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Fred Hiatt: Put the mayors in charge

This past week, hundreds of mayors and other local officials came to Washington to try to get some action out of Congress and the administration, and many of them were asking common-sensical questions.

Well, the mayors were probably too polite to ask that last one. But judging by the disconnect between the challenges they deal with every day and the useless rhetoric they were offered here, it must have been on their minds.

Worse than useless, actually. It happened that while they were in town, five Cabinet secretaries went to Congress to tout their shiny new infrastructure plan — with absolutely no proposal to pay for it.