Profligate politicians have never met a multibillion-dollar infrastructure project they didn’t like — except when it comes to President Trump’s border wall.
Think about it.
Boston’s Big Dig black hole, the nation’s most expensive highway project, burned through $25 billion and was plagued by deadly engineering incompetence, endless cost overruns, leaks, lawsuits and debt.
California’s high-speed rail boondoggle is a $100 billion bullet train to nowhere. Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown promised a 2020 completion date for the miracle transportation system. The latest estimates predict it won’t open until at least 2033, and the costs keep rising.
Seattle’s ill-fated Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement topped out at $4 billion in local, state and federal funds for a 2-mile, bored-road tunnel that will finally open next month — nearly four years behind schedule and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget.
What the Big Dig, bullet train boondoggle and Seattle squander all have in common is that political elites, lobbyists and corporate heavy-hitters trampled over grassroots citizen opposition to get their way.
Too many government construction projects are built because these publicly subsidized gravy trains reward campaign donors, powerful public employee unions and assorted control freaks in the urban planning and transportation sectors.
Another glaring example? Across the country, voters have repeatedly rejected billion-dollar sports stadium and arena subsidies over the past 30 years — only to be sabotaged by bipartisan alliances overruling the will of the…
