The Fiscal Times: Report: Eric Planin: President Obama Looks to Tax Reform to Save America's Highways

The Fiscal Times: Report: Eric Planin: President Obama Looks to Tax Reform to Save America's Highways

This would be an interesting way to raise the much needed revenue to rebuild America's infrastructure system but, as I've argued in the past, we wouldn't need to go to this length if we created a National Infrastructure Bank instead. That would prioritize the national infrastructure projects that our country actually needs, real projects that support strong economic and job growth as opposed to pork .

A National Infrastructure Bank was proposed by senators John Kerry (D) and Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R)in the 112th Congress. This would be an independent corporation created by Congress.  It would simply prioritize national infrastructure projects and then find funding for them in the private sector by bringing in investors.  It would make profits from the investments from tolls and fees that users would pay to use the roads, bridges, airports etc.

This is how we should paying for infrastructure improvements, moving past Congress to create an organization that could work on its own without taxpayer funds, collecting revenue from the projects. Our country would have all of the revenue needed to pay for its infrastructure requirements and not need to go to a dysfunctional Congress every year to meet its cash requirements.