Welcome infrastructure infusion

To anyone living on Long Island, the need for a massive infusion of infrastructure spending is obvious. The quality of our lives is tethered to our region's roads and bridges and trains and airports, and to the cleanliness of our drinking-water supply and our waterways.

But since President Joe Biden took office, his plans for an infrastructure bill and an additional, more contentious spending plan, Build Back Better, have sown more controversy than is merited.

Much of the confusion is understandable: The plans seem to have similar goals, and the politics surrounding passage have caused big changes, spurring attacks on the bills and Biden.

The infrastructure plan barely passed in the House last week, with six Democrats opposed and 13 Republicans supporting it, including Andrew Garbarino of Bayport, who has been unfairly castigated and even threatened for a vote that will benefit the region. His GOP colleague, Lee Zeldin of Shirley, was wrong to oppose it. Biden will sign the measure into law Monday. But in August it sailed through the Senate, 69-30, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell one of 19 Republicans voting for it.

It's not a $1.2 trillion plan, though even Biden sometimes claims it is. The infrastructure bill contains just $550 billion in new spending, with another $650 billion coming via annual baseline spending set in previous legislation. The infrastructure bill is funded with $200 billion in unspent COVID-19 relief, along with $50 billion in unspent supplemental unemployment funding and $50 billion garnered from postponing new Medicare rebates. It also includes $60 billion in "funding" from the economic growth Biden says the bill will create, and will increase the debt $256 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

And this is not a $2 trillion plan full of non-infrastructure items, as critics claim. Those dollars are for the Build Back Better blueprint Biden still hopes to pass, which, as Republicans rightly point out, contains massive new funding for controversial initiatives.

ROADS, BRIDGES AND MORE

Discussion of BBB's initiatives and funding will come later. Now, the focus is on infrastructure. Here is where most of the additional $550 billion goes, over five years:

• Roads and bridges: $110 billion
• Public transit: $39 billion
• Electrical grid: $73 billion
• Passenger and freight rail: $66 billion
• Airports: $25 billion
• Ports and waterways: $17 billion
• Electric vehicles: $17 billion
• Road Safety: $11 billion
• Water infrastructure (including lead pipe replacement): $55 billion
• Broadband: $65 billion
• Environmental remediation: $21 billion
• Resiliency and Western water supply storage: $21 billion

So when critics say not all the money goes to roads and bridges, that’s true. But when they say just 20% goes to hard infrastructure, that’s false. Even politicians with no love for public transit, for instance, or the urban communities that house most of it, should concede that railroads are infrastructure. So are ports and waterways and airports and water pipes and nearly everything on this list.

So it is expensive, and will increase borrowing. But it does not depend on tax increases, and $256 billion in debt over 10 years is not so much in the context of the nation’s urgent infrastructure needs, which experts say demand well over $3 trillion.

And it will benefit New York and Long Island tremendously; the state gets at least $90 billion for water infrastructure work, $685 million for airports, $1.9 billion for bridge replacement and repair, $12 billion for federal highways, and $20 billion for rail and other public transit.

MONEY MUST BE TRACKED

This infrastructure bill is urgently necessary, and when explained honestly, supported by the public. And at a time when bottlenecks in our ports and shipping and trucking and logistics are postponing purchases and feeding inflation, it's not surprising Americans support improvements.

The energy spent attacking the infrastructure bill, then defending it, should be redirected to assuring it is implemented efficiently, fairly and effectively.

Much of the money is going to be divvied up to states, then awarded to municipalities via competitive grants. That’s a setup ripe for boondoggles.

The methods by which the money is awarded have to be fully transparent and tightly overseen. Online tracking sites, easily accessed and navigated by the public, should follow projects applying for funds and the progress of those projects once funds are awarded.

Public comment should be a part of the process. It’s the people’s money, and it’s the people’s communities, and they will often have a good sense of what needs are most pressing.

Accountability is needed when projects go awry, and there ought to be clawbacks when money is wasted. There’s not enough funding in this bill to fritter any away on fraud and stupid choices.

And planning for more, large infrastructure initiatives has to be ongoing and constant, not sporadic. Caring for the mechanisms that make our nation prosperous and comfortable must be consistent.

The United States became the world’s dominant power at least partially because it built extraordinary roads and rail and bridges and canals and schools and power grids and 100 other kinds of necessary infrastructure.

To stay great, we must keep investing wisely. That will be a lot easier if our politicians come together to meet our needs, rather than seeing a safe, modern and productive physical plant as just another opportunity to brawl and smear.