Anybody remember this?

...The 1980s saw the concrete foundations of the United States crumble as the investment gap widened between America and our global competitors. By the decade's end, Japan and Germany were investing more than 12 times what we spend on roads, bridges, sewers and the information networks and technologies of the future....

As a prominent part of our commitment to put people first, we will create a Rebuild America Fund, with a $20 billion Federal investment in each year for four years....

We will focus on ...

-Transportation, including renovation of our country's roads, bridges and railroads....

That's from "Putting People First: A National Economic Strategy for America," from Governor Bill Clinton, dated June 21, 1992.

The Clinton plan won some praise, but it was sold as economic stimulus (because you can't possibly argue that government money should be spent to fix things simply because they're broken and we need them to work), and very smart people at the Heritage Foundation and National Review and elsewhere said that was a lousy way to stimulate the economy. Besides, Reagan and Poppy Bush had given America huge amounts of debt (which was blamed on Democrats in Congress), so, even though Clinton had a Democratic Congress, this didn't happen:

Many centrist Democrats would not support a social-democratic program, as was evident in the spring of 1993, when Clinton's short-term economic stimulus program (which included money for infrastructure) went down to defeat.

That's how we do things in America. The consequences of our usual approach were seen in Minnesota this week.