Date: 2025-01-02 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00020792
US Politics
The Infrastructure Bill
Re: Privatizing public roads and bridges in Pennsylvania
Peter Burgess
Re: Privatizing public roads and bridges in Pennsylvania Daily Kos
Peter, after rejecting President Biden's plan to make ultra-wealthy tax dodgers and rich corporations pay for infrastructure, Republicans have failed to make their various budget gimmicks cover the cost.
With the clock ticking and the bipartisan deal in jeopardy, it's increasingly possible that the infrastructure framework will include provisions that will rely on, incentivize, or encourage selling publics assets, like roads and bridges, to corporations who would then charge the public for using them.
SIGN AND SEND THE PETITION ... Sign and send the petition: Do not pay for the infrastructure plan by selling off public assets.
Beneficiaries of public-private partnerships claim that privatization transfers risk to the private contractor, while providing high quality infrastructure. But the history and details of infrastructure privatization tell a different story: Privatization has not been a good deal for the government, or the public.
- Virginia privatized construction for high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes on a 14-mile stretch of the Capital Beltway. These lanes charge a toll unless there are at least three passengers in a vehicle. However, Virginia taxpayers must reimburse the private companies whenever carpoolers using the HOT lanes exceed 24% of the traffic, or until the private entity makes $100 million in profits — undermining the public interest in favor of boosting contractor revenue.
- The city of Chicago sold 36,000 parking meters to a Wall Street firm. While that brought the city a little over $1 billion in revenue, Chicago drivers will now pay an additional $11 billion in parking rates through the 75-year life of the agreement.
- After Bayonne, New Jersey entered a lease agreement of its municipal water system, water rates have risen nearly 50%. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, with many people struggling to make ends meet, bills increased by 4.1%. The 40-year contract guarantees the corporations more than half a billion dollars in revenues, so residents will continue to pay ever increasing rates for the next three decades.
- Public-private partnerships actually drive up the cost of infrastructure, while burdening policymakers and residents with long-term contracts designed to protect private profits. We need a big, bold and green infrastructure package that addresses our country's real needs — not a phony scheme that allows private corporations to get richer.
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Campaign Action Sign and send the petition: Do not privatize public assets for infrastructure plan
Because Republicans refuse to make the rich or corporations pay higher taxes, the group of Democratic and Republican senators working on the bipartisan infrastructure package have come up with a dangerous new way to pay for their $579 billion proposal: privatize public assets.
The plan's details are vague, but the group has identified 'public private partnerships, private activity bond and asset recycling' as alternate forms of revenue. That means a sale of public infrastructure to the highest bidder, which the Trump Administration tried but Democrats opposed.
Privatizing infrastructure has not been a good deal for the government, or the public. In 2009, for example, the city of Chicago sold 36,000 parking meters to a Wall Street firm. While that brought the city a little over $1 billion in revenue, Chicago drivers will now pay an additional $11 billion in parking rates through the 75-year life of the agreement.
President Biden has been clear that working people should not be made to shoulder the burden of this massive infrastructure plan, which is why raising the gasoline tax was taken off the table. However, a privatization scheme that sells our infrastructure to private companies—who can then charge the public to use them—is just another regressive tax by a different name.
Politicians in both parties must have the backbone to make the rich and corporations—who got a huge tax windfall in 2017—pay more to fund our desperately needed infrastructure upgrade. We must not fall prey to deceptive revenue solutions that are simply stalking horses for privatization.
Sign and send the petition: We need a real infrastructure plan, not a privatization scheme. Do not pay for the infrastructure plan by selling off public assets.
TPB message
We cannot pay for a public infrastructure plan by selling our public infrastructure to private corporations. Politicians must have the courage to do it right: tax the rich and corporations. I trained as an accountant with Coopers and Lybrand back in the 1960s. In the course of this training I prepared tax returns for a lot of wealthy clients who were having to pay upwards of 75% marginal tax rates (actually more than 90% in the UK). The current tax rates are a catastrophic give-away to the rich and powerful who have gamed the system during the past several decades. Shame on the political class. Please do something to rectify the system dysfunction of the prevailing socio-enviro-economic system.