Abstract One of the major components of President Trump’s campaign platform was a promise to make a massive investment in infrastructure spending in the United States. The Trump Administration has recently released a detailed proposal to honor its promises. The proposal contains measures such expanding expenditures on roads and bridges as well as offering greater broadband access to rural residents. The bill has attempted to strike a balance between offering more services and jobs to President Trump’s core supporters in so-called red states while also honoring the Republican commitment to smaller government.

White House Stimulus Plan

Historically, investing in transportation has been used by both Democratic and Republican administrations to stimulate a flagging economy or to ensure that a healthy economy continues to thrive. Unlike making major investments in social programs or defense, transportation and infrastructure is a more bipartisan and less controversial approach to stimulus, since it both employs workers from a variety of economic classes, involves private industry as well as government, and will yield dividends by improving both transportation for businesses as well as travel for taxpayers. However, the most recent transportation stimulus package released by the Trump Administration is still likely to be quite controversial.

The Trump Administration’s transportation stimulus package includes a mix of traditional as well as uniquely 21st century goals, spanning from investing in or improving roads and bridges; energy-related investments; improving broadband coverage; and rehabilitating veteran’s hospitals (Zanona 2017). “The goal is to use $200 billion in federal funding to create $1 trillion worth of overall infrastructure investment over 10 years, with a focus on public-private partnerships and permit reform” (Zanona 2017, par.7). The Trump Administration also claims ending net neutrality will stimulate interest in investment in broadband by new companies and generate more competition (Zanona 2017).

Expanding rural broadband is seen as a critical component of getting rural Republicans on board with the stimulus plan, and the emphasis, as consistent with the Trump Administration’s philosophy, will be focused upon working with private enterprise, rather than expanding the role of government to provide broadband to underserved areas. Although the Trump Administration is a Republican administration, there is still resistance among many Republican fiscal conservatives to supporting such a massive investment package, and the...

Donald Trump planned his election strategy around a base of rural Americans who were struggling in the current economy. Many of these Americans live in underserved rural areas of the nation. The information economy of the modern era is dependent upon fast Internet access. Being able to search jobs, pursue an education, even work from home are all critically interlinked to being online. But according to a 2016 report by the Federal Communications Commission, “about 39% of rural Americans lack access to high- speed internet service” (“Trump Pushes,” 2018). The predominance of Republican representation in rural areas has made this an unusual combined rallying point for Democrats, Republicans and the Administration, despite the usual Republican resistance to any form of government intervention in the economy.
On the other hand, expanding broadband to rural areas is likely to be very advantageous to large businesses as well as lower-income consumers (traditionally part of the Democratic base). It will enrich broadband and technology firms which can capitalize upon the expansion, first and foremost. Secondly, it will be helpful for firms in all industries to have rural customers with greater access to broadband to purchase goods and services online. But while Microsoft has begun to develop projects in some areas to expand access, overall calls for private investment have been described as subdued (Ota 2018).

An estimated $40 billion subsidy would be required to connect all underserved residents and even then there are questions if it would be possible to offer adequate speeds for business teleconferencing and data analysis and such an amount falls short of the amount currently projected in the budget to be allocated to broadband expansion (Ota 2018). Democrats state that direct federal investment is still needed, given that many companies still do not believe it is cost-effective to focus on remote areas, given the number of new customers which they will be able to solicit is very limited and thus it is more cost-effective to focus on urban areas.

Transportation Investment

The Trump Administration’s infrastructure plan also includes more traditional projects, such as investing in transportation infrastructure…