How to ensure that Biden’s great American road trip leads to a better future

During his recent visit to the Detroit Auto Show, President Biden waxed eloquent about the historic shift toward electric vehicles driven by his 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the greenhouse gas reduction measures in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). But electrifying the “Great American Road Trip,” as President Biden framed it, is not as straightforward as it sounds, because achieving the laws’ objectives requires complex interactions among federal, state, and local governments and private sector partners spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in 50 different states.  

As the Brookings Institution noted earlier this year, big laws with massive investments present fat targets for scammers looking to cash in with bloated infrastructure contracts, shoddy materials, and outright fraud. Just as important, history suggests that such large-scale initiatives, despite good intentions, can produce a host of unintended negative consequences.  

Learning from History 

President Eisenhower’s interstate highway law, for example, established a vital system of freeways to connect our growing country and economy. At the same time, it needlessly supercharged racial segregation and urban decline by bankrolling the construction of highways that enabled middle class families to decamp to whites-only suburbs while decimating the tax base and economy of Detroit and other American cities.  

The Biden administration should take note of those twin lessons as it begins to implement sweeping new legislation to rebuild and electrify our transportation infrastructure and combat climate change. A key first step should be to install a comprehensive set of oversight measures that will track spending and implementation milestones, crack down on fraud, waste, and abuse, and force correction of problems that are sure to emerge.  

The Carl Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy earlier this year convened a group of experts to discuss the challenges of managing infrastructure investments via America’s fragmented federal-state system. The event, co-hosted by the Wayne Law Review, produced a set of recommendations for the kind of robust, fact-based oversight needed to ensure that our infrastructure development and emission reduction laws meet their objectives.  

Goals and Metrics 

Implementing both laws requires a clear statement of the problems to be solved and the metrics to be used to track success. Guidance should be provided to federal, state, and local agencies and contractors on the kinds of data that must be collected and the public progress reports that must be filed to enable government monitors, outside watchdog groups, and congressional committees to spot problems and fashion solutions. The BIL and IRA enunciate a set of admirable goals, including “congestion mitigation,” “air quality improvement,” and a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. But what is largely missing are requirements for clear metrics and data reports that will shed light on how the law is working.   

Neither measure requires states to submit regular, detailed reports on greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation projects they authorize. Without that data, the administration, Congress, and the public will be left in the dark about whether, in practice, specific infrastructure projects are advancing or impeding federal emission reduction goals. 

Authority and Money 

To get its arms around the mind-numbing complexity of tracking the performance of infrastructure projects in 50 states and countless localities, the federal government needs to create an oversight entity with sufficient authority and resources to tackle the job. The IRA provides resources to the Government Accountability Office and the Office of Management and Budget to “track the equitable distribution of economic, social, and environmental impact of the (IRA’s) funds.” But neither the IRA nor the BIL has established an entity with the cross-cutting authority and resources to reduce fraud losses and ensure that our infrastructure investments support rather than undermine our environmental goals.  

Fortunately, the administration has models to build on, such as the 2009 Recovery Board, a group of 11 agency inspectors general that effectively oversaw the response to the Great Recession, and the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), a collection of 21 IGs that currently tracks over $5 trillion in funding approved to help the country deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. The PRAC, which provides a wealth of data about federal spending on its website, could be expanded to address the administration’s infrastructure and a greenhouse gas reduction program.  

Congress has left it up to the executive branch to impose the data and reporting requirements needed to ensure a successful renewal of America’s infrastructure. Now is the time for the Biden administration to put into place the discipline, transparency, and accountability measures to help ensure that the Great American Road Trip leads to a more sustainable and equitable future.  

Jim Townsend is an attorney and director of the Carl Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy at Wayne State University Law School and previously served as a congressional staff member and as an elected member of the Michigan House of Representatives.