600,000 Bridges and the Man Tasked with Closing Them

 When I was in Guatemala a few years ago, a guide said, "We're really proud of our bridge. It's the only one like it in the entire region." While it was a nice enough bridge, I felt jaded. We probably have a million bridges like that in the U.S., I thought.

 

But I'm sure that this bridge made life much easier for the people who lived in this region. Because that's what bridges do. They make life easier. 

In the United States, we have 600,000 bridges. Some small, some big. They all serve the purpose of making life easier. What's involved in designing and building a bridge? How does a bridge go from imagination to reality? 

1. People decide a bridge is needed. 

2. Politicians agree, and the process begins -- funding, designing, building, and so on. 

3. Once the bridge is built, it will still require maintenance -- more funding, monitoring, and so on. 

4. A good bridge will probably last for decades. 

Elon Musk's DOGE is tasked with cutting a $1 trillion (at the rate of $4 billon per day). No one involved in this task is an expert at anything they're cutting. It's not about cutting fraud and waste. It's about finding $1 trillion. It's an arbitrary figure, and no one has clearly stated why this figure needs to be cut. Or discussed why the costs of doing so should be examined, because if you "close down bridges," there will be costs. The U.S. could be a country like Guatemala. We could all praise the one bridge we have. We could be thankful for that one bridge. But is that the country we want to be?