President-Elect Donald Trump has long supported infrastructure spending, going as far as to say he would double the $300 billion that his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, had planned to spend on roads, bridges, and the like. He wants to create jobs and rebuild the nation to Make America Great Again.
His plan doesn’t call for tax increases to finance any of it. Instead, he claims all projects built under the plan would be required to generate cash flow and produce tax revenue.
It sounds like a tall order.
But the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline fits the bill completely.
In addition to creating tens of thousands of much-needed jobs—the real point of the infrastructure plan in the first place—the project would also generate an estimated $50 million in revenue from income and sales taxes during construction and the pipeline will continue to generate an estimated $124 million annually in property and sales taxes.
This is game-changing revenue for the struggling economy. It’s an offset bigger than any tax-credit or stimulus Congress would come up with.
It’s a project already approved by the Army Corp of Engineers, the governments of five states, and the federal bureaucracy.
It’s something we can start on immediately.
All it takes is a dismissal of the misguided protesters, and a commitment to the law and order Trump promised.
What do you say, President Trump?
