Courtesy of Mish.
Inquiring minds are watching an excellent video on The Kudlow Report between Larry Kudlow and David Harkin.
Harkin is the author of a study on US infrastructure and a professor at the university of North Carolina Charlotte.
Partial Transcript
Kudlow: President Obama wants to spend another $50 billion on repairs to our infrastructure. Do we really need it? That would be on top of the over $100 billion for the nonshovel ready projects back in the 2009 stimulus. Remember that? There’s a new study that says we may not need it. Our roads and bridges are not crumbling and are much better than they were 20 years ago. How about that good news? David Harkin is the lead author of that study. David, thank you for coming on. I read the reports. Throughout the country in real terms adjusted for inflation, state control, highway spending has increased by 60%. 177% in nominal terms. 60% in real terms. They had good results.
Harkin: We were quite surprised when we looked at the numbers. The highway system has gotten better on all seven measures we looked at. Accidents rates are down. Even the pavements have been improved particularly for the interstate system. Even congestion is down too. This isn’t, I think, generally common knowledge. Most people think the infrastructure is crumbling or falling apart. We found just the opposite.
Kudlow: Why is Washington then, so manic and obsessive about pouring more and more infrastructure money? Why?
Harkin: Well, the fundamental problem here is that the states control how that money will be spent. Some of it comes from the federal government and some of it from the states. So the feeling in the states and in Washington is that we just need more and more and more. But in fact the numbers don’t support that. The numbers suggest that we’re making progress and that’s very good news for the public. So, in terms of where the issue should go here we ought to look very carefully at whether these requests are really needed.
Kudlow: David, here’s one of my big beefs. This is highway money and bridge money. Davis-Bacon, the prevailing union wick, once you use federal dollars and it’s true for these big union states like New York, New Jersey and California, Once do you that you have to pay the Davis-Bacon prevailing union wage rate which is at least a third higher than if you did it privately. That’s my biggest beef about spending all this money.
Harkin: In our study we showed the cost for doing this work are much higher in a few states compared with the rest of the country like California, New Jersey, New York are very high cost states relative to the other states. To go back to the earlier question regarding whether this is just a problem of the interstate system or whether the civil engineering report is correct, you know, let’s remember the civil engineering report looks at only one year and is based on opinions from local experts. But it doesn’t look back in time to see whether we made progress. David Harkin thank you ever so much. congratulations on your study which blows the lid off all this infrastructure money proposal coming out of Washington.
End Transcript
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