Editorial: Impeachment isn't the only I word

The “I” word.

That’s what President Trump said derailed a meeting with Congressional Democrats Wednesday. He claimed that before that planned confab, House Dems gathered to discuss the “I” word.

The “I” in this case stands for impeachment.

Democrats, especially House members, have definitely been throwing around a lot of impeachment talk. Despite Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s cautions, the redacted Mueller report and its mix of breadcrumbs, black ink and balance between neither charging nor exonerating the president has made many, including Republican Rep. Justin Amash, weigh in about impeachable conduct.

But everyone needs to stop focusing on impeachment because it’s not the only “I” out there. No, not investigation or indictment, or Pelosi’s “intervention.”

The meeting that should have happened at the White House was about the biggest domestic “I.” Infrastructure.

As the House and the Senate, and the Democrats and Republicans, and the president and his opponents all wrangle to find someone to beat or to blame, there is work that needs to be done. We need to fix our roads and bridges. We need to improve our water quality, broadband access, mass transportation, electrical grid and a million other things that keep America ticking. All of those things, the frame of our collective house, are infrastructure.

And as we learned during the Great Depression, investing in infrastructure isn’t a banking-style bailout.

It primes a pump that produces projects that make more and better jobs that snowball into more and better business. Like Eisenhower’s highway system, infrastructure can marry what is good for people with what is good for economy and give birth to something beneficial for national security.

Everyone loves infrastructure. It transcends party. It trumps branch. It can touch everyone. But despite everyone agreeing that it’s important, nothing ever gets started. It’s easy to push off until later, like a roof that doesn’t get attention until it leaks.

Well, the roof is leaking. So why won’t anyone pay attention?

Because of another “I” word: incitement.

It’s a lot easier for everyone on both sides to keep arguing than it is to do something.