Washington needs to come together on infrastructure bill to boost middle class

This past November, Americans sent a clear message that they want Washington to do more to make the American economy work for the middle class. They know that American workers have been hurt by bad trade deals; they want these deals to be renegotiated and future deals to prioritize American workers, not multinational corporations. They see American manufacturing jobs declining not just because of automation, but also because other countries are taking these jobs through unfair trade practices while Washington does little to respond.

Americans also know that there is a lot of work to be done fixing our broken infrastructure, especially our transportation system. In northeastern Illinois, we have some of the worst congestion in the country, which means lost time, wasted gas and more pollution. It also means that conducting business is more expensive for local businesses that need to get products to customers quickly. Overall, it hurts our quality of life every day in many different ways. President Trump has promised the American people a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill. He mentioned it the night of the election, during his inaugural address, and during his address to a joint session of Congress. But over 100 days into his presidency, we have yet to see any concrete ideas put forward, much less legislation.

{mosads}Congress stepped forward two years ago with a five-year transportation infrastructure funding bill, and while this bill has been helpful, we know that more needs to be done. But will President Trump follow through on his promise and will Congress finally come together to get it done? 

First, we need a good plan. The only plan that President Trump has put forward so far relies on tax breaks to spur private building. To some, this looks more like a tax cut for big-money developers rather than an infrastructure plan. The biggest problem is that it would only lead to the construction of toll roads and other projects that would produce a guaranteed return. This would mean that most of our infrastructure would continue to crumble, while those projects that did get done would cost more because they would include a profit for investors.

What we need is a real infrastructure plan that makes a public investment in our transportation system. It should include more than “shovel-ready projects,” as has been suggested by the Trump administration; this lesson should have been learned from President Obama’s stimulus bill. We need to make long-term investments that transform our transportation system. I have always said that we need to think beyond asphalt and bridges. Yes, our roads and bridges are in dire need of repair, but we need to build a resilient infrastructure network that will accommodate the future of transportation. This includes public transit, waterway navigation and connected infrastructure systems that will enable the transportation network of the future.

This investment will deliver real returns for everyone with less time wasted on our roads, less fuel unnecessarily burned, a better public transit system, the direct creation of jobs and a long-term boost to our economy. These would be big payoffs for all Americans, especially the middle class.

In a recent interview on CNN, former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said investing in infrastructure was likely the best way to “improve the supply side of the economy.” Bernanke said infrastructure — combined with some adjustments to the current tax system, though not necessarily those changes roughly sketched out by the White House — “would probably be the highest-return fiscal actions in terms of getting higher growth.”

We also need to ensure that every dollar of public investment possible stays here in the U.S. by including strong “Buy American” requirements. The president has issued an executive order directing an examination of how we can strengthen Buy American laws to ensure that the federal government spends tax dollars on American products. But he doesn’t have to wait seven months for this review to be completed before taking action. He can immediately start helping American workers by getting congressional Republicans to pass a bill that I introduced earlier this year, the bipartisan Buy American Improvement Act, H.R. 904. This comprehensively changes Buy America and Buy American laws to close loopholes in current law and extend domestic content protections to more federal programs.

There are many policies that President Trump is trying to implement that I strongly disagree with, and I will continue to fight against them. But we should not let these disagreements stop us from working on issues that can help create jobs for middle-class families. Infrastructure investment should be an issue that we can all agree upon. Washington needs to remember the message Americans sent in November and come together on a real infrastructure bill that will boost the middle class. 

Lipinski is a member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

The views expressed by this author are their own and are not the views of The Hill.