The American Jobs Plan is premised chiefly upon investing $621 billion in America's crumbling transportation infrastructure. The Biden administration claims "Decades of declining public investment has left our roads, bridges, rail, and transit systems in poor condition, with a trillion-dollar backlog of needed repairs. More than 35,000 people die in traffic crashes on U.S. roads each year, and millions more are seriously and often permanently injured." These statistics related to infrastructure are misleading. While traffic deaths have risen appreciably from 2020 despite fewer people driving, the preponderance were caused by aberrant behavior not infrastructure. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics show that deaths resulting from impaired driving rose more than 9% since 2019 and failure to wear safety belts increased 15%. There can be little doubt that the White House’s distortion of the causes of death is based on ulterior motives.
It is more likely that the vast investment in infrastructure is driven by the desire of progressives to consolidate economic and political power. It can scarcely be called legitimate. The most damning evidence for this view is that specificities of places and people which such projects are intended to help are strikingly absent. Similarly, the costs for each of the [unnamed] projects are neither supplied nor safeguards mentioned to control cost overruns. In fact, the Plan is alarming for anyone who typically asks the four basic questions: Why? What? Where? When? Another commentator has already noted a similar lack of specificity in Biden’s so-called Fact Sheet on Domestic Terrorism. The so-called jobs “Plan” provides a lot of vacuous generalities that serve the purpose of dramatically expanding the federal government, but vacuously ignore specifics.
Economically, there is no long-term financial plan to pay for improvements without both raising taxes across the board and further increasing an already burgeoning national debt. Consider the fabulous expansion of railroads in the 19th century. The government did not pay for the expansion of the railroads, but incentivized investments by providing land grants to investors for every mile of new track laid. Together with private enterprise, a way was found for the government supported the private sector to accomplish infrastructure goals.
So many economic issues affecting the USA are ignored by this document. Honest hard-working people are becoming increasingly alarmed about the loss of our energy independence acerbated by the shutdown of the Keystone XL pipeline resulting in higher fuel prices and transportation costs of goods to market. More importantly, the shutdown led to the loss of thousands of jobs. The shift away from natural gas and oil-generated power in favor of electric power for cars, and solar power and windmills for homes will lead to tremendous employment dislocation. Yet, these likely dislocations are not addressed in a meaningful way by the so-called Plan. As a Plan, it is therefore strangely disconnected from the stated goals of the Administration.
The issue of job development cannot be properly addressed without substantively addressing inflation. Despite the attempts of Janet Yellen to downplay the threat of inflation even as our national debt surges to unprecedented levels under the Democrat give-away-the-store-public-spending, this 800 pound elephant in the room is not addressed in the Jobs Plan even tangentially. The consumer price index has already risen 1.4% in the past year. Earnings have begun to stagnate while taxes reflexively will escalate to meet the rising demand for increased social services which the Administration is ready to offer to non-citizens as well as citizens. These are portents of trouble.
When the many key issues of economics are not properly addressed by a document that is more propaganda and posturing than truly analytical and issue-oriented, many bad consequences are sure to follow. Why? The answer is simple: the fiscal and philosophical fundamentals have not changed. The virulent evil of China's communist dictatorship and its footprint in our national economy must be reckoned with. We must avoid becoming a command economy like China but compete under free market strategies, meanwhile shrinking our reliance on government. If we are to survive we must shrink, not increase, our dependence on a government driven and controlled economy. If America is still to be the dominant economic powerhouse, our strategy must change. So must our priorities.
The moral dimension of jobs and work requires that we determine our own future through the classical dignities of work and self-reliance. How ironic that we citizens are offered an American Jobs Plan while at the same time thousands of illegal so-called refugees are being admitted who will undermine our economy. They will take jobs away from actual citizens, and they will depend upon social services that will drain and undermine the economic life of citizens through excessive taxation and skyrocketing of the national debt. The American Jobs Plan is for Americans; yet without borders, there is no country. We control who comes here and that they do so legally. This does not make us racist, narrow minded or xenophobic. It is the rule of law and that which makes us American.
We cannot endure as a country by leveraging large amounts of long-term debt and cultivating an inflationary economy. A stable future and full employment can only be attained by careful planning and living within our means. The task ahead will not be easy but such is the road to recovery. American life is and should always be a renewal movement built upon the dignity of being an American – a living hope directed by discipline, virtue, and above all law and behaving as if it applies to everyone. It therefore takes time, energy, and courage. Most of all, it requires character and a manifestation of moral truth to set the example. We do not need the stream of ideological pap and “green” thinking which have been emanating from the Democrats. We do not need a jobs plan that has no plans. Moral realities combined with non-green economic realities must be embraced and put forward as an alternative to the bogus jobs plan of this Administration.
