Birds on the Brain

Yet as president, Obama has pushed his preferred approach only halfheartedly — his American Jobs Act proposal contained about $50 billion in infrastructure spending, of which a good chunk, $27 billion, would go toward “rebuilding roads and bridges.” And Congress has shown even less interest. Back in June, the House and Senate agreed on a 27-month, $120 billion highway bill that left out a provision pushing states to fix their existing bridges and roads first. More generally, the highway bill that Obama signed didn’t do very much to shift funding from suburban highways to inner-city transit. In any case, we’re guessing a bit about what Obama meant by his line — maybe it was actually something more sinister! But there’s a strong policy case that we don’t need to build many more highways out in the suburbs, at least for the time being.