Politics & Power Quote by Ron Kind

Kind’s sentence is the politician’s tightrope walk: express skepticism without looking like an obstructionist, and concede the big, obvious problem without endorsing a shaky fix. The first clause is a carefully calibrated jab at the Army Corps of Engineers. “Remain troubled” signals ongoing oversight, not a one-off gripe; “inability to fully justify” is bureaucratic understatement that politely implies methodological weakness. And “the Model” is capital-M technocracy, a nod to the black-box authority that often props up billion-dollar infrastructure projects. He’s not arguing about concrete and steel yet; he’s arguing about the legitimacy of the numbers that make concrete and steel inevitable.

Then he pivots to the consensus anchor: “America clearly has an aging lock and dam infrastructure on the Mississippi.” That “clearly” is doing political heavy lifting. It reframes the debate from whether there’s a problem to what kind of solution, and it invites a broad coalition to agree on the diagnosis even if they disagree on the prescription. It’s also a regional signal: the Mississippi is commerce, farm exports, barge traffic, and midwestern identity. Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat representing a river state, is speaking to constituents who want modernization but resent being sold a predetermined project justified by opaque forecasting.

Context matters here: lock and dam upgrades tend to arrive packaged with environmental concerns, cost overruns, and lobbying from shipping and agricultural interests. Kind’s intent is to claim the mantle of pragmatism - pro-infrastructure, pro-accountability - while putting the Corps on notice that expertise without transparency doesn’t get a blank check.