The plan President Trump unveiled this week for repairing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure isn’t getting much love in the media or in Congress, in part because there isn’t much to it.
Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan only includes $200 billion in actual government spending, with the rest coming from unnamed private investors incentivized by a “mixture of loans and grants” and empowered by Trump’s deregulatory agenda. A White House fact sheet presents ideas such as lifting restrictions on tolls in the interstate highway system and opening rest areas to private investment.
While short on specifics, the White House press release announcing the plan dedicates a good deal of ink to ridiculing President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package as an “expensive waste” of more than $800 billion.
Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have reportedly balked at Trump’s infrastructure plan. Progressive Democrats are pushing their own proposal, which would simply spend $2 trillion over the next decade on fixing up roads, bridges and crumbling sewer and drinking water delivery systems.
The president’s proposal for bolstering infrastructure development with a vaguely defined partnership between the public and private sectors has policymakers looking to infrastructure investment models in other countries for guidance as to what his policies might look like in the real world. One country that keeps coming up in media coverage is Australia, where the government has experimented with a model known as “asset recycling.”
Asset recycling is basically the practice of selling off existing public infrastructure to private investors in order to pay for new infrastructure, and critics say the model fast-tracks privatization deals that prioritize profit margins over the needs of the public. Rather than being a model to replicate, Australia’s experiment provides a cautionary tale to US policymakers because its asset-recycling program amounted to “expensive loans with long-term concession contracts that have had problematic features,” according to In the Public Interest (ITPI), a progressive think tank.
“The Trump infrastructure plan would put a giant ‘for sale’ sign on the country’s roads, bridges, water systems and other infrastructure,” said Donald Cohen, ITPI’S executive director. “Rather than invest in America’s future, the plan would encourage cities and states to hand over public infrastructure to Wall Street and global corporations.”
In Trump’s vision, it seems that what’s best for public infrastructure is assumed to be what’s best for big business. In a nod to Trump’s supporters in the coal and oil industries, which are arguably the intended beneficiaries of his decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement, the White House points out that the nation’s inland waterways where coal, oil and steel are transported have “been allowed to fall apart” and require $8.7 billion in maintenance work.
Trump announced his plan on the banks of the Ohio River in Cincinnati, where he abruptly stopped in the middle of his speech to wave at the captain of a barge stationed behind him.
Australia’s asset recycling program was introduced in 2014 but was formally ended two years later because former Prime Minister Tony Abbott was unable to convince lawmakers to fund it due to mounting concerns over the program’s effectiveness, according to ITPI.
The White House has explored asset recycling as a model, and reports indicate that Trump has considered offering state and local governments a “bonus” for selling off some of their assets. Australia offered a 15 percent subsidy to states and territories, which encouraged hasty decisions to privatize public assets. One territory leased a port to a Chinese company for 99 years without determining where the proceeds would go.
Another cautionary tale comes out of Chicago, where the city contracted private companies to run its parking meters and locked itself into a contract that caused parking prices to skyrocket, according to ITPI.
“Asset recycling is Chicago’s parking meter deal on steroids. It incentivizes making shortsighted deals with private investors,” Cohen said. “In what world does it make sense for the federal government to encourage cities and states to rush to sell off public assets?”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.