Coyote Blog

I demonstrated a while back from the CBO report that less than 7% of the 2009-2010 spending was infrastructure in the stimulus bill.  In fact, this percentage barely increases past 2010.  Below is a piece of a Washington Post graphic (whole chart here).  I have colored orange the areas that include infrastructure.

I have generously included all of the highway, transportation, interior, energy, water, Corps of Engineers, school renovation and parks spending, though my bet is that a bunch of that never turns into steel and concrete.  I have also included some of the rural and urban development money.  I have excluded facilities that are by bureaucrats for bureaucrats, such as improvements in federal office buildings.  I have tried to keep things proportional, but note, as always, actual spending does not match the rhetoric.  For example, you might think that the school spending, from Obama’s speeches, was all infrastructure, but in fact only $20 out of over $90 billion is for school renovation.  The rest is for  … something or other.

We will be posting on the stimulus bill for months and years, because it will take that long to figure out what was in it.  Congressman who voted for it may never know what they actually voted for.  Veronique de Rugy takes a first swing at it:

Total spending amounts to $792 billion, with $570 billion in direct spending and $212 billion in tax provisions. These numbers don’t include the massive amount of interest that will accrue on the increased debt. If we include that, the total amount comes to $1.14 trillion.

Supporters of the package describe the legislation as transportation and infrastructure investment, the idea being to use new spending to put America back to work while at the same time fixing decrepit infrastructure. However, only 17 percent of the discretionary spending in this package is for infrastructure items. More worrisome still, the final version lacks any mechanism to ensure that spending will be targeted toward infrastructure projects with high economic returns

De Rugy actually overestimates the infrastructure spending, because she looks at the spending over 10 years.  Since the stimulative effect of infrastructure spending in this recession is, at most, limited to 2009-2010 spending, and since the infrastructure spending is more back-end loaded, the percentage is much lower in the first 2 years — something like 6-7% as I calculated here (I will go back through the CBO reports with an update when I get a chance, but Kevin Drum links them here, hilariously saying they “scored well.”

Unfortunately, even this seems to wildly underestimate the true cost of the bill.  In creating the bill, Congress increased the general operating funds for zillions of departments and programs  (remember, 80+% of the spending is departmental budget increases, not infrastructure construction).  However, they show these increasing disappearing after a couple of years.  We all know that Democrats consider removing an increase to be “a massive cut” so we can assume that at some point, these budget increases will be extended for eternity.  If one makes this more realistic assumption, then the cost of the stimulus bill is over $3 trillion!  [update:  Carpe Diem demonstrates this with a nice set of graphs]

My other project I am working on is to look at some of the “shovel ready” projects on the mayor’s list here  (warning!  600 page pdf!!) in the Phoenix area.  My incoming hypothesis is that any project on here either:

1. Is not shovel ready, as it takes years to get a project through planning, procurement, and environmental permitting, but once anyone in DC finds that out, they won’t take back the money, -OR-
2. Is something that the local residents, who will enjoy the benefit, refused to fund, raising the question as to why the rest of us should fund it.

I won’t spill the beans yet, but here are a few tastes from the Phoenix area:

• A major upgrade to the water system of the town of Paradise Valley, a small community embedded in Phoenix which is, by a fairly good margin, the single wealthiest zip code in the state.
• A lot of solar.  Solar is a particularly good choice for this list because 1)  Obama has a hard-on for it, so he is unlikely to question it  2)  Solar’s problem is high capital cost vs. the amount of electricity produced, but if someone else is paying the capital cost….

Via a reader, comes this update on the link from Phoenix’s new light rail line to the airport:

Down the line, Sky Harbor plans to phase out shuttles.

Eventually, an automated train will take passengers around the airport. The project will cover 4.8 miles and will cost $1.1 billion.

Construction on the project began this year, and the first phase is scheduled to open in 2013.

The entire system will be up by 2020, Sky Harbor officials say.

I beg your pardon?  $1.1 Billion.  With a B?  For 4.8 miles?  That is, as the title implies, $3,617 per inch.   It is probably so expensive because they will be working at the blistering pace of 1/3 mile per year, or about 5 feet per day.

Some Valley residents have questioned the reason Phoenix and transit officials didn’t build one train system – light rail – with several stations at Sky Harbor.

Transit leaders considered that, but they decided against it, light-rail officials have said.

Running the line through Sky Harbor would have made light rail even more expensive.

Because, you know, if the Sky Harbor extension is an entirely different project that has to be funded later to make up an obvious service gap that everyone and his dog can immediately spot in the system, then the cost doesn’t count?