Many Republican lawmakers are adamantly against President Obama's proposed use of federal tax dollars to finance repair of the nation's deteriorating infrastructure and jumpstart the economy. They argue that the federal government is often too incompetent and wasteful to meet the challenge. Besides, they say, lowering taxes and reducing regulation is a far better way to stimulate infrastructure rehabilitation and job creation.
Many of these Republican politicians are of a libertarian bent, so they believe the states and especially private entrepreneurs are infinitely superior to the federal government in managing the bulk of the nation's domestic affairs. If the GOP had its druthers, it would privatize most functions of government as well as a majority of publicly owned property (presumably stopping short of acquiring such national treasures as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park).
Republicans maintain that the states and private companies could more effectively rehabilitate rickety bridges, construct new highways, and upgrade water works and energy delivery systems than could Obama's proposed Federal Infrastructure Bank.
But the GOP argument is a red herring. Funded by tolls, user fees, and a surtax on millionaires and billionaires (especially objectionable to Republicans), Obama's infrastructure bank would be doing essentially what the GOP wants. Federal taxpayer dollars would be disbursed to the states and private entities (both of which lack sufficient resources of their own) to engage in worthy infrastructure rehabilitation projects. Washington bureaucrats would not be manning the bulldozers and steam shovels.
The arrangement worked quite well in the 1950s' when six dollars in benefits were realized for every federal dollar spent in helping states and private contractors to build our magnificent Interstate Highway System.
As for the claim that the Washington bureaucracy is ineffectual in directly managing or upgrading infrastructure, this is Republicans' not too subtle attempt to privatize as much of the federal government's current functions as possible.
Yet if history is any guide, the Republicans' assertion of private sector generic superiority is wishful ideological thinking. Although the public sector is far from infallible, federal custodianship of public lands and historic sites sets a conservation standard that private parties have rarely been able to match.
True, federal agencies can sometimes make a mess of things. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is a favorite target of criticism for paving over wetlands, channelizing rivers, and building dams that do more harm than good in mitigating flood damage. But most of the Corps' structural work is of good quality. The problem is conceptual. The agency has often been assigned to run roughshod over nature, a wrong-headed mission usually undertaken at the direction of pork barrel-minded members of Congress.
There needs to be a sound mix of government and private investment in restoring the nation's infrastructure to health and generating new jobs, but federal oversight of tax dollars use cannot be far removed. Although the marketplace sometimes operates more efficiently than the federal bureaucracy, at the end of the day, the private sector is driven to maximize profits, even if it is at the expense of the general welfare. By contrast, the public sector is charged (or at least is supposed to be) with maximizing society's long term well-being, even at the expense of some short term sacrifice.
For the general population then, government is more often than not a solution, not a problem.