I know Tea Party Republicans don’t care for infrastructure spending. But I presume they still care for infrastructure.

That is, I presume they like well-maintained roads, affordable electricity, and clean drinking water as much as I do. And when those things aren’t available – when antiquated air traffic control systems delay their flights, for example, or broken down street sewers flood their neighborhoods – I presume they are just as frustrated as I am.

The problem, for the Tea Partiers and their allies, is the government part. They don’t trust Congress to assign, or oversee, these investments efficiently. And you know what? They have reason to be skeptical. Congress has been known to allocate infrastructure spending based on which lawmaker sits on which committee, rather than on which project has the greatest intrinsic virtue. It’s also been known to go a bit lax on the oversight. And so we end up with Alaska’s infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” courtesy of former Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, rather than, say, a hi-speed train linking St. Louis, Chicago, and Detroit.

But the alternative shouldn’t be to stop funding public works altogether, particularly when new reports on the sorry state of American infrastructure seem to appear every month. The alternative should be to fund them in a better way. And, as it happens, that’s precisely what the Obama Administration and some of its allies have in mind, as part of their push for new steps to revive the economy.