Pipeline’s shutdown reminds us what is and isn’t infrastructure

Here’s my question for today, class: Can a ham sandwich be considered infrastructure? Now, discuss.

The question isn’t as dopey as it sounds, not when President Biden lumps all sorts of things into the category he calls “infrastructure.” I mean, when did subsidized child care qualify as infrastructure? Or when did expanded welfare benefits become infrastructure? Spending $400 billion for in-home health care for the elderly and the disabled may be a worthy idea, but when did it fit into what the president calls — and much of the political media dutifully accept as — infrastructure. I’m all for taking care of grandma, but calling it “infrastructure” is like, well, calling a ham sandwich “infrastructure.” 

As I write this, 17 states and the District of Columbia have declared “states of emergency” after cyber-terrorists shut down the Colonial pipeline, which carries fuel from Texas all the way to New Jersey.  

I live in one of those states and tried to get gas for my car today. No luck; the pumps are shut down. If President Biden needs proof that pipelines matter, it’s right here, staring him in the face. 

Here’s a bulletin, Mr. President: Pipelines are infrastructure. So are oil refineries. And so are all the other “dirty” things associated with fossil fuels that you, Mr. President — or whoever is calling the shots in the White House — are against.

In one of his first acts as president, Biden shut down the Keystone XL pipeline in the middle of the country, eliminating, with a stroke of his pen, thousands of good-paying union jobs — which he keeps telling us he cares so much about. But shutting down pipelines, while it may please the Green New Deal gang, is not a great idea for the rest of America. Just ask people in those 17 states who can’t get gasoline for their cars at the moment.

The president and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) aren’t the only ones in America who care about the environment. We all want clean air and, as far as I know, no one is suggesting that we drill for oil on the National Mall in Washington. But the president might want to consider the obvious: that the very same pipelines that are so despised by progressives carry real fuel to real people who drive real cars that take them to real jobs — and so, he might want to spend more money on pipeline infrastructure and less on social welfare programs that, whatever else they are, are not “infrastructure.” 

What America needs is tax dollars spent on actual infrastructure — on roads and bridges and, yes, on pipelines and refineries, and on rail lines that carry oil from here to there — and not just passengers from New York to Washington.

If everybody drove an electric car and kept the lights on at home thanks to windmills and solar panels, then we might not need pipelines and the oil that runs through them. But we’re not there yet, and who knows if we’ll ever get there. So in the meantime — cover your ears, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — what America needs is more pipelines, not fewer pipelines.

A piece in New York magazine by Eric Levitz lays out the other side. “Just as highways and train tracks were indispensable to achieving shared prosperity in the postwar industrial economy, so long-term care benefits for seniors — and collective-bargaining rights for home health aides — are indispensable for achieving such prosperity in 21st century America,” he writes. “As the economy changes, our conception of ‘infrastructure’ must change with it.”

It’s not an unreasonable argument. But it is one that I, and I suspect millions of other Americans, would be more open to if the nation’s pipelines that carry the oil that fuels the American economy weren’t so vulnerable — the target of not only cyber-terrorists but also a president who would rather spend “infrastructure” money on “collective rights for home health aides” than on the fossil fuel infrastructure that his progressive friends loathe but the American economy desperately needs.

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Patreon page. Follow him on Twitter @BernardGoldberg.