During his first year in office, the President launched an ambitious infrastructure plan for the federal government to sponsor projects and institutions designed to improve the conditions of society, calling on Congress to construct a system of internal improvements to structures ranging from roads and bridges to harbors and other systems of public works. The President launched this effort after an extremely close, contentious election filled with name-calling and innuendo that resulted in further polarization of an already-polarized country. After the election was over, the losing candidate claimed that the election was stolen and began, with the help of his supporters in Congress, to do everything possible to undermine not only the president’s infrastructure initiatives but also the legitimacy of the presidency itself. The year was 1825, and John Quincy Adams had defeated Andrew Jackson to become the sixth president of the United States. Adams was unable to get his ambitious plan through Congress, and he was only able to accomplish a few modest projects.
January 21, 2022 Columns
Chair’s Column
By J. Bradley Fewell
Today, as I compose this message under perhaps similar circumstances, the President has signed a sweeping $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill to upgrade the nation’s roads, bridges, water systems, and broadband, touting the passage as evidence that bipartisanship can work even in a polarized time. It is noteworthy that such a feat was accomplished when history provides evidence of failure under those similar circumstances. Regardless of what you think of this bill, it represents an enormous opportunity, and it has now been enacted into law. However, there is much work and wrangling to be done. Joe Tocco, addressing broadband network deployment in his wonderful piece, Bold, Not Burdensome, Regulations Can Stimulate Investment in Broadband Infrastructure to Close the Digital Divide, put it well in the last issue of Infrastructure when he wrote, “[F]ederal, state, and local regulations should maintain a light-touch regulatory approach that sustains continued private investment . . . rather than imposing unnecessary and onerous regulations . . . that make greater private-sector investment less sustainable.”
History views John Quincy Adams as an ineffective president. However, as a lawyer and legislator, he strove to present sound arguments based on principle, and with great attention to facts and detail. In this hyperpartisan environment, it is up to the legal profession to shape, through rigorous, thoughtful, apolitical debate and discussion in various sectors, consensus about which regulations are necessary and which are onerous and which are not. These determinations are not easily made, but how they are made will impact the extent to which we as a society will benefit from the passage of the infrastructure bill that, on November 15, 2021, became law.