Stretching the definition of infrastructure comes at a cost

What is infrastructure? If you listen to the people pushing the American Jobs Plan, it’s just about anything. A quick tour of the Internet reveals impassioned pleas for soft infrastructure (childcare, healthcare, etc.), natural infrastructure (the environment), green infrastructure (clean energy) and, of course, traditional infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.)

All of these things are needed, but they aren’t all infrastructure. The examples above at least can be justified as falling within the “spirit of the word.” But almost anything a legislator wants to fund today is called “infrastructure.” If you have to redefine a word to sell a product or idea, maybe you should look instead at what you’re selling. 

These real and invented types of infrastructure are lumped into one bill for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, some are more popular than others. Attaching unpopular items to bills headlined by popular projects is a decades-old trick at all levels of government. Also, partisan gridlock encourages massive catch-all bills, because realistically only a few bills will make it through the legislative process.

But the verbal gymnastics and legislative sleight of hand come at a cost: loss of trust.

Trust in government has been below 30 percent since early in President George W. Bush’s second term except for one year early in President Barak Obama’s first term, according to Pew Research surveys. The most recent survey, released last month, put it at 24 percent.

There are a lot of reasons that trust is low, some of which will be hard to address. But in just about any context straight-forward communication helps build trust. Breaking the American Jobs Plan into parts would make it more difficult to pass, but it would be more honest. And it just might help improve trust in government. At the least, proponents should be honest about what is infrastructure and what isn't.