6: Infrastructure
Improve infrastructure.
Stakeholder(s):
- Republicans: Summary: Republicans must accept increased funding and innovative financing for new investments in projects that move people,
products, ideas, and power better, faster, and cheaper than the rest of the world. -- Republicans must accept the correlation
between public investment and private sector growth. They should accept substantially higher funding and innovative financing
for new investments that move people, products, ideas, and power better, faster, and cheaper than the rest of the world. They
must accept that to grow, we have to invest in cutting-edge infrastructure -- including broadband, smart electric grids, intelligent
logistics, and satellite-based air traffic management. Our funding mechanisms for infrastructure projects are becoming as
obsolete as the buggy whip. Ideas Republicans should embrace include higher spending on capital budget items like highways,
broadband construction, and power grid improvement; leveraging public spending with private capital through such financing
structures as a National Infrastructure Bank; and an increase in the revenue stream that funds infrastructure projects through
a modest carbon tax, or some other revenue generating measure.
- Democrats: Summary: Democrats must accept that cost overruns from the past have hurt public support for capital projects and they must
scale up Obama Administration reforms that are working effectively to reduce waste and encourage economically beneficial projects
only. -- Democrats must accept that past cost overruns damage the public perception of capital projects. In a 2007 report
of 27,000 U.S. federal government funded construction projects completed between 2001 and 2005, researchers found that 82%
of projects with a price tag above $5 million ran over budget -- and 30% ran at least 10% over budget. To turn this around
and show that government can deliver on time and on budget, the Obama Administration has embraced sweeping reforms to prevent
cost overruns -- changes that, according to the Government Accountability Office, have brought many highway and capital projects
in under budget.93 Democrats must strongly support continued reforms, including those that ensure that projects are awarded
for economic reasons, not constituent reasons. Ideas Democrats should embrace and bring to scale include the transparency
and compliance measures used by the Administration to monitor capital projects from the Recovery Act; further contracting
reform so that contractors and government are in agreement on who bears the burden of cost overruns; additional reforms to
eliminate moral hazards in lowestpriced bidding; requiring complete project designs before a contract to build is awarded;
and innovative financing measures like independently funded toll roads and the President's proposed National Infrastructure
Bank.
Objective(s):
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