — has the courage or political will to back legislation that would require the spending of $1 trillion in additional taxpayer money.

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Initially, Trump’s plan amounted to little more than corporate welfare: a massive, $137 billion tax cut to incentivize construction companies, utilities and private investors to pony up the cash for public projects that would then turn an ongoing profit for them. Those same tax breaks and profits would have been awarded to companies already in the process of rebuilding infrastructure as part of pre-existing projects.

The thought of effectively privatizing these public assets scared off many supporters in Congress, and it’s no wonder. Government has its faults, but it’s at least designed to operate for the public good, while corporations make decisions based on the needs of owners and shareholders. At best, the Trump plan would have encouraged investment in profit-generating projects, such as toll roads, at the expense of other necessities, such as rural roads and water utilities.

So that plan was quickly replaced with a new “trillion-dollar infrastructure plan” that calls for spending not $1 trillion of public money, but one-fifth that amount.

So far, this plan, which was announced in Cincinnati on June 7, is nothing but a bullet-point list of vaguely defined goals and ambitions. It calls for the commitment of $200 billion in public money over the next decade, and it references unspecified incentives that, once conceived and defined, are supposed to persuade private corporations to invest the other $800 billion. The $200 billion in federal spending would then be offset by a $95 billion cut in infrastructure spending in future years, further eroding the public commitment.

This latest iteration of the "trillion-dollar plan" doesn’t even specify how all of the $200 billion would be spent, let alone the $800 billion from private investors. And to address concerns with the previous version’s corporate tax breaks, this new version simply omits any mention of incentives. That means we really have no clue as to the impact this plan will have on the Treasury and on individual taxpayers.

No doubt this is by design. People can’t criticize or oppose elements of a plan until those elements are publicly disclosed.

One of the most troubling aspects of the plan, if it can even be called that, is its attempt to deal with the broadband needs of rural America.

As reported by Bloomberg News, it would cost roughly $80 billion to bring broadband service to all areas of the United States that still need it. At one point, Trump’s plan proposed spending just $25 billion, and that would have been spread out over the next 10 years. Now it’s unclear how much will be budgeted for broadband.

The nation can’t wait 10 years for basic infrastructure improvements. Even now, smaller cities across America are struggling to deal with the costs of rapidly decaying water systems, and they’re responding to the crisis by selling off these public utilities to private investors.

And as the Washington Post reported two weeks ago, Trump’s overall budget reduces federal aid for water-utility projects. It eliminates a $498 million loan program that helps rural communities pay for them, and adds only $4 million — less than half of 1 percent — to the State Revolving Fund that is widely used for localized water projects. Adjusted for inflation, this will leave the fund with its smallest budget since 1997.

You’d never know any of this if you listened only to Trump’s self-congratulatory speeches, such as the inaugural address in which he promised to “build new roads and highways and bridges and airports and tunnels and railways all across our wonderful nation.” And his June 21 speech in Cedar Rapids, where he said “we're going to be rebuilding our country. We're going to do things in terms of infrastructure that we need. Our roads, our highways, our bridges, our schools, our airports.”

If he actually follows through on that promise, he’ll have earned at least some measure of support from rural America. If not, he may have to answer for it in 2020.