Biden Calls on Congress to Address Infrastructure
“We have a tremendous opportunity to strengthen our competitiveness, to drive growth, to protect our national security and to generate good-paying, middle-class jobs,” Biden said at the Program For American Job Creation And Infrastructure Forum under the aegis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “I think we’re on the cusp of a genuine resurgence in the U.S. economy.”
According to the vice president, for that resurgence to occur, “We have to have an infrastructure that is consistent with 21st-century needs.”
Biden said that the United States ranks 28th in the world in infrastructure spending and cited a study by the American Society of Civil Engineers that said that the nation needs $3.6 trillion in such spending by 2020.
He touted the administration’s Grow America Act, a six-year, $478 billion investment in infrastructure, $317 billion of which is devoted to the nation’s roads and bridges, paid for largely by a one-time, 14% tax on over $2 trillion in overseas corporate profits.
However, Biden said that he and President Obama are “wide open” to the funding mechanisms as long as the infrastructure is sufficiently upgraded now.
“The challenges facing infrastructure today are not only resolvable, they are potential game-changers for us in a whole range of areas,” Biden said. “There used to be a bipartisan consensus that infrastructure was important. I understand why there should be legitimate debate on how we pay for infrastructure. What I don’t understand is how there can even be a debate on whether we need to invest in infrastructure. Without investing in our entire system, how we can lead the world in the 21st century? If we don’t step up now, the price is going to be extremely high.”
