Dégringolade: noun; a rapid decline or deterioration (as in strength, position, or condition), downfall.
The Democrats running the show in DC have passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill – $550 billion billed as “additional spending” – and approved on a party-line vote (50-49) the Socialist Bernie Sanders’s $3.5 trillion “reconciliation” blue print. We are throwing money to the wind and will reap the whirlwind. We’ll get little for it but a national wasteland.
We could end up as the next Argentina. Argentina presents an abject lesson in the effects of drunken-sailor public finance. The Latin American country in 1970’s and 1980’s faced a debt crisis and began to wildly print money to address it. The result was an annual inflation rate that averaged 300% from 1975 to 1990. Middle-class purchasing power shrunk 30%. What is waiting in the wings as we embark on our own colossal spending binge, almost all of it from borrowing, bloating the national debt to such astronomical levels that the only way out is the one paved by Argentina? Could this be the beginning of the USA as simply another failed state?
Dire? Yes, because the numbers point in that direction. The national debt is scheduled to balloon from $17 trillion to $40 trillion over the next decade.* To put it in perspective, 1 trillion square miles would cover the surface of 5,000 earths; 40 of them would amount to 200,000 planet earths. There’s no solace in the fact that I won’t be around to experience the worst of it. My kids and grandkids will live to see their country become a basket case.
Much of this bloat will be swallowed up under “infrastructure”, which the most recent little and big sister editions aren’t. It’s a race-mongering, greenie utopian, nation-building exercise. It’s infrastructure to produce a faculty-lounge Soviet Union.
Leaving that aside, let’s take a closer look at the $550 billion mini-monster (remember, it’s $550 billion in $1.2 trillion) coming down the pike. Simple question: Is it even necessary? No. State and local governments currently spend $500 billion on real infrastructure. It’s not that there’s no infrastructure expenditures without this monstrosity. The drunken sailors in charge of the federal fisc are burying the cupcake of state spending under a gargantuan load of ice cream of federal cash. Don’t expect a cherry on top. Look forward to a belly ache and diabetes.
So, there’s no shortage of cash for “infrastructure”, if we understand that 500 billion hours ago would place us in the onset of the Early Eocene Period, which would leave another 56,762,626 more years before we started to walk upright. What happened to this interstellar load of dollars to justify an additional intergalactic heap? Well, it’s essentially wasted. Once again, the numbers are dispiriting.
Spending reform isn’t in the cards, just more cash. The problem isn’t that we don’t spend enough. It’s that we squander so much of it. Union featherbedding in the form of Davis-Bacon, and the little Davis-Bacons (state), bloat the cost of these projects by 22%. With federal Project Labor Agreements, labor costs are ballooned 30% when more workers are mandated than comparable projects in the European Union. It’s a sweet gig for the union hall, but in the end, we’ll still be plagued with crumbling bridges and interstates and a national debt that’ll relegate more of our children to pauper status.
Remember Obama’s measly $787 billion stimulus bill of 2009 which was supposed to produce those “shovel-ready jobs”? “Shovel-ready” ran into the buzz saw of entrenched environmentalism. Those lovable Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) in federal law, to be combined with Environmental Impact Reports (EIR) in states like California, empower environmental jihadists to delay and run up costs till they have squashed the thing and the proponents throw up their hands in disgust.
Nearly every step on the approval path is plagued with public hearings. A great idea, right? It seems peachy till you notice who’s attending. Let me tell you it isn’t the young family breadwinners negotiating clogged freeway traffic trying to get to work or the grocery store. It’s the traveling troupe of eco-zealots who seek to make mincemeat of planning commissioners and building department officals. If that isn’t enough, the laws give the same lunatics the right to sue, which frequently shoves the project back to the EIR/EIS level and a restart of the whole rigmarole.
California set the tone at the state level with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the creation of new commissions and boards like the Coastal Commission. Others were empowered like the Air Resources Board and the sundry Air Quality Management Districts scattered throughout the state. Other states followed suit. California gave us Silicon Valley . . . and Ottoman regulatory efficiency. As a result, will we go the way of the Ottoman Empire, courtesy of the golden state?
Putting a number to the scene, EIS’s take 7-25 years to complete, depending on the availability of legal talent and motivation to mash up the works. Eco-zealots have both in ample supply. I’m reminded of Rachel Maddow standing before the Hoover Dam in 2011 wondering why we don’t seem to be able to accomplish big-scale feats anymore. Apparently, it never occurred to her that her eco-allies had something to do with it.
Disgorging a couple of humungous bills through Congress can only be considered a win in one sense. They were examples of a group of overpaid, insular politicos in DC getting more votes than the opposition in a couple of rooms in the capitol building. They won’t be wins for the American people, particularly the young and the ones yet to be born. Our children will be burdened with a legacy of dégringolade.
RogerG
*“Time to Move On from COVID Capitalism”, Kevin D. Williamson, National Review, April 5, 2021