Trump's America

by Newt Gingrich

  President Trump, as someone who has employed thousands of people in a wide range of jobs, thoroughly understands the importance of job training and vocational education. President Trump combines a desire to get everyone working with a clear understanding that we need dramatically better vocational education and far more apprenticeship programs if we are to match up the workforce with emerging job opportunities. The men and women of Trump’s America also seek a concerted policy shift across the entire American system, so it favors honest work over dependency and illegal economies.

  This is radically different from the Obama-Left system. President Obama and his left-wing base were comfortable with the largest number of Americans in history being dependent on government. They viewed large enrollment in food stamps as a positive, not a negative. Getting more people dependent on Medicaid was a sign of progress to them.

  President Trump and the men and women of Trump’s America will only be comfortable when a booming economy has drawn the largest number of Americans possible out of dependence and into the workforce.

  Those are diametrically opposed visions of how America should operate.

  President Trump can break us out of the decay of the Obama-Left model, solve our workforce problems, and revamp our nation’s infrastructure by pushing reforms and innovation on several tracks: removing hurdles for career and vocational training, reforming welfare, and fixing our broken criminal justice system.

  WHY INFRASTRUCTURE NOW?

  A large-scale infrastructure plan would create well-paying jobs in virtually every state in the Union. This would include jobs at every skill level. It would give relief to many Americans who have been looking for work—and provide an entry point for young Americans looking to start careers in construction, engineering, or other skilled trades. It would also make our economy more efficient and more competitive in the world market. The economic impact would be felt nationwide.

  Critics of the president—and even some who generally support him—question whether we should focus on passing a large-scale infrastructure bill before we see more of the benefits from the tax cuts and deregulation efforts.

  The first reason is simple: Our national infrastructure is already falling apart in many areas, and those bridges, locks, dams, and roadways are going to keep eroding regardless of whether it is politically convenient to fix them.

  The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave America’s infrastructure a D+ in 2017.1

  According to the ASCE, 40 percent of our 614,387 bridges are 50 years old or older. In 2016, 56,007 were found to be structurally deficient, yet, on average, they were still crossed by traffic 188 times a day. The current backlog of work to fix our bridges is estimated at $123 billion, according to ASCE.

  On average, the 90,580 dams in the United States are 56 years old. Almost 15,500 of those dams have “high-hazard potential” and about 2,170 of those high-hazard dams are also deficient. What American wants their family to live or work near one of these more than 2,000 deficient dams?

  Traffic delays on our nation’s urban interstates cost the United States roughly $160 billion in 2014, according to ASCE, and one in five miles of our roadways nationwide are reportedly in poor condition. This is not just about dealing with bumps and potholes. Rundown roads are dangerous. According to the engineering association, traffic fatalities jumped by 7 percent from 2014 to 2015, up to 35,092 deaths.

  As a final example, many of the one million miles of water pipes in our country were first laid in the 1950s. They are only meant to last 75 to 100 years, according to ASCE. After the catastrophe in Flint, Michigan, where thousands contracted lead poisoning from deteriorating pipes and insufficient filtration, we all know how devastating unsafe drinking water can be.

  Frankly, Congress and past administrations have passed the buck on infrastructure for too long. Yes, fixing infrastructure is expensive. Yes, it doesn’t get as much media attention as other more exciting issues. However, it is a lot cheaper to maintain infrastructure than to fix it when it breaks—and when it breaks, and people are hurt or killed, the media always looks to elected officials to find out why. “It was too expensive” and “it wasn’t politically smart” are never acceptable answers.

  President Trump and the Republican Congress should move to a major infrastructure plan now. It is an opportunity to show the American people that the Republican majority and the Republican White House can and will do what is necessary to keep America prosperous and safe.

  Specifically, they should follow the model President Trump proposed in early February.2 Trump’s plan calls for leveraging $200 billion in federal dollars in order to generate $1.5 trillion worth of infrastructure investment. The plan would achieve this by making federal money available to state and local governments, which would match the dollars four to one by partnering with private investors. The main idea here is to give states, local governments, and industries more control over the infrastructure projects important to their communities.

  President Trump’s plan to get $1.5 trillion worth of results is totally different than the typical bureaucratic idea of having $1.5 trillion of taxpayers’ money to spend. Instead, President Trump’s program would divide the $200 billion in federal dollars into categories for important national projects, rural block grant programs, federal infrastructure loan programs, and other projects. Each category would then dispense money to state and local governments based on certain criteria that depended on what type of project was being built.

  Not all of this matching money must come from governments. A significant share of funding for projects could also come from the private sector. President Trump can help states and local governments find these investors by leveraging his relationships with people in the private sector to create public–private partnerships on large infrastructure projects that benefit entire communities. The president’s decision to go to the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2018 was an excellent step toward maintaining and building those relationships and moving in this direction. I have spoken with leaders in Canada where this method has been put to the test. It is entirely possible that 10 to 20 percent of the investments for major infrastructure projects could come from private companies rather than government coffers.

  In addition to restructuring how federal dollars are used, President Trump’s plan also calls for dramatically streamlining the federal process for approving infrastructure projects. The goal is to cut the time it takes for issuing a permit to no more than two years. In some cases, federal permitting currently can take up to a decade. As I described in an earlier chapter, the administration has already made great strides in this area and will continue to do so. As a lifelong builder, President Trump understands how burdensome regulations can slow down projects and increase costs. When work gets delayed by regulations or hiccups in the bureaucratic process, companies either have to pay workers to do nothing or tell them to go home and rehire them later. This costs companies money—but it also puts tremendous economic uncertainty and burdens on workers and their families.

  Trump will direct his agencies to specifically look for regulations that slow down large infrastructure projects and either streamline them or get rid of them. This includes onerous environmental regulations, expensive or burdensome permitting rules, and others that hinder work. Reducing the cost of compliance with regulations will provide an immediate savings for private-sector companies and state and local governments, which can dramatically reduce the final price tag for the infrastructure plan. President Trump should also consider including provisions to allow governors to waive some regulations. Governors such as Pete Wilson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mike Leavitt, Mitch Daniels, and John Kasich have already demonstrated that replacing the standard government model can save a lot of time and money.

  All five of these governors have used emergency or executive powers in various ways to make sure large infrastructure projects in their states were completed on time and under budget. Many also created performance plans that inc
entivized private contractors to finish work on, or ahead of, schedule.

  In fact, Governors Daniels and Kasich greatly reduced government involvement altogether to achieve goals for their states.

  Daniels contracted with a private company to manage part of the state’s interstate system and then used payments from that contract to fund other infrastructure projects. Governor Kasich was able to ignore federal rules by funding road improvements with state money from leasing state-owned liquor stores. In both cases, the result was more infrastructure, faster, for less money.

  Finally, President Trump should also focus on projects that use twenty-first-century technology that will save money in the long run. Things which are as simple as switching street and highway lighting over to a hybrid system that combines solar power and traditional electricity to power LEDs, installing smart traffic and water management devices, and upgrading our electrical grid with more efficient systems can save tremendous amounts of money. Those savings can then be reinvested to continue the infrastructure improvements and create a virtuous cycle of savings and investment in infrastructure.

  Politically speaking, the infrastructure bill will also put Democrats in yet another spot where they either have to vote with Republicans to improve America or explain to their constituents why their streets, bridges, dams, and ports were less important than partisan politics. This will be particularly difficult for Democrats who are up for reelection in states that President Trump won.

  It’s a win-win play.

  BRIDGING THE SKILLS GAP

  However, creating jobs does no good if there aren’t Americans prepared to take them. President Trump’s infrastructure plan also calls for prioritizing federal work study funding for job training.

  For years, companies have noticed a skills gap in the American workforce. As experienced employees of a certain age retire, there are fewer Americans with comparable skills to replace them. At the same time, our education system has moved away from focusing on vocational and skilled trade programs. For instance, the Department of Labor reported in January 2018 that there were 5.9 million unfilled jobs in the United States. Many of those remain open because companies cannot find qualified workers to fill them. This is creating big problems for manufacturing and construction sectors—which will be critical to completing the work created by the infrastructure bill.

  The Trump administration has already started work to close the skills gap by ending enforcement of the Obama-era Gainful Employment Rule, which I discussed previously. This is one step toward reversing the war Obama waged on private, for-profit institutions that offer needed vocational and career training in the United States.

  The Obama administration fought tooth and nail to destroy the private vocational school industry. Under his reign, ITT Technical Institutes were shut down despite having trained American workers for more than 50 years. Roughly 40,000 students and 8,000 employees were left out to dry by Obama, according to a September 20, 2016, Washington Post editorial.

  Just before Obama left office, the Department of Education also revoked accrediting authority from the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools. This was devastating for private vocational schools—as well as career and job training nationwide.

  President Trump has been working to undo much of the damage caused by the elitist Obama-era Education Department, which heavily prioritized college over the vocational training our workforce desperately needs.

  In June 2017, President Trump also issued a significant executive order3 aimed at rebuilding apprenticeship programs in the United States. The order directed the Labor Department to work with private companies, trade associations, and unions to establish broad vocational and job training programs through which Americans seeking to gain new skills can learn—and be paid—on the job.

  At the same time, according to U.S. News and World Report, President Trump urged companies and schools (mainly high schools and community colleges) to work together to develop meaningful vocation training programs, so students who are not interested in college still learn applicable, marketable skills.

  In the course of developing these new programs with the private sector, Trump’s Labor Department is also reviewing and analyzing all 43 of the existing federal job training programs to weed out ineffective or duplicative programs that are wasting taxpayer dollars. According to U.S. News and World Report, these programs are spread across many parts of the federal government and currently account for $16.7 billion of the annual federal budget.

  Focusing that money on programs that work could help train millions of Americans (young and old) with the skills they need to fill twenty-first-century jobs. The Higher Education Act will need to be renewed in 2018 or 2019. It would be a good opportunity to reorient our federal higher education focus toward skills training.

  WELFARE REFORM

  To achieve growth targets, President Trump, working with Congress, can also tap a large section of the workforce that is currently on the sidelines, trapped in a welfare system of dependency and idleness.

  Consider these startling figures:

  In the last 18 years, the number of Americans who receive food stamps, also known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, ballooned from 17 million to 42 million.4 For perspective, that exceeds the entire population of the state of California, which has 39 million people. It is also higher than the populations of all of Canada (36 million) and Australia (24 million).

  In the same time frame, enrollment for Medicaid has also grown to 75 million people (more than two Canadas). Nearly one-fifth of the people in our country are drawing Medicaid benefits—this includes able-bodied adults. Most alarming: 52 percent of these working-age, capable Americans enrolled in the program do not work.5

  We see a similar trend in our Social Security Disability program. The Washington Post reported in March 20176 that the number of working-age adults in the program almost doubled from 7.7 million to 13 million from 1996 to 2015. In a period when workplaces became safer, more people found ways to get on the disabilities program.

  Now, these enrollment numbers are staggering, but the cost figures are devastating. Nationwide annual spending on the SNAP program is $70 billion.7 Meanwhile, states on average devote about 30 percent of their budgets to funding bloated Medicaid programs. These programs are not sustainable or good for America. They are also harmful to the people they are meant to help. The Trump administration has thankfully returned to the Reagan-era belief that employment is always superior to welfare, and that the success of welfare programs should be measured by the number of people who get out of the system, rather than the number of people who become trapped in it.

  President Trump and Republicans will greatly grow the American workforce by putting in place work requirements for many of these programs. We already know this works. A recent experiment in Maine led by then Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew (who is now running for governor) showed the speed with which workforce participation could dramatically change.

  Like many states, Maine had been allowing able-bodied adults without children to participate in its food stamp program. As a result, a high number of these able-bodied adults avoided work and simply depended on the taxpayers to take care of them.

  When Mayhew instituted a strong work/study requirement to receive food stamps in the state, the program’s rolls plummeted—and wages for those who used to be on food stamps soared.

  In an interview Mayhew gave to Forbes Magazine,8 the interviewer even commented that “a year after work requirements for able-bodied adults who receive food stamps were put into effect in October 2014… the number of able-bodied adults on the program has fallen from 16,000 to 4,500.” This represented an almost 72 percent reduction in dependency in this population. According to Forbes’ Jared Meyer, the 11,500 people who reentered the workforce in Maine saw their incomes double on average, which “more than offset the lost welfare benefits.”

  Mayhew responded by acknowledging
that many lawmakers have approached welfare programs with backward thinking.

  Policymakers often talk about the American dream, but poorly designed welfare programs can trap people in a nightmare of poverty and despair. Maine, like too many other states, measured welfare programs’ successes by ever-increasing caseloads instead of by the number of individuals who successfully transitioned off the programs by increasing their earnings.…

  We were up against fierce resistance while re-establishing work requirements for able-bodied, childless adults between the ages of 19 and 49. The work requirements we instituted include working a minimum of 20 hours per week, being in a vocational training program, or volunteering for about 24 hours per month. Putting in place these common-sense requirements led to an 88 percent drop in SNAP enrollment and a 114 percent spike in average wages, which more than offset lost SNAP benefits. Kansas implemented similar policy reforms and experienced the same positive results.

  If the Mayhew model is applied nationwide, millions of Americans who have been excluded from unemployment reports for decades would suddenly move back into the workforce.

  This is similar to the reforms we accomplished when I was Speaker of the House. We included strong work requirements, time limits, and a host of other accountability measures to welfare programs that incentivized people to work rather than depend on the government. As a result, enrollment dropped by 60 percent as Americans who had been trapped in dependency rejoined the workforce. These families saw on average a 25 percent increase in their incomes and children were raised out of poverty at a record level.

  However, the Obama administration diligently worked to undo many of our successful reforms. As a result, a lot more people are depending on the government. Most current welfare programs have no work requirement for able-bodied individuals. Also, there is no time limit for how long someone can benefit from subsidized housing, so there is never an incentive to make more money and exit the subsidized housing system.