Sheila Bair: "A bold plan for rebuilding our roads and bridges"

Sheila Bair, former chair of the FDIC, writing in Fortune magazine.

She outlines several different possible financing mechanisms:

With government borrowing rates low (courtesy of the Fed) and so many construction workers eager for work, you would think that the federal government would launch major infrastructure programs. Unfortunately, the Fed’s cheap money has been squandered mostly on sugar-high stimulus and paper profits in the stock and bond markets — ephemeral benefits that are fading fast. In contrast, infrastructure programs would have lasting and much-needed benefits for this and future generations. Yet Washington’s bigwigs are providing little leadership on the issue, and they are missing the boat, as government borrowing costs will continue to go up.

Many in the GOP seem to think the government spends too much already and is too incompetent to run major infrastructure programs. But lots of sensible people, including those at the New America Foundation, a leading centrist think tank, have proposed the creation of a National Infrastructure Bank, which would support only projects that were approved by a team of engineers and that could be paid for over time with user fees or dedicated revenues like energy taxes.