The Time is Right to Create a 21st Century Infrastructure Bank

Feb 20, 2013 - Georgia Levenson Keohane

President Obama has called for the creation of an infrastructure bank. Congress must follow his lead.

“It's not a bigger government we need,” President Obama said in the State of the Union address, “but a smarter government that sets priorities and invests in broad-based growth.” The creation of a national infrastructure bank is a “smarter government” idea whose time has come.

Plans for a national infrastructure bank – one that uses federal funds to incent or leverage even greater investment, public and private, in large-scale public purpose projects – have been percolating since the 1990s. President Obama has long been a champion, and the idea has enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress and backing from the likes of the AFL-CIO and U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Yet we remain stalled in enacting this kind of finance facility, despite the weight of evidence of its potential efficacy and the urgency of the infrastructure (and financing) need. It is time, as the president urged, to put the nation’s interest before party, and to use this kind of public-private partnership to make the investments vital to our economic prosperity.