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Posted January 25, 2012 in Moving Beyond Oil
In his State of the Union address, President Obama touched on an important national issue that is near and dear to me: the need to get America back to work building up the nation’s vast road and rail network. In a word: infrastructure. The context for this issue is important for everyone to understand, as all Americans are affected by transportation. Indeed, a strong economy depends on it. My fellow Americans, the state of our infrastructure is not good. But expect lots of action by our elected leaders starting this year to tackle transportation.
The Good
In his speech to the nation last night President Obama recognized, as he’s done many times before, that transportation infrastructure is in desperate need of repair. The 2009 Recovery Act (the much-maligned “stimulus” bill) helped to reduce the growing backlog of deferred maintenance -- with half or more of the money going to reconstruction, rehabilitation or resurfacing of roads and bridges (pdf of a report by the General Accountability Office here). But that pipeline of investment is now down to a trickle. The president also took the opportunity to hearken back to a time when leaders in both political parties collaborated on the design, finance and building of big projects such as the Golden Gate Bridge.
Obama called for cutting so-called “red tape”, which is unfortunate (more on that later), but he also correctly noted that there’s “never been a better time to build.” This is a point made most forcefully by columnist Ezra Klein who has noted that low interest rates as well as low labor and materials costs due to the economic down turn allow big-time leveraging of taxpayer dollars. This means that now is the time to invest in infrastructure. Where to get the capital for doing so? The president proposed taking half of the savings – about $200 billion according to the National Journal’s Fawn Johnson – from our reduced spending on wars overseas and investing it in “nation-building right here at home.” FULL ARTICLE
Posted on
Wed, January 25, 2012
by John Cox