{"id":4601,"date":"2016-11-15T19:49:43","date_gmt":"2016-11-16T00:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/?p=4601"},"modified":"2016-11-15T19:49:43","modified_gmt":"2016-11-16T00:49:43","slug":"to-infrastruct-or-not-to-infrastruct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/to-infrastruct-or-not-to-infrastruct\/","title":{"rendered":"To Infrastruct or Not To Infrastruct?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"House

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer. \u00a0Photo: Alex Wong\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

I confess it occurred to me shortly after the horror of last Tuesday had begun to settle in that at least maybe now we could move forward on\u00a0some infrastructure spending, create some jobs and begin to repair our crumbling roads and bridges. \u00a0President Obama has been begging for that for eight years, and both Hillary and Voldemort<\/del>\u00a0DJT made noises about it in the campaign. \u00a0The irony of the GOP’s very predictable instant turnaround from debt terror\u00a0to stimulus frenzy would be good for some scorn and a few people might be better off…<\/p>\n

But Jonathan Chait makes a solid argument<\/a> that we don’t want to fall limply into the GOP’s waiting arms here. \u00a0His argument has two prongs. \u00a0First, …<\/p>\n

For Democrats to cooperate unconditionally with this strategy is to institutionalize a political order in which Democratic presidents must be punished with contractionary policy while Republicans are rewarded with expansionary policy. Reasonable people can disagree about what level of national debt can be sustained, but the figure is finite. The political system seems to passively accept that America\u2019s long-term debt should be allocated toward the goal of maximizing growth exclusively during Republican administrations. Why Democrats would find this system good for their country, let alone their party, is difficult to understand.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because most voters\u00a0only see who is in the White House, the effect would be to increase DJT’s popularity and increase the likelihood of further GOP consolidation. \u00a0Republicans understand that\u00a0things work this way and have cynically used that knowledge; that’s why they have resolutely kept their collective foot on the economic brakes over the entire Obama presidency.<\/p>\n

And not only that, but as we have seen, DJT will steer benefits, financial and otherwise, to himself and his companies in this as he does in everything else:<\/p>\n

…Trump\u2019s high potential for corruption involves the interplay of two different rejections of political norms. First, unlike every other presidential candidate in modern history, he has refused to disclose his tax returns, so his financial interests remain opaque. Second, he will continue to hold his interests in office rather than retreat into passive investment. …\u00a0Asked […]\u00a0about the presidential tradition of placing his assets in a blind trust, Giuliani replied (correctly) that a blind trust would do no good if Trump\u2019s branding business continued, since he knows its assets, and only selling off the entire company would do. But Giuliani insisted that such a drastic step would be unfair to Trump\u2019s offspring: \u201cPut his children out of work, they\u2019d have to go start a whole new business, that would set up a whole set of new problems.\u201d The premise that Trump\u2019s children could not find jobs that did not involve selling their father\u2019s name, and that averting the crisis of Trump-children unemployment should take precedence over averting massive corruption of the federal government is one Republicans probably do not relish having to defend.<\/p>\n

Giuliani\u2019s second defense was even more audacious. \u201cYou have to have some confidence in the integrity of the president. The man is an enormously wealthy man. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any real fear or suspicion that he\u2019s seeking to enrich himself by becoming president,\u201d he laughed. \u201cIf he wanted to enrich himself, he wouldn\u2019t have run for president.\u201d<\/p>\n

In reality, the world is replete with wealthy men who attained power and used it to enrich themselves. This is the very source of concern about Trump\u2019s attack on the norms that prevent American presidents from using their power for self-enrichment. These norms exist precisely because we don\u2019t assume a president is immune to temptation. …<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Giving Trump and his party such a valuable gift, and weakening Democrats\u2019 own chances for regaining power, is worth doing in the case of a vital humanitarian interest. But for some highways? And to give bipartisan cover to what may well have grants to contractors who will be giving kickbacks to Trump and his family? …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole\u00a0piece.<\/a><\/p>\n