Tuesday, April 30, 2019 | 2 a.m.
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President Donald Trump has given Americans an abundance of reasons to oppose him, no question. But “dump Trump” sentiment can go way too far — a point that was driven home last week when Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev., spoke to the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce.
Discussing the need for a major infrastructure spending bill, the freshman congresswoman said some people had tried to dissuade her from getting behind such a measure. Their concern: not that the nation couldn’t afford it, but because passing a bill would allow Trump to fulfill one of his campaign promises.
“I’ve been told, ‘You don’t want to give Donald Trump a win on this,’ ” Lee said.
Now, that kind of thinking is just ridiculous. This is an issue where everyone stands to win — Trump, the Democrats and, most importantly, Americans. The only losers would be those who let partisan politics stand in the way of addressing the critical need for better roads, repaired bridges, updated airports and so on.
To her credit, Lee said she hasn’t let anyone dissuade her from pushing for infrastructure spending, and being willing to work across the aisle to bring it about.
“This isn’t a Republican-Democrat thing. This is an American people issue,” she said.
That’s exactly right.
Infrastructure is literally a life-and-death matter in many respects, affecting the water we drink, protecting us from flooding and keeping us safe in cars, trains and aircraft.
And according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, our nation’s infrastructure is in miserable shape. Among the society’s findings from a 2017 report:
• More than 200,000 bridges — about a third of the total number — are more than 50 years old.
• Many of the 1 million pipes that transport clean water have been in use for nearly 100 years. Americans lose 2 trillion gallons of treated water per year due to pipe breaks.
• Air traffic control systems in some areas are badly in need of modernization, causing congestion and leaving airline passengers at risk.
The ASCE gave the nation’s overall infrastructure a D-plus grade and estimated that it would take $4.5 trillion in spending by 2025 to get it up to snuff.
This is an area that also has a major impact on the U.S. economy. Better infrastructure means more efficient transportation of goods and services and less lost productivity due to utility outages or health issues, for instance.
Nevada’s economy would get a significant boost from the long-overdue completion of Interstate 11, which according to a 2014 study would provide $24 billion in economic benefit to the areas along its route.
And as the Brookings Institution’s Adie Tomer and Lara Fishbane pointed out in a recent article in The Hill, the price of upgrades gets higher the longer projects are put off. That’s especially the case because of Trump’s destructive tariffs on aluminum and steel, which, according to Tomer and Fishbane, had driven up the cost index for steel mill products by 14% from March 2018 to January of this year. The tariffs have added millions of dollars to the price tags of some projects and tightened public works budgets, leaving some projects delayed and others discontinued.
“The net result: lower-quality infrastructure than if the country never instituted the new tariffs,” the researchers wrote. “Oddly enough, while the president pushes a trade war to boost global competitiveness, our domestic infrastructure will be less prepared to power our economy once the war is over.”
With all of that being the case, it’s critical for Congress and the White House to quit kicking the can down the road and get to work on an infrastructure package.
We trust that Lee’s Democratic Party colleagues in the Nevada congressional delegation will join her in working constructively with Trump and other Republicans to bring a bill to the table.
In far too many areas — immigration, the environment and civil rights, to name a few big ones — the appropriate response to Trump is generally to dig in and resist.
But not on infrastructure. Pardon the pun, but this is an area where lawmakers need to build bridges in order to serve Americans’ needs.
