December 04, 2015
It has become a common practice for reporters to refer to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s proposal to spend $275 billion on infrastructure. Is this a lot of money? My guess is that almost no one reading the number has a clue. Certainly Secretary Clinton wants people to think it is a major commitment.
While there is no obvious yes or no answer, it would help first of all if reporters started by giving a time frame. Spending $275 billion over one year is a much larger commitment than $275 billion over 10 years. The proposal would spend this money out over five years, making the annual amount $55 billion a year.
By comparison, the new highway bill calls for spending just over $60 billion annually on infrastructure over the next five years, so Clinton’s proposal would nearly double current spending. As a share of the total budget it is still not a huge deal. With government spending projected to average around $4.7 trillion over the first five years of a Clinton administration, the proposal would amount to a bit less than 1.2 percent of projected spending. Measured as a share of projected GDP, it would be roughly 0.2 percent. And, it would come to roughly $170 a year per person in spending.
There are other ways to measure this sum, including looking at past levels of spending or relative to estimates of the need for new infrastructure. Reporters have much room to pick and choose on this one, but telling us that Clinton wants to spend $275 billion on infrastructure really is not providing information.
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