White House makes a big push to invest in us.
President Obama on Monday unveiled his 2016 budget proposal, which includes $478 billion designed to get America moving again.
It’s great to see the President give transportation investment cover space in a budget request chock full of other priorities.
What’s new this year?
It’s bigger and longer: The president asked for $478 billion over six years, or about $80 billion annually. Last year’s request would have spent $302 billion over four years.
It’s funded: To pay for investment here at home, the president proposed a 14 percent tax on corporate profits held overseas. Revenue from this one-time “repatriation” would fill the empty coffers of our highway trust fund, which is set to run out in May.
Of course, the big question is whether it win any support in Congress.
Since November, when Republicans secured majorities in both Houses, Republican leaders and the president have flirted with the idea that they could, if circumstances were absolutely perfect, work with each other, maybe. Passing a long-term transportation bill is ripe for bipartisan cooperation.
Both the president and Congress know the facts:
- Decaying infrastructure makes the United States less competitive — global assessments ranking the United States 16th globally and sixth out of our top trading partners;
- The United States invests just $848 per person annually in transportation infrastructure; Europe spends more than three times as much. Underinvestment has caused a $900 billion backlog in needed improvements and repairs throughout the United States;
- Meanwhile, every dollar invested in transportation infrastructure returns $3.54 in economic impact. That comes down to 21,761 American jobs for every $1 billion.
Naysayers will dismiss the economic impact of infrastructure investment on the grounds that projects are slow to get off the ground, and that there are sometimes inefficiencies in how infrastructure money is spent.
But this is exactly why a long-term bill is so important. It’s impossible to plan or prioritize projects (small or large) when you don’t know if there will be funding in six months.
Kudos to President Obama for leading on infrastructure. We need a plan to rebuild our crumbling nation and pave the way for a prosperous future. This is a great first step.