I get mad about Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere” and its ilk for a whole host of reasons, but chief among them is how they represent a perversion of national priorities and needs. The US has compelling reasons to spend money improving and expanding its transportation infrastructure, much of which is out of date, not in the best of shape, and inadequate for future economic needs.
But we all know that, for the US government, transportation appropriations are the equivalent of trips to Billy Bob”s Pork–O–Rama BBQ and Ribs.
The solution seems obvious to me (so obvious that I’m sure it has occurred to lots of people before). Why not create a “national transportation infrastructure commission” modeled after the Base Realignment and Closure Commission?
Congress would “vote up or down” on the recommendations of the commission; there would be some details to iron out, such as whether the commission would be given a sum to work with before its proceeds, and so on and so forth.
I can’t imagine it would be a worse system for setting transportation priorities than the current one.
Filed as: transportation and pork
Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.
He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.
He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.
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