By: Kelly H. Carnes, President and CEO TechVision21
Former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Technology Policy
In this campaign season, the major party candidates for President have expressed strong support for greater investment in repairing and modernizing America’s crumbling infrastructure.
Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump recognize that modern, efficient and secure infrastructure plays an indispensable role in U.S. competitiveness, economic growth and productivity.
Hillary Clinton makes a very strong case for infrastructure investment, and has an aggressive vision for upgrading U.S. infrastructure of all kinds: transportation, bridges, rail, ports, dams and levees, water, broadband and energy. She also recognizes the need for investments supporting future growth, such as intelligent highways, smart cities and the Internet of Things. She calls for increasing investment by $275 billion over five years. This would be in addition to the few billion annually added by the surface transportation bill passed into law last year. Hillary Clinton’s plan represents a significant down payment on the infrastructure funding gap of $1.6 trillion–or about $200 billion annually by 2020–estimated by the American Society of Civil Engineers. While more is needed, these proposals offer an excellent first step.
Hillary Clinton’s vision calls out the underinvestment in our critical drinking water and wastewater systems, and calls for a “bold agenda” to harness public and private resources to revitalize our aging water infrastructure. The funding gap for water and wastewater systems alone is estimated at $84 billion per year by 2020. She also proposes an infrastructure bank, jump-started with $25 billion in government funds for loans, loan guarantees and credit enhancement. And, unlike most transportation infrastructure, water systems have built-in ratepayers, and stable and fairly predictable revenue streams, making them a good candidate for investment via an infrastructure bank.
Donald Trump vows to increase infrastructure investment twice as much as Hillary Clinton, but has not released a plan or vision for that spending.
At the end of the day, these are proposals that have to be paid for, financially sustainable, authorized and appropriated by Congress in today’s tight Federal budget environment. Once the election is behind us, I hope that Congress will work in a bi-partisan way to address the pressing need for infrastructure spending. Hillary Clinton’s proposals are an excellent foundation for this debate and strong Congressional action, which is long overdue.