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Yet their safety depends on the same dysfunctional government processes that almost provided $398 million in federal funds on that Alaska span between an airport and an island of 50 people.
It's the same for drinking-water systems, highways, public-school buildings, locks in inland waterways and mass-transit systems. At least $1.6 trillion in repairs and new construction is needed - and needed yesterday. Instead, Washington has engaged in years of penny-wise and pound-foolish budgeting, putting off long-term investment in favor of supposedly "responsible" spending restraints. (Fiscal discipline must not apply to fighting unnecessary wars.)
Not only are we spending much less than we should on infrastructure, we likely are spending it in the wrong places. Congressional earmarks for infrastructure depend, not on the economic and environmental value of the projects, but on which state's representatives have the most clout - and many edge out projects that would be better for the nation as a whole.
And the other uncoordinated methods for deciding which projects get federal funding are only marginally more rational than earmarks.
That's why a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank is an idea whose time has come.
Developed by investment banker Felix Rohatyn and former Sen. Warren Rudman, the idea was turned into legislation now in the Senate and House Banking Committees. Barack Obama, one of 12 co-sponsors in the Senate, has thrown his full support behind it. If elected president, Obama has pledged to use $60 billion in federal money to leverage a quarter-trillion dollars for infrastructure improvements through the bank.
As part of his emergency-jobs proposal announced in a speech just yesterday, Obama urged making $25 billion available to the states immediately to save 1 million jobs at risk because of budget pressures on current infrastructure and school-repair projects. To Obama, in both the long and short term, improving infrastructure is an excellent way to create good-paying jobs and stimulate economic activity.
But at least as important is that the bank will set up standards for deciding national priorities and evaluating the projects based on merit.
For example, as Rohatyn has observed, instead of building levees in areas threatened by hurricanes, it might be more effective to spend money to preserve wetlands that offer natural flood protection by absorbing torrential rain. Instead of building new roads, it might be wiser to update or repair the ones we have. The bank would make those decisions.
Recent spectacular failures of infrastructure - the August 2007 collapse of the I-35 bridge near Minneapolis that killed 13, the failure of the levees in New Orleans that almost destroyed that city - can overshadow the day-to-day losses in time, safety and creativity that come with neglect.
The average American loses 51.5 hours a year stuck in traffic. This year, thousands of homes and millions of acres of crops were lost due to the failure of obsolete levees along the Mississippi River. About a third of the nation's public-school facilities have physical deficiencies that impair teaching. The next president will surely be advised that we can't afford to spend $60 billion on an infrastructure bank. But we just forked over $700 billion for "toxic assets."
Wouldn't it be better to invest a fraction of that to produce tangible improvements to our country, as well as jobs? *
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