Summary: Trump has broken most of the campaign promises that put him in the White House, especially the pledge to rebuild America. See his promises and his pitiful attempts to fulfill them.
“Some of his ideas …will be passable if Trump is even marginally competent as President (which I doubt), such as more infrastructure spending.”
— My prediction on the day after the election. I did not realize that Trump would not even try.
Trump promised to rebuild America. He has done nothing.
By Tom Conway for The Independent Media Institute.
Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union.
Links added.
Bad news about infrastructure is as ubiquitous as potholes. Failures in a 108-year-old railroad bridge and tunnel cost New York commuters thousands of hours in delays. Illinois doesn’t regularly inspect, let alone fix, decaying bridges. Flooding in Nebraska caused nearly half a billion dollars in road and bridge damage – just this year.
No problem, though. President Donald Trump promised to fix all this. The great dealmaker, the builder of eponymous buildings, the star of “The Apprentice,” Donald Trump, during his campaign, urged Americans to bet on him because he’d double what his opponent would spend on infrastructure. Double, he pledged!
So far, that wager has netted Americans nothing. No money. No deal. No bridges, roads or leadless water pipes. And there’s nothing on the horizon since Trump stormed out of the most recent meeting. That was a three-minute session in May with Democratic leaders at which Trump was supposed to discuss the $2 trillion he had proposed earlier to spend on infrastructure. In a press conference immediately afterward, Trump said if the Democrats continued to investigate him, he would refuse to keep his promises to the American people to repair the nation’s infrastructure. {See the NY Times}
The comedian Stephen Colbert described the situation best, saying Trump told the Democrats: “It’s my way or no highways.”
The situation, however, is no joke. Just ask the New York rail commuters held up for more than 2,000 hours over the past four years by bridge and tunnel breakdowns. Just ask the American Society of Civil Engineers, which gave the nation a D+ grade for infrastructure and estimated that if more than $1 trillion is not added to currently anticipated spending on infrastructure, “the economy is expected to lose almost $4 trillion in GDP, resulting in a loss of 2.5 million jobs in 2025.” {In their 2017 Infrastructure Report Card.}
Candidate Donald Trump knew it was no joke. On the campaign trail, he said U.S. infrastructure was “a mess” and no better than that of a “third-world country” {26 September 2016). When an Amtrak train derailed in Philadelphia in 2015, killing eight and injuring about 200, he tweeted, “Our roads, airports, tunnels, bridges, electric grid – all falling apart.” Later, he tweeted …
The only one to fix the infrastructure of our country is me – roads, airports, bridges. I know how to build, pols only know how to talk!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 13, 2015
Donald Trump promised to make America great again. And that wouldn’t be possible if America’s rail system, locks, dams, and pipeline – that is, its vital organs – were “a mess.” Trump signed what he described as a contract with American voters to deliver an infrastructure plan within the first 100 days of his administration.
He mocked his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton’s proposal to spend $275 billion. “Her number is a fraction of what we’re talking about. We need much more money to rebuild our infrastructure,” he told Fox News in 2016. “I would say at least double her numbers, and you’re going to really need a lot more than that.”
In August of 2016, he promised {big things} …
“We will build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, seaports, and airports that our country deserves. American cars will travel the roads, American planes will connect our cities, and American ships will patrol the seas. American steel will send new skyscrapers soaring. We will put new American metal into the spine of this nation.”
In his victory speech and both of his State of the Union addresses, he pledged again to be the master of infrastructure. “We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. …And we will put millions of our people to work,” he said the night he won.
That sounds excellent. That’s exactly what 75% of respondents to a Gallup poll said they wanted. That would create millions of family-supporting jobs making the steel, aluminum, concrete, pipes and construction vehicles necessary to accomplish infrastructure repair. That would stimulate the economy in ways that benefit the middle class and those who are struggling.
That contract Trump signed with American voters to produce an infrastructure plan in the first 100 days: worthless. It never happened. He gave Americans an Infrastructure Week in June of 2017, though, and at just about the 100-day mark {8 June 2017}, predicted infrastructure spending would “take off like a rocket ship.” Two more Infrastructure Weeks followed in the next two years, but no money.
Trump finally announced a plan in February of 2018, at a little over the 365-day mark, to spend $1.5 trillion on infrastructure. It went nowhere because it managed to annoy both Democrats and Republicans.
It was to be funded by only $200 billion in federal dollars – less than what Hillary Clinton proposed. The rest was to come from state and local governments and from foreign money interests and the private sector. Basically, the idea was to hand over to hedge fund managers the roads and bridges and pipelines originally built, owned and maintained by Americans. The fat cats at the hedge funds would pay for repairs but then toll the assets in perpetuity. Nobody liked it.
That was last year. This year, by which time the words Infrastructure Week had become a synonym for promises not kept {see “How ‘Infrastructure Week’ Became a Long-Running Joke.“}, Trump met on April 30 with top Democratic leaders and recommended a $2 trillion infrastructure investment. Democrats praised Trump afterward for taking the challenge seriously and for agreeing to find the money.
“It couldn’t have gone any better,” Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal, D-Mass., told the Washington Post, even though Neal was investigating Trump for possible tax fraud. Almost immediately, Trump began complaining that Democrats were trying to hoodwink him into raising taxes to pay for the $2 trillion he had offered to spend.
Trump and the Republicans relinquished one way to pay for infrastructure when they passed a tax cut for the rich and corporations in December of 2017. As a result, the rich and corporations pocketed hundreds of billions – $1 trillion over 10 years – and Trump doesn’t have that money to invest in infrastructure. Corporations spent their tax break money on stock buybacks, further enriching the already rich. They didn’t invest in American manufacturing or worker training or wage increases.
Three weeks after the April 30 meeting, Trump snubbed Democrats who returned to the White House hoping the president had found a way to keep his promise to raise $2 trillion for infrastructure. Trump dismissed them like naughty schoolchildren. He told them he wouldn’t countenance Democrats simultaneously investigating him and bargaining with him – even though Democrats were investigating him at the time of the April meeting and one of the investigators – Neal – had attended.
Promise not kept again.
Trump’s reelection motto, Keep America Great, doesn’t work for infrastructure. It’s still a mess. It’s the third year of his presidency, and he has done nothing about it. Apparently, he’s saving this pledge for his next term.
In May, he promised Louisianans a new bridge over Interstate 10 – only if he is reelected. He said the administration would have it ready to go on “day one, right after the election.” Just like he said he’d produce an infrastructure plan within the first 100 days of his first term.
He’s doubling down on the infrastructure promises. His win would mean Americans get nothing again.
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See a nation in decline
There is no one number that can show the Federal government’s annual investment in infrastructure. This is close: net Federal government investment – gross investment minus depreciation – on structures, excluding defense spending. It has been falling for a quarter-century, with a pause during the stimulus spending after the Crash. It was negative in 2013 – 2017. Negative! I expect that the numbers for Trump’s years will show little or no improvement.
See the promises
In Trump’s 2015 book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again
“Domestically, we need to undertake a massive rebuilding of our infrastructure. Too many bridges have become dangerous, our roads are decaying and full of potholes, while traffic jams are costing millions in lost income for drivers who have jobs in congested cities. Public transit is overcrowded and unreliable and our airports must be rebuilt. You go to countries like China and many others and you look at their train systems and their public transport. It’s so much better. We’re like a third-world country.”
On 2 August 2016 Trump described his plans to Stuart Varney on the Fox Business Network.
“We have a great plan and we are going to rebuild our infrastructure. By the way, her [Hillary Clinton] numbers [$275 billion] is a fraction of what we’re talking about, we need much more money than that to rebuild our infrastructure. I would say at least double her numbers and you’re going to really need more than that. We have bridges that are falling down.”
Steve Bannon, Trump’s Chief Strategist, made big promises after the election in The Hollywood Reporter on 18 November 2016.
“Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement,” he says. “It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution – conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”
About Trump’s fiscal deficits
Republicans condemned Obama’s deficits (which prevented another depression). Once in office, they cut taxes for the rich, boosted are already insanely high military spending – and did little else.
Although the GOP hates fiscal stimulus when done by Democrats, when in office they love how deficits boost the economy. Although Trump has built little infrastructure, he has run big deficits. When Trump leaves the White House, all he will leave behind are massive debts. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget gave the bad news in their 25 July 2019 report. Click the graph to enlarge.
“If the recent budget deal is signed into law, it will be the third major piece of deficit-financed legislation in President Trump’s term. In total, we estimate legislation signed by the President will have added $4.1 trillion to the debt between 2017 and 2029. Over a traditional ten-year budget window, the President will have added $3.4 to $3.8 trillion to the debt. The source of the debt expansion is split relatively evenly between tax and spending policy.”
Trump has increased the debt in an expansion – the essence of imprudence. The debt has grown even faster than the economy has grown – the essence of unsustainability. The debt was 74.9% of GDP when Trump’s first fiscal year began on 1 October 2017. It was 76.9% in Q1 2019, the effect of his deficits partially offset by economic growth. Click to enlarge the graph.
Conclusion
Trump pretended to be a populist. That put him in the White House. He has governed as a bog-standard far-right-wing Republican, breaking almost every promise made during the campaign. He will do the same in the 2020 campaign. After all, Americans love leaders who lie to them – and eagerly believe the next lie.
Nothing will change in American politics until we change.
For More Information
Ideas! For shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about populism, about our infrastructure, and especially these…
- A parable of America today – subways here and around the world.
- A look at the future (it’s already here, but it’s not in the USA).
- Portraits of a nation in decline. An unnecessary and easily fixed decline.,
- Watch other nations build infrastructure for 21st C prosperity. We can, too.
- Here’s the news about Team Trump. See the promises fade away.
- See the warnings about Trump’s infrastructure plan. It’s betraying populism.
- While America’s infrastructure rots, we build the most expensive weapon ever.
- The devastating economic effect of mass migration – We need much more infrastructure, which they can’t pay for.
See the Left’s fear of populism
See Leftists’ fear of populism, their blindness about the failure of their policies, their inability to see that there are legitimate other paths, and how they project their own hatred onto their political foes. So long as populists and progressives remain divided, political reform will remain impossible in America.
Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort
Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred
