Columns

Pocatello/Chubbuck School District #25 and Let's Rebuild America

Posted on: August 14, 2007

By Thomas J. Donohue, President and CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
August 14, 2007

Last week I outlined the deplorable conditions of our nation’s transportation, energy, and water infrastructure systems. We are rapidly running out of capacity, and it’s already costing us jobs, productivity, competitiveness, mobility, and most tragically, innocent American lives, as the I-35W bridge collapse demonstrated. I underscored that now was the time to build a modern and safe infrastructure system for the 21st century. This week’s focus is on what we’re going to do about it.

On Friday, the U.S. Chamber unveiled a new initiative to spur hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure investments. We are going to organize, fund, and lead a new, multimillion-dollar initiative called “Let’s Rebuild America.” The initiative has four goals.

First, we will document in a factual and comprehensive way the totality of America’s infrastructure needs—not just what is required to patch things up, but what we must do to move our country and economy forward in a competitive world.

Second, will we educate the public, the business community, policymakers, and government at all levels about the benefits of investing in infrastructure and the cost of failure. We will develop and widely disseminate a series of compelling messages to build grassroots support for infrastructure.

Our third goal is to unleash and unlock the potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in private investment just waiting to be spent on critically needed power plants, pipelines, refineries, transmission lines, broadband lines, port facilities, railroads, airports, and privately constructed roadways. The money is there—ready, willing, and able—if government and regulators would just get out of the way. The red tape, lawsuits, and mind-numbing regulations we have imposed on our infrastructure systems and transportation modes defy common sense.

Fourth, we will foster an honest national dialogue on how and where we are going to find the public money to meet critical infrastructure needs. All options must be on the table, including eliminating wasteful spending, preventing the diversion of infrastructure money to other causes, advancing public-private partnerships, and considering an increase to the federal gasoline user fee, which hasn’t been raised in 14 years.

We can create American jobs, reduce congestion, clean the air, succeed in a global economy, and save thousands of innocent lives by expanding both private and public investment in our infrastructure. The benefits are great. The price of failure is high. We are going to make sure that the American people hear that message over and over again and hold their elected officials accountable.

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