November 30, 2021 9:27AM # How Much Will Biden’s Infrastructure Plan Eventually Cost? History Suggests Some Worrisome Answers By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE Here at Cato we’ve written many times about the record of big infrastructure projects and “megaprojects”: - [Cost overruns are rampant](https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/blog?field_themes_tid=26&field_departments_target_id=All). - “[Here is a rule of thumb](https://www.cato.org/blog/edwards-law-government-cost-overruns) to remember when you hear about a proposed government project: If a politician says that it will cost $1, it will end up costing $2 or more.” - “[Contractors were essentially rewarded for delays and overruns](https://www.cato.org/blog/big-dig) with added cash and guaranteed profits.” - “[The ongoing saga of California’s high-speed bullet train](https://www.cato.org/blog/californias-high-speed-train-has-done-lot-more-good-big-consultants-taxpayers-or-riders) may end up being as classic a story of Democratic politicians’ hubris as the Solyndra debacle.” - “Linda Bilmes, coauthor with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz of *The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict*, [analyzes](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/01/the-fiscal-stimulus-lessons-from-katrina-iraq-and-the-big-dig.html) the massive problems in three somewhat smaller government projects — [the Iraqi reconstruction effort, Hurricane Katrina reconstruction, and the Big Dig artery construction in Boston](https://www.cato.org/blog/how-spend-trillion-dollars-without-waste-fraud) — and finds that ‘in any organization that starts to increase spending very rapidly there are risks of waste, fraud and inefficiency.’ ” - “In fact, as megaprojects expert Bent Flyvbjerg explains in the following article, these grandiose projects operate by an iron law: [over budget, over time, over and over again](https://www.cato.org/policy-report/january/february-2017/megaprojects-over-budget-over-time-over-over).” And now we welcome the *New York Times* to the beat with its [impressive Monday story](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/28/us/infrastructure-megaprojects.html?smid=tw-share) titled “Years of Delays, Billions in Overruns: The Dismal History of Big Infrastructure.” Ralph Vartabedian, who covered the “bullet train” fiasco for years at the *Los Angeles Times*, lays out problems across the country with big infrastructure projects, from a Honolulu transit line to the Long Island Railroad. Read the whole thing, but you can start here: > Honolulu’s tribulations are far from a lone cautionary tale. To the contrary, they signal the kind of cost overruns, engineering challenges and political obstacles that have made it all but impossible to complete a major, multibillion-dollar infrastructure project in the United States on budget and on schedule over the past decade.… > > When California voters approved a bond in 2008 for [a high-speed rail system from Los Angeles to San Francisco](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/25/us/california-high-speed-rail.html), the project was supposed to cost $33 billion and be completed by 2020**.** The job is now projected to finish in 2033 for $100 billion, though those estimates are dated and there is an $80 billion funding gap.… > > Mr. Schofer said many projects are justified by estimating that future benefits will exceed costs, but when the costs go up astronomically, no one recalculates the ratio. > > In a candid admission of how the political world operates, Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco, once dismissed cost overruns on a transportation hub intended for the bullet train. > > “In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment,” he [wrote in a guest newspaper column in 2013](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/williesworld/article/When-Warriors-travel-to-China-Ed-Lee-will-follow-4691101.php). “If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big there’s no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.” And this is, I suppose, no surprise: > U.S. Transportation Department officials declined to comment for this article. It’s an excellent article. My only complaint is, as [Cliff Asness](https://twitter.com/CliffordAsness/status/1464949250924687363) and I both [pointed out](https://twitter.com/David_Boaz/status/1464960727450628110) on Twitter, it would have been more useful to members of Congress and the public if it had been published during the many months that Congress was debating the Biden administration’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan. Maybe members of Congress should ponder it now as they consider another, even bigger — $1.75 trillion? [$4.9 trillion](https://www.crfb.org/blogs/build-back-better-cost-would-double-extensions)? — “Build Back Better” infrastructure+more plan. ##### Related Tags [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Department of Transportation](https://www.cato.org/department-transportation), [Downsizing Government](https://www.cato.org/downsizing-government) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).