Trump’s Infrastructure Plan Doesn’t Have to Be Politics as Usual

If the Democrats take the House, we may see a revival of President Donald Trump’s promised $1 trillion (or more) infrastructure program, this time financed through federal borrowing rather than the public-private partnerships floated last year. Former economic adviser Gary Cohn and other sources tell Axios that Trump — the self-styled “King of Debt” as a businessman — never wanted that approach anyway, preferring to have the government spend the money directly. “Another trillion in debt, here we come,” Cohn said in a CNBC interview.

The problem with writing private companies out of financing and managing infrastructure isn’t just the already-ballooning budget deficit. It would signal that both the administration and Congress are less interested in delivering high-quality highways, bridges and airports than in continuing politics as usual — hiding who pays for what amid a rat’s nest of cross-subsidies and looking backward rather than forward. Better approaches are possible, and in his new book “Rethinking America’s Highways,” veteran transportation researcher Robert W. Poole outlines one such approach. Poole, who 25 years ago first popularized the idea of adding a toll option to carpool lanes (and was my boss at the time, when I was editor of Reason magazine and he was president of the Reason Foundation), answered my questions via email. The following is a lightly edited transcript.