With complaints growing about the underfunded state of America's aging roads, rails and bridges, it may be time to redirect money to infrastructure from other, less effective federal programs, says a monetary policy analyst and former mayor.
"We've spent some $14-18 trillion dollars on something called the "war on poverty" over the last 40 years and have seen no results," Steve Lonegan, director of monetary policy at the American Principles Project and a former Bogota, N.J., mayor, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on
Newsmax TV on Wednesday.
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"A lot of that money could have been put into something meaningful, like real infrastructure," said Lonegan.
Lonegan said that simply trying to open up a new revenue stream for infrastructure, without cutting other federal costs, would be difficult given the nation's "$18 trillion staggering national debt."
That means looking for other funding avenues, including renewed efforts to close the gap by growing the economy and by spending the taxpayer dollars the nation does have more sparingly and intelligently, he said.
"Maybe Amtrak is better run by only the private sector," he said, referring to the nation's ostensibly private but publicly subsidized passenger rail system.
Lonegan also rejected an argument that other countries have better infrastructure than the United States because they spend a larger share of national gross domestic product on such projects.
New York City Mayor
Bill de Blasio on Wednesday called for increased U.S. infrastructure spending as part of a broader battle against income inequality, and wrote that the U.S. spends 1.7 percent of GDP on infrastructure compared to 5 percent in the European Union and 9 percent in China.
"We still have a much better infrastructure than China," said Lonegan. "I don't care how much of their GDP they spend."
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