Keller @ Large: What is 'Bidenomics' doing for Massachusetts?
BOSTON - "Guess what? Bidenomics is working," said President Joe Biden in a speech aimed at and around dismal public perceptions of his economic management.
The debate over whether or not that's true will consume much of the campaign over the next year and a half. But we wondered: is "Bidenomics" so far proving to be good for Massachusetts?
Massive infrastructure spending was at the top of Biden's list of greatest hits. And when we ran that by Doug Howgate, head of the business-backed Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, he agreed, it's good news for us. "One of the things Massachusetts needs to do to make sure we continue to be an economy that thrives is invest in our infrastructure, whether that's transportation, transition to clean energy, climate mitigation. And you see a lot of investments in those areas" from the Biden administration, he said.
But watching other states grab bridge repair funds while we wait our turn for help with the decaying Cape Cod bridges has been a reminder that we're not at the head of the line the way we once were. "Many of these infrastructure investments that are on offer from the federal government require states to have a plan in place and be able to invest quickly on big-ticket projects," said Howgate. "We need to make sure we're able to do that to take full advantage."
Another economic initiative touted by Biden: federal intervention in drug pricing. But while Jim Stergios of the conservative Pioneer Institute acknowledged the burden of drug costs and the actions of predatory "bad actors" in the pharmaceutical industry, he warns: watch out for unintended local consequences. "For this state, it will affect the kind of investment that we will see in the life sciences, so it's actually a really important thing for Massachusetts," he said.
Our dependence on federal spending is kind of a mixed bag. We send billions more in taxes to Washington than we get in return, so in that sense we're not so reliant on the feds.
But we also have key sectors like higher education, health and hospitals, and military research that do lean on federal funding. And if they don't come through on those Cape bridges and leave us with the mult-billion-dollar tab, it could be a flashback to the bad old days of the Big Dig.