U.S. Infrastructure gets a D.

I didn’t even get a D in Calculus my senior year of high school, and I did almost no work in that class.

This is the third time in a row that U.S. infrastructure has received a D. Well, almost, it got a D+ in 2001. Even with all the spending on infrastructure in the stimulus package (which passed on party lines tonight), U.S. infrastructure still has oodles of problems.

First and foremost is the way we  deal with infrastructure — its just added on to appropriations as “pork.” Its not called that, but that’s basically what it is. Lawmakers request funding for pet projects back home. Other than that, the money is just funneled to the states, who just ferry it out most of the time in the same way federal lawmakers do — pet projects, new roads in a lawmaker’s district, etc etc.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (the ones who graded the infrastructure) report that over $2.2 trillion (not a typo) of public and private spending would be required to fix America’s infrastructure problems. Obviously, we don’t have that kind of money, given that we’re running huge deficits as it is.

However, we can change the way we spend it. President Obama and others have advocated, and I agree, creating an “Infrastructure Bank,” of sorts, into which Congress would appropriate X amount of infrastructure spending. The officials at the “bank” would then divide X dollars out to projects based on merit and need. This way, projects that need to be completed receive funding, and benefitial projects get funded. Basically, it just taking Congress out of the equation in deciding which projects get funded. Instead of individual lawmakers submitting projects, the “infrastructure bank” would review each case and decide if these are projects that actually deserve funding.

There are problems with every system, and this system itself has problems, but I personally think its much better than the system we  currently have — and, let’s face it, we have a lot of infrastructure problems.

~ by deluxetoaster on January 28, 2009.