By Chris Satullo
Over the years, I’ve organized or moderated a bunch of election forums. One thing I like to do is ask one or two offbeat questions that force the candidates to drop their prepared patter on the usual issues and reveal something authentic about themselves. (Yes, even on these queries many candidates bob and weave and avoid saying anything genuine. Still, that display of cowardice gives voters important information about them.)
At a mayoral debate in Philadelphia a few years back, the question was: “What’s your favorite place in Philly and why?” The candidate who gave the best answer that day ended up winning the election.
Afterward, I asked myself what my answer would be.
What I came up with: Schuylkill Banks.
For those of you not from Philly (my condolences, by the way), Schuylkill (SKOO-kull) Banks is the central, two-mile segment of the much longer Schuylkill River Trail. The Banks runs alongside the Schuylkill River on the western edge of Center City (or “downtown,” to you non-Fluffyans), as seen in the photo that adjoins this column.
When my wife and I moved into the city seven years ago, proximity to the Banks was a huge selling point for the condo we ended up buying. Many days, we pick up the trail by the Art Museum (think: Rocky Steps) and stroll to a little beyond South Street (“where the hippest meet” cf. The Orlons).
The Banks is a public amenity that offers a wide, well-tended, well-landscaped path for walkers, bikers, bladers, boarders and what-was-that-contraption?-ers. Somehow, most days, we manage to share the path without incident. On most days, the full age, racial, ethnic and gender diversity of our beloved city is on full display along the Banks. Tattooed bladers in muscle shirts sweep by Black moms in hajibs pushing strollers. The Banks offers stunning views of the Museum, 30th Street Station (think Witness and Unbreakable), and the gleaming towers on either side of the river. Our walk takes us past the banked walls and scuffed rails of that skateboarders’ haven, Paine’s Park, and the furry, delighted chaos of the huge Spruce Street dog park. And past a whole bunch of new condo and office towers that, during our seven years of walking the Banks, we’ve watched grow from the pouring of foundations to the cutting of ribbons.
Which brings me, by a leisurely saunter, to my real topic for the day: Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan.
It’s a hefty mother: $2 trillion. Its understanding of what counts as infrastructure is broad. It promises increased broadband access for Americans. It includes school construction, K-12 and community college. It incorporates retrofitting old homes for energy efficiency as well as (this will be controversial) big bucks ($400B) to enable the elderly and disabled to live in homes that fit their needs. It offers a massive investment in research into green technology.
And, sure, it includes a heaping mound of dough for what might first come to mind when you hear the word infrastructure (which you did hear a lot, to no apparent purpose or result, during the Trump years). Joe tucked a tidy $621 billion in there for roads, bridges, airports, waterways, tunnels, trails and, oh my yes – since this is the Amtrak President we’re talking about – trains. All with a focus on reducing the amount of carbon our ceaseless bustling about the country uses up and tosses into the skies.
Note the word trails is on the list. You might not think of a walking/biking path as transportation infrastructure – but transportation planners do. Poetic souls that they are, they’ve given it this lyrical name: “active transportation.” People in Philly really do use the Schuylkill Trail to get to work, school and shopping– even more in Covid times when mass transit can seem risky. As Gen Z matures into workplaces, the role of walking and bike trails as part of a daily commuting strategy will grow.
How does Biden propose to pay for all these wonders? By raising various taxes on corporations. He’d wipe out much but not all of the 2017 cut in corporate tax rates that was probably Trump’s chief legislative “achievement.” The income taxes of the bulk of Americans wouldn’t go up a dollar to pay for this plan – assuming the Biden team’s numbers add up. (Whichever party occupies the White House, big plans like this often include some wishful accounting.)
Trump’s repeated dalliances with the idea of an infrastructure plan reflected an age-old political reality. It’s easier by far to cajole bipartisanship on a plan that will ship useful bacon into almost every lawmaker’s home district.
So how did GOP legislative leaders react to the Biden plan? Did you really need to ask?
Here’s what the minority’s Dr. No, Mitch McConnell, said: “I’m going to fight them every step of the way.”
Gee, Mitch, why?
“You’re either alarmed about the level of national debt and the future impact of that on our children and our grandchildren or you aren’t,” he said. “My view of infrastructure is we ought to build that which we can afford, and not either whack the economy with major tax increases or run up the national debt even more.”
Notice Mitch’s sly sophistry here? Talk of the national debt is a pure red herring. Biden is not proposing to pay for this plan through federal debt; that’s what McConnell and his co-religionists did in 2017 to finance the corporate tax cuts that Biden would partially roll back.
And “major tax increases”? McConnell wants Joe Sixpack to think his wallet is going to get whacked. But that’s a lie. The Mar-a-Lago crowd, which has seen its share of the national income double over the last 50 years, will be asked to have the corporations they run contribute more of their profits to pay for vital investments in America’s sinews and bones.
“Whack the economy”? McConnell talks about the infrastructure spending as though Biden had proposed picking corporate pockets, digging a big hole, throwing the money in it and setting it on fire. Wrong. Investments in broadband, in ports, in tech innovation, in rail – they fuel economic growth, not thwart it. (The Internet was born out of government-funded research; you could look it up … on the Internet.)
Even humble walking trails along a river with a hard-to-pronounce name can prove to be an engine of investment. Remember those gleaming towers my wife and I watched climb into the sky over our years of walking the Banks?
Their location is not a coincidence. Developers are choosing these sites precisely because they border the Banks. The other day, my wife and I visited the new, to-die-for Giant supermarket in the new Riverwalk complex, just steps from the trail. Two of the six photos in the slider at the top of Riverwalk’s home page show the Banks. The first words the site says about the complex’s location: “Instant access to the Schuylkill River Trail.”
Another sign of how real businesspeople view the value of this type of infrastructure investment: Gerard Sweeney is a very smart, no-nonsense developer whom I’ve known a long time. His firm, Brandywine Realty Trust, built the largest and handsomest of those new towers that now hug the river. Besides being CEO of Brandywine, he holds another title: chair of the Schuylkill River Development Council, which built, maintains and is actively expanding the Banks.
McConnell may be married to a former Commerce Secretary, but he’s not an entrepreneur. He’s a political hack. He no more knows how to grow a modern economy than do the Labradoodles who sometimes nearly run me over on the trail.
It’s a shame because any proposal as huge, costly and multifaceted as Biden’s infrastructure plan deserves factual, skeptical scrutiny from a loyal opposition. Indeed, there are parts of it that make some smart people go “Huh?” or “Please explain” or “Have you thought about this unintended consequence?” Boondoggles are always a risk when a trough gets this big – so what safeguards should be in place? What might this spending do to inflation? Legislative engagement by principled conservatives with a grasp of finance and project execution can always be valuable.
Instead, we get a sour ideologue opening with “fight it every step of the way,” followed by a steaming pile of rhetorical baloney.
Shameful.
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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia