What Will it Take to Rebuild America?
Plus a blueprint for today moonshots for
tomorrow and a plan for getting it right
When President Trump declared, in his first
speech to Congress, gThe time has come for a new program of national
rebuilding,h the applause was loud and long. This pledge to spend what it takes
to fix roads and bridges, rails and broadband, dams and airports–a staple of
his campaign speeches–struck a chord with public opinion. The legacy of past
generations that sustained the worldfs largest economy is aging and needs
repair. Some 34 million Americans still lack access to broadband. The
electrical grid canft keep up with advances in renewable energy. People
understand this: a recent poll for CNN found that 79% of Americans want the
President to increase spending on infrastructure, including 72% of people who
say they donft support Donald Trump.
His commitment was music to the ears of Wall Street and Main Street, and charmed labor as well as management. State and local officials from Hartford to Honolulu had scrambled in the weeks after Trumpfs victory to compile wish lists of worthy projects, hoping to catch his eye. gAmerica is suffering from a massive infrastructure deficit–crumbling and dilapidated roads, bridges, airports, and tunnels,h Trump said in a statement to TIME. gWe need members of both parties–partnering with industry and workers–to join together to repair, rebuild and renew the infrastructure of the United States.h
So if everyone agrees, if the need is great
and the will is there, if Americafs very quality of life is at stake, as well
as safety, jobs and economic competitiveness, then one would think that this is
where all of Washington has a chance to step up. An embattled President could
prove whether his record as a developer is relevant; Republicans in Congress
could practice governing; Democrats could deliver long-promised results.
Everyone wins–unless Bismarckfs advice that gPolitics is the art of the
possibleh no longer holds. After the failure by Trump and congressional
Republicans to deliver on their pledge to repeal Obamacare, the questions were
written across Washington in neon. Does the President actually have a plan, and
can he persuade even people who may agree with him to go along with it?
Although Trump often spoke during the
campaign of unlocking $1 trillion in infrastructure investments, the pledge may
prove as hollow as his promised mastery of the health care muddle. Ten weeks
after Trumpfs Inauguration, key House and Senate leaders say they are not in
talks with the White House on a plan. And the reason is that there is no
blueprint to discuss one. Only in early March did White House economic adviser
Gary Cohn convene a meeting to create a framework for drafting a proposal.
According to a White House official, Cohn
put them to work on a six-lane process for moving forward, with the expectation
that infrastructure would be handled after health care and tax reform. Lanes
one and two were devoted to finding new and existing projects worthy of a
federal boost. But the rest of the lanes were devoted to issues of regulation
and finance–on the theory that streamlining the approval of infrastructure
projects will unleash a tornado of pent-up energy. gIf we were to take our
10-year process and shrink it down to a two-year process, that in and of itself
would create trillions of dollars of economic activity,h the official said.
gTrillions.h
Trumpfs staff has identified a few
priorities, like broadband and the electrical grid, that require significant
federal investment. His $1 trillion plan will include, officials say, between
$100 billion and $200 billion of actual taxpayer money for projects like these.
But the bulk of Trumpfs promise is contained in the theoretical tsunami of
money in private hands supposedly waiting for regulatory reform. While
nonpartisan experts agree that Americafs permitting process is too cumbersome,
Trumpfs team is an outlier in thinking that faster approvals will have such a
staggering effect. You might ask: How much of this plan has to do with
infrastructure, and how much is part of the war–as White House strategist Steve
Bannon calls it–on the gadministrative stateh?
Which in turn undercuts Trumpfs invocation
of bipartisan cooperation. It comes as he is gutting the Democratsf
climate-change policies, charging ahead with his controversial border wall and
Twitter-bashing Hillary Clinton. Itfs hard to take seriously a hand extended
across the aisle when the middle finger is so prominent. The renegade
Republicans who scotched the health care bill want to cut spending, not
increase it. And the tax reforms that might free up some money for
infrastructure are locked inside a fortress guarded by fire-breathing special
interests.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is one of the
local officials who has discussed projects with the Trump White House,
including plans to alleviate rail congestion through one of the worldfs busiest
transit hubs. A Democrat, he has been known to strike bipartisan deals, but he
doesnft see much hope for this one. gI donft think the federal government is
going to step up, to be honest,h Emanuel says. gIfve been honest with his
Administration. You canft get from here to there–therefs no fairy dust thatfs
going to figure this out. Youfre going to have to invest in it.h
But with his approval rating in the Gallup
poll sinking to an abysmal 35%, Trump may soon find he needs something broadly
popular to anchor his policy pivot. Infrastructure is his best and most worthy
prospect. His name on the side of skyscrapers around the world gives him
credibility as a builder. And his past history as a New York Democrat could
give him space to tone down his antigovernment gospel. He knows what the
problems are. Younger economies around the world have leapfrogged us in
building state-of-the-art works, while our infrastructure is showing its age.
Trump frames the issue with his characteristic colorful hyperbole. gYou come in
from Dubai and Qatar and you see these incredible–you come in from China, you
see these incredible airports,h he says, gwefve become
a third-world country.h
As a younger nation, we built on a heroic
scale, creating instantly recognizable monuments to dynamism and energy. Grand
Central Terminal. The Chicago gL.h The TWA terminal at Kennedy International
Airport. The endless ribbon of interstate highway. The Golden Gate Bridge.
Sadly, wefve discovered that building such projects is more glorious than
maintaining them, even as wefve made new projects too difficult to build.
Admirable goals, like environmental protection and worker safety, are mummied
in red tape. All the while, more and more of our national income has been
diverted into other priorities: the safety net, the Social Security system, our
health care, infrastructure and the costs of the worldfs most dominant
military.
While America waits for the White House
proposal, and the battles that will erupt when it lands in Congress, we should
think harder about how much to spend and how to spend it. The best
infrastructure investments begin in the imagination. They are bold bets on
tomorrow. Their essence isnft found in an engineering textbook. Itfs found in
W.P. Kinsellafs novel Shoeless Joe, in which a ghostly voice promises an Iowa
farmer: gIf you build it, he will come.h Like the farmerfs baseball diamond in
a cornfield, a visionary project changes a culture and creates its own demand.
Two hundred years ago, the governor of New
York convinced the state legislature to dig a canal from the Hudson River to
the Great Lakes. A boondoggle, people scoffed. But DeWitt Clinton could imagine
the impact of such a direct waterway linking the unsettled heartland to the
port of New York City. The Erie Canal ignited settlement of the frontier and
soon carried a brisk trade in crops and goods that ensured New Yorkfs place as
Americafs leading city.
A vision leads to a project, which leads to
the future. Another example: among the settlers in the booming Midwest was a
young man whose ambition was to be gthe DeWitt Clinton of Illinois.h Instead,
Abraham Lincoln wound up in the White House, where his vision of a stronger
Union found expression in infrastructure. Amid the chaos of the Civil War,
Lincoln carved out time to push for approval of the Transcontinental Railroad.
Todayfs transformative infrastructure
projects might not look like the broad-shouldered undertakings of the past. The
best ones must harness efficiency and brainpower, not just concrete and steel.
Tomorrowfs version of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which brought light to
darkness in the mid–20th century, could be powered by sunlight and batteries in
the 21st. A storm of lucrative contracts for new infrastructure projects could
demand a productivity renaissance in the construction industry. Perhaps the
monuments of a new age of infrastructure will be the invisible ones that shape
a nation able to do more while consuming less. Which is every bit as
mind-boggling.
After the iron rails of the
Transcontinental Railroad were laid across trackless prairies and over the
daunting Sierra Nevada, it seemed that nothing could stop the rise of
California–except water. Then as now, the state was parched in some years and
flooded in others. California needed water that it could depend on. A man from
Lincolnfs Illinois, Arthur Powell Davis, made the case for a towering wall of
concrete in a narrow canyon near what is now Las Vegas. His vision became the
Hoover Dam, which tamed the capricious Colorado River and created a reliable
reservoir.
Recently, I asked an executive at one of
Americafs leading engineering firms why we donft build Hoover Dams anymore.
Wherefs our ambition? Wherefs the moxie that conjured a city from nothing in a
remote desert, in the depths of the Depression, and put nearly the whole
population to work on a structure able to hold back Lake Mead?
I thought he might point to such large
undertakings as the high-speed rail project in California, the mass-transit
system that is transforming Denver or the tunneling of a major downtown highway
in Seattle. Instead, he directed my attention to an unimpressive cluster of
buildings in the suburbs of southern Los Angeles–and, much more important, to
what goes on inside.
One group of structures, nothing to look
at, houses an Orange County Sanitation District water-treatment facility. Each
day some 185 million gallons of raw sewage flows in, and eventually the treated
water flows out–not toxic, but not potable either. This wastewater used to be
pumped through long pipes to disperse in the Pacific Ocean. But now more than
half of the treated product goes next door, to nondescript facilities operated
by the Orange County Water District. The OCWD strains the water through
microscopic filters, then forces it by reverse osmosis through superfine
membranes, and finally bombards it with high-intensity ultraviolet light.
What flows out of the facility, in volumes
sufficient to meet the daily demands of roughly 850,000 people, is as pure as a
sparkling glass of premium ice water. Pumping stations return it to the Orange
County aquifer to percolate into wells for future drinking. The process costs
less, and consumes less energy, than importing water from the Colorado River.
So the next Hoover Dam is no dam at all.
Itfs technology, invention, efficiency. Take a look at Singapore–one of the
worldfs infrastructure leaders, according to Germanyfs respected Kiel Institute
for the World Economy. Using the technology pioneered in Orange County, the
island nation has replaced 40% of its freshwater consumption with recycled
NEWater, as they call it. Infrastructure is shrinking even as it grows more
powerful.
Like DeWitt Clinton and Arthur Powell
Davis, the leaders of Orange County had to let go of the past to reach for the
future. In the mid-1990s, the sanitation district was faced with a need to
upgrade existing infrastructure. But instead of doubling down on what they
already had, they built something completely different.
Can Trump harness that spirit?
Groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings have been staples of his existence for four
decades. Can a man whose name is synonymous with gold and glitz become a
champion of small and smart? America may not need many more interstate flyovers
or massive dams. It does need a huge investment in embedded, but invisible, technology
to prepare our highways and streets for driverless cars and trucks. Such
innovations will allow more vehicles to run on existing roads, reducing the
need for new pavement. A modernized air-traffic control system would permit
existing airports to handle more traffic without the need for more runways.
One test will come when the President
weighs his priorities for energy infrastructure. Trumpfs campaign promises to
revitalize coal mining may have won votes, but they lacked vision. While
politicians have been arguing about the relative merits of coal, gas and
nuclear, in the real world, the energy story is suddenly about efficiency.
U.S. demand for electricity has gone flat.
Few saw it coming. But Energy Department statistics show that total sales of electricity
from all sources, measured in gigawatt hours, have been unchanged for nearly a
decade. Between 2007–the last year before the economic crash–and 2015, demand
actually fell very slightly. In the same period, the U.S. economy grew by an
inflation-adjusted 10%.
In other words, without much fanfare, the
U.S. is figuring out how to produce economic growth without consuming more
energy. That might be a first in human history. Smart infrastructure
investments would seize on this breakthrough and pull it forward. We would
build smaller, scattered power plants to reduce wastage of electricity by
shortening the distance between generator and customer. We would invest in
rapidly improving batteries to make solar energy more practical for running
individual homes and small businesses. We would continue to push
high-efficiency appliances and lighting to drive down demand for electricity.
According to Energy Department estimates, if the conversion to LED lightbulbs
continues at its current pace, demand for electricity will be cut by an amount
equal to 44 large power plants 10 years from now.
Maybe you donft think of lightbulbs as
infrastructure, but they are.
Ducts and concrete and asphalt and wire may
look mundane, but they have revolutionized the where and the how of human life.
The world of freeways and jets has a radically different geography from the
world of small towns and rural homesteads that it replaced. Electrified life
has a culture different from the culture of lives lit by oil lamps.
Investment in infrastructure is investment
in change. It represents a peoplefs belief in something better yet to come, and
the willingness to help it along. Across the U.S., local and state governments
are reflecting this optimism. Los Angeles voters in November approved a ballot
initiative that will raise an estimated $120 billion for transportation
infrastructure over the next four decades. Seattlefs voters said yes to a $54
billion mass-transit investment. Denver-area voters have chosen to shoulder the
cost of their light-rail network, which could reach $8 billion. Atlanta
residents have kicked in for a $2.5 billion transit expansion. In Rhode Island,
voters have approved $70 million in bonds to improve the ports of Providence
and Davisville.
In light of all this, some experts question
whether the Trump plan will rely too much on private investors. Private money
is attracted to projects that have a dependable return of revenue. Private
money can learn to love toll roads and even airports, but not every bridge or
storm sewer is likely to generate a profit for investors.
Ultimately, if the President wants to stake
his revival on infrastructure, he will need to bring more than deregulation to
the table. He must bring daring. As grand as his $1 trillion promise may
appear, he has a chance at something real that is even bigger. He can use his
experience as a salesman to bring budget hawks around to the idea of investing
in Americafs tomorrow. He can turn his knowledge of construction to
streamlining the building industry and bringing it into the new century. He can
turn his gift for promotion to renewing Americafs confidence in the strides we
are already making.
This is a harder, more substantive, mission
than the one that took Trump to the White House. But the wreckage of his health
care failure is proof that leadership is not always easy. And doing the hard
thing has always been what makes America great.
–With reporting by BEN GOLDBERGER and JOSH
SANBURN/NEW YORK; and PHILIP ELLIOTT, SAM FRIZELL AND ZEKE J. MILLER/WASHINGTON
This appears in the April 10, 2017 issue of TIME.