What is in Trump’s $200 billion infrastructure plan?
By Gabriel Black
14 June 2017
14 June 2017
Trump’s
infrastructure plan was released late last month as part of his proposed 2018
budget. The vague proposal, which according to his administration will be
worked out in detail by the fall of this year, will lead to the mass sell-off
of public infrastructure throughout the country while simultaneously slashing
the transportation budget.
The plan
earmarks $200 billion over 10 years. Though there are no details yet, a Trump
administration memo suggests that the bulk of the money will be given to states
and local governments as incentives for privatizing public infrastructure.
Moreover,
more than $200 billion will simultaneously be cut from the transportation
budget. This will likely hurt, among other programs, Amtrak, the national
passenger rail service, potentially shutting it down, and TIGER, a program that
gives state grants to fund infrastructure projects.
Trump’s
dubious plan will not repair or upgrade the decrepit and outmoded American
infrastructure and transit systems. The proposal will force the public to pay
new tolls and fees for basic transportation needs with no guarantees that the
monopolies that control the roads will maintain them properly.
The true
beneficiaries of Trump’s plan are a handful of financial parasites and
corporate conglomerates that will rake in the cash from this unprecedented
transaction. Everything about the plan stinks of a disastrous con job. Trump
ran for president on the promise that he would bring $1 trillion in
infrastructure spending to the decaying and broken infrastructure of the United
States. It is notable then that his administration has essentially slipped this
into the 2018 budget without any mention of it to the public. The deal is too
rotten to show more publicly.
The heart of
the deal seems to be the encouragement of something known as P3, that is a
public-private partnership schemes. The plan has most notably been tested in
Australia, where it is known as the “Asset Recycling Initiative.” Since 2013,
the Australian government has paid an Australian state and two territories 15
percent of public assets they sell off as an incentive to make the sale.
Joyce Nelson, an economist, writes in her book Beyond
Banksters: “Australian critics of ‘asset recycling’ say it is
basically ‘selling a hospital to build a road,’ with the federal government
bribing local governments with incentive payments in order to sell off public
assets.”
Australian
economist William Mitchell notes that these schemes “have systematically failed
to deliver on the promises made by the consultants.” Meanwhile, he writes, “The
stockbroking and legal companies and economists who advised governments in
these public robberies have all done very well.”
The Trump
Administration is also considering some direct federal investments, but its
memo makes clear that it believes local governments have become too reliant on
federal funds. It euphemistically calls on “encouraging self-help” at the local
level, by which it means pressuring local governments to make the choice to
sell off assets.
It must be
stressed that there is nothing unique in Trump’s championing of P3. The
Democratic Party and Republican Party have both stressed the need for
public-private partnerships as the solution to the infrastructural and
local-public debt problem in the United States. In the Detroit metro area, for
example, Democratic politicians have played a key role in selling off
infrastructure to private companies.
The American
Society of Civil Engineers, which has repeatedly warned about the dismal state
of US infrastructure, also advocates P3 as the solution. The group has written,
“Infrastructure owners and operators must charge, and Americans must be willing
to pay, rates and fees that reflect the true cost of using, maintaining, and
improving infrastructure.” The ASCE advocates “user generated fees,” hiking the
gasoline tax, and other regressive proposals that would disproportionately
affect the country’s poorest citizens. The group also calls for more
“public-private” partnerships, along with the streamlining of approval for
private investment in public infrastructure projects. These are all currently
being considered by the Trump administration.
Because
roads, highways, transit lines, and other infrastructure investments are
expensive long-term investments, it is rare to be able to have any kind of
competition between service providers in a region. Having two highways going
between the same places would be unprofitable, not to say irrational. The
result is that privatization of public infrastructure always means monopoly
privatization, with one company in charge of necessary infrastructure. This
monopoly allows the company to charge exorbitant fees or provide sub-standard
service with no repercussions.
Reorienting
American infrastructure along private lines would only create an ever more
class-based infrastructure system, where only those who could afford to will be
able to drive on high-toll expressways and bridges, send their children to
quality schools, drink clean water and live in areas not threatened with
constant flooding or environmental disasters.
States and
local municipalities whose budgets partially rely on revenue from
transportation will likely be hurt in the long run by P3 schemes. For example,
a privatization scheme of Chicago meters cost the city $974 million in revenue,
according to the Inspector General’s office. Depriving states and
municipalities of this source of revenue would compound a future budget crisis
in the event of a future financial collapse. This would encourage cases like
Detroit and Stockton where the collapse of city funds acts as a springboard for
brutal cuts to worker pensions, pay, medical benefit and city services.
THE CLINTON “JOBS” PLAN ENDORSED BY NARCOMEX – IT’S CALLED
AMNESTY!
Clinton, in the guise of a “jobs” and “infrastructure” program,
promoted yet another scheme to hand out tax cuts and other incentives for
companies to hire workers at poverty-level wages, with the trade unions brought
in to keep the workers in line in return for a cut in the spoils.
HOW MANY ILLEGALS WILL GET JOBS?
IN CALIFORNIA YOU WILL NOT FIND A CONSTRUCTION SITE THAT HIRE ANYONE THAT ISN'T MEX.
AMERICA: WALL STREET, THE DEMOCRAT PARTY, THE GOP and LA
RAZA SAY NO LEGAL NEED APPLY!
“The percentage of foreign-born workers in the U.S. labor
force has more than tripled over the last four decades and while the U.S.
represents just 5 percent of the world’s population it attracts 20 percent of
the world’s immigrants,
according to a new report.”
SECURITY
TO OFFSET TAX CUTS FOR THE SUPER RICH
…. AND THE “WALL” WITH
NARCOMEX…. WILL ONLY BE A
“NO TRESPASSING” SIGN
POSTED EVERY 100 OR SO MILES.
DONALD TRUMP, HIS PARASITIC FAMILY, HIS GOLDMAN SACHS
REGIME and GOD FATHER, GEORGE SOROS… .global looters of the
poor!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-jared-kushner-donald-trump-george.html
THE TRUMP AMNESTY… BUILT ON THE OBAMA AMNESTY and
endorsed by NARCOMEX
Open the floodgates of our welfare
state to the uneducated, impoverished, and unskilled masses of the world and in
a generation or three America, as we know it, will be gone.
Those most impacted are middle
class and lower middle class. It is they whose jobs are taken, whose raises are
postponed, whose schools are filled with non-English speaking children that
absorb precious resources for remedial English, whose public parks are trashed
and whose emergency rooms serve as the local clinic for the illegal
underground.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/05/mike-stopa-america-what-ever-happened.html
TRUMP
FILLS THE “SWAMP” WITH CRONY BILLIONAIRES!
"Far
from Trump’s demagogic claims that he would 'drain the swamp,' the corrupt
nexus between Wall Street and Washington is tighter than ever."
TRUMP
IMPOSES OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS:
Cut Federal Pensions and Medicare to Cover Tax
Cuts For the Super Rich
"Trump
is not the initiator of this class war against working people. It has been
underway for decades, beginning in earnest with the election of
Ronald Reagan in 1980 and continuing under every
succeeding administration, including the eight-year tenures of
Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The colossal redistribution of
wealth and income from the bottom to the top of American society reached
record proportions under Obama, whose legacy of falling
living standards and worsening economic crisis for tens of millions
of workers was a decisive factor in the victory of the fascistic demagogue
and con artist Trump."
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