Isaiah J. Poole, Tom Paine
Instead of a
silly argument over a "gas tax holiday," we desperately need a
serious discussion about the nation's infrastructure. And there is a good
legislative proposal that could be the basis for that discussion.
There are bills in the House (HR 3401) and the Senate (S 1926) that would
create a national infrastructure bank. It could be one way to bring some common
sense to the task of rebuilding America's
roads, bridges, sewers and public buildings. The creation of this bank should
be part of the effort progressives are making in Congress to enact a second
stimulus bill this month.
Such a bank would allow the federal government to finance these projects in
the same way that states do: by issuing long-term, tax-exempt bonds or by
making loan guarantees.
Both Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have said they support the idea
of an infrastructure bank, although it rarely comes up in their campaign
speeches. And that's a shame, because they both need to spend their time
reinforcing an
emerging national mandate for repairing and improving our crumbling
foundations.
Just last month, the
blog Infrastructure Watch notes, the Government Accountability Office
estimated that the nation's total water infrastructure needs would cost between
$485 billion to $1.2 trillion. However, funding for the largest federal
drinking water and wastewater infrastructure programs have been flat or
declining.
Also, the
Congressional Budget Office told Congress last year that the Highway Trust
Fund, which is made up largely of the revenue from the gasoline tax, will run
out of money in 2009. Spending is outpacing money flowing into the fund. (High
gasoline prices, in fact, worsens that problem. When high prices force cutbacks
in driving, less money flows into the fund; the federal gasoline tax is a
per-gallon tax; it does not increase proportionately to the cost of a gallon of
gasoline.) One key reason for the exhaustion of the fund is that prices for
materials such as asphalt and concrete are exceeding the general rate of
inflation.
In March, the president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, David G.
Mongan, reminded
the House Banking Committee that in 2005 the organization gave a grade of
"D" to the state of the nation's infrastructure and said that an
investment of $1.6 trillion by 2010 would be needed to bring the fix these
public resources. At the time, that bad grade got a fair amount of attention.
Since then:
Nothing approaching that level of investment has been made. Indeed, little
has changed in the three years since we handed out that dismal grade, and
establishing a longterm plan to finance the development and maintenance of our
infrastructure remains a pressing national priority.
This nation continues to under-invest in infrastructure at the national
level. The total of all federal spending for infrastructure as a share of all
federal spending has steadily declined over the last 30 years, according to the
Congressional Budget Office.
One of the more shameful examples of what Robert Kuttner adroitly calls "the squandering of
America" is the failure of America to take care of its basic public
assets, especially after the Bush administration inherited a government with a
budget surplus that gave it the leeway to tackle that challenge intelligently.
(Colleague Bill Scher has linked to
some NBC News reports on how we're literally falling apart and is asking
why the media, including NBC, isn't doing more to press this into the national
debate.) Under the guise of controlling spending, the administration has
shifted an increasing share of the national burden to state and local
governments—where the same conservatives who say the federal government
shouldn't tax to pay for these needs make the same argument at the state and
local level—or encouraged turning public assets into private profit centers.
Now that the country is moving through a recession, there is an even more
critical need to target government resources on projects that will produce jobs
in the short run and leave the nation in the long run with the clean water,
transportation, schools and other public facilities that a nation needs to be
healthy and economically vibrant. As Congress considers a second economic
stimulus package for short-term relief this month, it should authorize the
creation of that infrastructure bank. Then let's have a serious debate about
how to fund it and how to use it when the next president takes office.