America Is Literally Rotting‎

America’s decrepit infrastructure is one of our country’s many problems where “kick the can” or "I'll worry about it tomorrow" has been the political order of the day for decades. This is in no small part due to our political gridlock. President Trump and Democratic Senate Minority leader Schumer were publicly on record earlier this year as wanting to address our decaying infrastructure [link], ‎but just couldn’t get it done.

 The American Society of Civil Engineers issues a report card on America’s infrastructure every four years. See www.infrastructurereportcard.org. In 2017 it graded America’s infrastructure D+. 

 Since 1998, America’s infrastructure has earned persistent D grades. The aviation, dams, drinking water, energy, hazardous waste, inland waterways, levees, public parks, roads, schools, transit and waste water sectors all get D’s. (Solid waste, ports and bridges each get a C+, and rail a B.) 

 In terms of the obvious costs of such neglect, think about the destruction of Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, Harvey and Maria, or the Interstate 35 eight-lane bridge spanning the Mississippi River that collapsed into the river in Minneapolis-St. Paul in 2007.

 But there are also less visible costs, including to America’s households (think about traffic jams and the recent power outages in California); to many of America’s industries; and to American competitiveness generally.

 Surprisingly, despite its history as the party of fiscal responsibility, fiscal conservatism has nothing to do with today's Republican Party, so that isn’t the reason for Republican inaction on infrastructure. (Today’s Democrats talk about fiscal responsibility a lot less than Presidents Clinton and Obama did too.) Given President Trump’s background building things, it is surprising that he isn't doing whatever he needs to do in order to rebuild America’s infrastructure. Rebuilding our infrastructure seems like exactly the kind of legacy he would want to leave.

 I wonder whether our national motto should now be “Sinere putrere” (“To allow to fester or rot”), rather than “E pluribus unum” (Out of many, one”)?