"This legislation is better than nothing – but barely. It is an underwhelming, pathetically weak bill that does little to repair our crumbling infrastructure, fix our economy or create jobs for our returning veterans. What a missed opportunity.
“Every expert agrees that America’s infrastructure is in need of immediate and large-scale investment. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives our infrastructure a D grade. The World Economic Forum ranks American infrastructure 24th in the world. And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that we lose hundreds of billions of dollars in economic growth due to the poor quality of our infrastructure.
“Bold legislation that makes the large-scale investments we need would also have created millions of jobs for American workers – jobs that can’t be outsourced. The benefit to our economy would have been enormous.
“And then there is this: Congress spent $139 billion rebuilding the roads and infrastructure of Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries with a combined population less than one fifth of our own. That is $30 billion more than this bill proposes to spend on American infrastructure. It is time Washington learned to do some nation building here at home.”
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Earlier this year Congressman Higgins introduced H.R. 4352, the Nation Building Here at Home Act, which calls for a $1.2 trillion investment in infrastructure over the next 5 years. According to a New America Foundation report, this investment would create 27 million jobs.
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