As you can see, the Budget Request criticisms are easily addressed. But there remains a question: where did they come from?
Axios (and now others) have reported that “many proposed cuts were identified by Elon Musk’s DOGE”. By all accounts, these guys are young and working incredibly hard. I imagine the mission was to find as much stuff to cut as possible. Unless there was a political story to tell or justification required in any individual cut (e.g., unnecessarily large, extreme waste, green, wokeness, etc.), the rationale probably wasn’t considered too important. Hence, we get inaccurate and inconsistent criticisms that could have been clarified by a little internet search and logical thinking. Move fast and break stuff, right?
But I’m not wholly convinced by this scenario in the CWIFP case. The amount saved by the program’s defunding ‘elimination’ — all of $7m — is utterly trivial. In the timeframe since January 20th, in the scale of the federal government programs (over 2,000 programs on OMB’s list) and in light of the complete political neutrality of the program, how did CWIFP even end up on DOGE’s radar screen? Much less to be included in a ‘skinny budget’ short list? Of course, CIFIA made the list (big and green), but WIFIA and TIFIA went unscathed as far as I can tell, so there apparently wasn’t a special ‘search & destroy’ sub-mission against infrastructure loan programs. For CWIFP there was no savings and no story — why did they bother? I would think that ‘efficient use of limited time’ and ‘prioritization of effort’, and all that would be DOGE watchwords.
Well, I have to speculate — just a speculation — that someone within the federal bureaucracy pointed CWIFP out, perhaps in a DOGE interview or request for cut candidates. Someone with a private agenda against the program, who perhaps had exhibited an animus before. You know, by twisting and misrepresenting technical rules to the extreme disadvantage of the program. And who wouldn’t be above twisting and misrepresenting program facts in an illogical and inconsistent word salad, as the Budget Request criticism would seem to be. Someone who saw an opportunity — to go in for the kill.
An ugly story if true. But in a way I hope it is, because that would mean that the issue with CWIFP is localized and aberrant (and perhaps not long lasting), and as such meaningless with respect to real and important questions about federal infrastructure finance policy.