AASHTO Journal, 30 January 2015
Two U.S. senators who fill the top minority positions on the Budget and Appropriations committees – Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. – have introduced legislation that would put $1 trillion into transportation and other infrastructure spending.
Senators Sanders and Mikulski (2011)Win McNamee/Getty Images North America
The bill, which Sanders sponsored and Mikulski joined as an initial co-sponsor, does not identify a funding source. And it comes as lawmakers considering how to replenish the Highway Trust Fund mostly talk about just finding enough revenue to maintain road and transit spending at current spending levels plus inflation.
But the detailed proposal would spread the $1 trillion over five years and in some cases longer “to rebuild America’s crumbling network of roads, bridges and transit systems and other infrastructure projects,” Sanders’ announcement said.
Sanders said his plan is also backed by the American Society of Civil Engineers, the AFL-CIO and others. Sanders had said weeks earlier that he would unveil the measure he calls The Rebuild America Act, and introduced it Jan. 27..
A summary says: “Our deteriorating infrastructure already costs the economy close to $200 billion a year, and if we don’t make these investments now, they will simply cost us more the longer we wait.”
It includes $753 billion just for roads, bridges and transit systems, partly by injecting an extra $75 billion a year into the Highway Trust Fund “so states can address the backlog of projects to fix our crumbling roads, bridges and transit.” The trust fund’s highway and transit accounts are on course to spend a combined $53 billion this year, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.
Sanders’ bill would also capitalize a federal infrastructure bank, sharply expand the U.S. Department of Transportation’s TIGER infrastructure grant and TIFIA loan pools, put $15 billion a year into passenger and freight rail projects, sharply increase federal airport spending and put more money into inland and coastal waterway projects.
In addition, it would target funds to improve drinking water and flood control infrastructure, the electric grid, broadband networks and National Parks.
Sanders also presented his bill as a program that would create 13 million jobs. In a white paper on ways to improve the middle class economically, he wrote: “If we are truly serious about addressing the 40-year decline of the American middle class, we need a major federal jobs program. There are a number of approaches which can be taken, but the fastest way to create jobs is to rebuild our crumbling roads, bridges, airports, railways, and water systems and to substantially reduce the infrastructure deficit.”