CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Public works projects are credited with playing a big role in ending the Great Depression. As millions of men were out of work in the 1930s we built roads and dams and brought electricity to parts of the country that were underdeveloped.
Joe Biden imagines that his trillion-dollar inflation reduction act is something similar. It’s not. There are no Hoover Dams or interstate highways yet to be built. Pushing high-speed internet into rural areas just doesn’t have the same scale. These projects will put dozens, not thousands, of people back to work.
Also this is not a time when unemployment is at 20-percent; it’s 3-percent. Tight labor markets make inflation worse, not better.
So now comes a group of useful idiots who’ve organized a news conference at Wausau City Hall today where they will highlight the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act. How has Wausau spent the money? New streetlights. Pickleball courts. We’re fixing up the skateboard park. None of those projects are robust enough to lift the local economy.
The two projects that would have really benefitted local residents, funding for PFAS mitigation in the drinking water and for dubious lead pipe removal, will fall mostly to ratepayers and homeowners. Of course, federal dollars come with strings attached: streetlights are greenlighted, water quality… that’s a separate program.
We’re told that the Biden bill includes cost reductions for insulin and more money for daycare. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. At a time of tight supply chains and high inflation pumping more money into the economy causes prices to rise further. And while I don’t want anyone priced out of insulin and childcare, if, hypothetically a family redirects their free daycare into a backyard deck project – that’s what causes lumber prices to rise.
The biggest clue that the Inflation Reduction Act is dubious is that Joe Biden has to lie about his signature piece of legislation. A bridge did not collapse in front of the President, like he told a crowd in Milwaukee last week. If the program is so good, why resort to an obviously untrue story. When something is working as-planned, the truth will suffice.
Chris Conley
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