NYT op-ed on Biden's investments in rural America: Why they matter and how to make them happen

Tony Pipa of the Brookings Institution wrote in the New York Times opinion section this weekend under the headline, "Biden Wants to Send Billions to Rural America, but This Must Happen First."  

President Biden regularly emphasizes how the major pieces of legislation he has signed — the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act — expand opportunities for Americans.

This is especially true for rural Americans. Those three laws appropriated billions of dollars — about $464 billion — for many projects that could be particularly relevant to rural communities, allowing them to dream of a different economic future.

I am often asked if rural voters will give Mr. Biden credit for all that money and the changes it could bring and will show their appreciation at the ballot box. My answer is that it is unrealistic to expect place-specific investments to have an immediate impact on elections.

Rural places remain skeptical that federal policymakers have their best interests at heart. Proving otherwise will take intention and time.

Pipa goes on to explain how important implementation is, by which he refers to the lack of bandwidth many rural local governments have to plan, develop projects, and write grants.   This is because many of these local governments are run by officials who are elected but unpaid.   Here's some data he uses to illustrate the point:   

Only 15 percent of Michigan’s smallest jurisdictions, for example, express confidence in their ability to get access to federal grants, whereas the rate for jurisdictions over 30,000 people is close to 40 percent. A national survey published in 2019 found more than half of rural counties experienced moderate or significant fiscal stress, so for programs where local governments must match the federal funding, those counties face an additional challenge.

This, Pipa predicts, portends likely inequitable distribution of these federal monies.  He also gives a nod to the recent debate over whether rural places are worthy of investment.  

These human capital issues and the impact they have on garnering federal dollars, as well as charitable grant funding, have been addressed in prior posts here, here, and here.  

Pipa's X (formerly Twitter) thread about the op-ed is here.  

I discuss some of the issues Pipa raises--in particular the challenge of showing rural folks that the federal government is working for them, too--in my recent commentary in the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy, and Society:  "Mustering the political will to help left-behind places in a polarized USA."