While the President cannot spend a dime under our Constitution, let us presume that DJT will be able to convince Congress to spend a little more on infrastructure maintenance and renovation.
The Davis Bacon Act (and all of its state and local "prevailing wage" progeny) costs the taxpayers approximately 25% more for every construction project than would be the case without them.
Under Davis Bacon, all construction contractors are required to pay the local "prevailing wage" on government contracts. The expression "prevailing wage" is a bit of semantic nonsense, if you don't know, and here's how it came about.
During the Depression, congresspeople were fighting to get federal government construction projects for their districts, in order to help the local job situation. But federal construction contracts were awarded on a low-bidder basis, and increasingly, the contractors were bringing crews of "Knee-Groes" from down south to do the work, thus being able to underbid the local contractors and prevent locals from getting the work.
In response, Congress passed the Davis Bacon Act, which theoretically prevented "outsiders" from taking these jobs by paying their workers less than the local "prevailing wage.' Subsequently, the Labor Department decided that "prevailing wage" meant, whatever the local union scale was. And that's what we have today.
So even if only, say, 10% of the local construction workforce is unionized, the federal contractors are required to pay union scale. It is not the "prevailing wage," it is the union wage.
But even aside from the racist origins of this law, what conceivable justification could there be for the Federal Government to deviate from a simple "lowest bidder" paradigm? The combination of detailed construction specifications and government QA are more than enough to ensure that the work is done properly. And in all honesty, there is no reason to believe that union construction people are going to do any better work than non-union in any event. 90% of residential construction nationwide is done by non-union workers, and I don't see any houses falling down.
Before we spend "trillions" of my dollars on infrastructure, let's repeal Davis Bacon so that 25% of that money is not wasted.
By the way, if you think that it is good policy for the Feds to require union scale on construction contracts, would you want to extend that to manufacturing contracts? Service contracts? We seem to be doing OK without that now.
The Davis Bacon Act (and all of its state and local "prevailing wage" progeny) costs the taxpayers approximately 25% more for every construction project than would be the case without them.
Under Davis Bacon, all construction contractors are required to pay the local "prevailing wage" on government contracts. The expression "prevailing wage" is a bit of semantic nonsense, if you don't know, and here's how it came about.
During the Depression, congresspeople were fighting to get federal government construction projects for their districts, in order to help the local job situation. But federal construction contracts were awarded on a low-bidder basis, and increasingly, the contractors were bringing crews of "Knee-Groes" from down south to do the work, thus being able to underbid the local contractors and prevent locals from getting the work.
In response, Congress passed the Davis Bacon Act, which theoretically prevented "outsiders" from taking these jobs by paying their workers less than the local "prevailing wage.' Subsequently, the Labor Department decided that "prevailing wage" meant, whatever the local union scale was. And that's what we have today.
So even if only, say, 10% of the local construction workforce is unionized, the federal contractors are required to pay union scale. It is not the "prevailing wage," it is the union wage.
But even aside from the racist origins of this law, what conceivable justification could there be for the Federal Government to deviate from a simple "lowest bidder" paradigm? The combination of detailed construction specifications and government QA are more than enough to ensure that the work is done properly. And in all honesty, there is no reason to believe that union construction people are going to do any better work than non-union in any event. 90% of residential construction nationwide is done by non-union workers, and I don't see any houses falling down.
Before we spend "trillions" of my dollars on infrastructure, let's repeal Davis Bacon so that 25% of that money is not wasted.
By the way, if you think that it is good policy for the Feds to require union scale on construction contracts, would you want to extend that to manufacturing contracts? Service contracts? We seem to be doing OK without that now.
