Those are the signs President Donald Trump and everyone in America should be seeing in their heads when they hear an announcement like that because this plan is already doomed to failure before the first bulldozer driver turns the ignition.

Its three explicit and implicit goals for the Trump team, boosting the economy, improving our network of roads, bridges, and airports, and building a virtual bridge to the Democrats will all fail and fail dramatically. And we know this because they always do.

Let's start with boosting the economy. Deficit spending has been a political football kicked by conservative free marketers and lauded by liberal Keynesians for decades. Conservatives argue that big government spending projects don't provide enough enduring economic bang for taxpayer dollars and simply leave a larger debt for future generations to shoulder. Keynesians say that government-generated demand is a fine driver for the economy and often the only way to fill the gaps the free market is allegedly leaving behind.

This is an age-old debate that may never be settled, but a relatively recent and extensive study from a decidedly non-conservative source should at least give the big government spenders great pause.

In their 2010 report, Harvard University professors Lauren Cohen, Joshua Coval, and Christopher Malloy found that states that receive increased federal spending usually see private businesses in their state cut their investment, cut jobs, and suffer decreased sales. Even the authors of the study were surprised by those results, but they stand by them. So much for that economic boost from Uncle Sam.