Ocasio-Cortez Claim: ‘For Every $1 Spent on Infrastructure, We Get $6 Back’

EXCERPT:

INSKEEP: “You’re talking about things that obviously would cost a lot of money. I know you’d rather think of it as an investment rather than the cost, but it’s just certainly a lot of money. You don’t specify where it’s going to come from other than saying it will all pay for itself.”
OCASIO-CORTEZ: “Yeah. I think the first move we need to do is kind of break the mistaken idea that taxes pay for 100 percent of government expenditure. It’s just not how government expenditure works. We can recoup costs, but oftentimes you look at, for example, the GOP tax cut which I think was an irresponsible use of government expenditure, but government projects are often financed by a combination of taxes, deficit spending and other kinds of investments, you know, bonds and so on.”
INSKEEP: “Well, I get that, but deficit spending is borrowing money that has to be paid back eventually through taxes.”
OCASIO-CORTEZ: “Yeah, and I think — I think that is always the crux of it. So when we decide to go into the realm of deficit spending, we have to do so responsibly. We ask is this an investment or is this actually going to pay for itself?”
INSKEEP: “So you’re saying borrow the money, make the investment, the economy will grow, we’ll pay off the debt.” 
OCASIO-CORTEZ: “Absolutely. Because we are creating jobs.”
INSKEEP: “Although I do have to say, you mentioned the Republican tax cut. They said the same thing about the tax cut. ‘Let’s do the tax cut, the economy will grow, it’s going to be great, it’s going to pay for itself.’ Hasn’t turned out to be true at all.”
OCASIO-CORTEZ: “Absolutely. And I think that that is an important distinction to me, because when they were advancing that cause they had no evidence to say that these things were going to happen. But we actually do have the evidence. For every $1 invested in infrastructure we get $6 back.”