Rendell gets behind infrastructure bank

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) said Wednesday that Congress should create a national infrastructure bank to prevent a conflict between President Obama and lawmakers over earmarks in a transportation bill.

 Rendell said the new transportation reauthorization bill will be stuffed so full of earmarks that it will test Obama’s resolve to limit spending on parochial projects.

{mosads}“The president and the Congress are on a little bit of a collision course,” Rendell said at a forum on Wednesday hosted by Third Way, a centrist think tank, and Building America’s Future, a pro-infrastructure organization.

Rendell said legislation to create a national infrastructure bank would depoliticize the federal government’s infrastructure spending by putting decision-making power in the hands of an oversight board that would direct funds to rebuild America’s bridges, highways and railroads.

Legislation to create such a bank, sponsored by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), would defuse the coming showdown between Obama and Congress before the transportation legislation hits his desk in the Oval Office.

“The American people won’t support a massive-in-scale infrastructure investment if it goes through the same old process,” Rendell said. “China invests in its own infrastructure because the returns are enormous. We have to do the same.”

Obama has offered support for a national infrastructure bank. His budget request included $5 billion for the next fiscal year for seed money to create the bank.

DeLauro’s bill is more ambitious. Under her legislation, the bank would have up to $625 billion in lending capacity. It would also be able to make loans and sell securities to attract private investment in infrastructure projects.

She argues that kind of investment is needed to fix America’s crumbling transportation system.

“It is time to rethink how we do things. It is time to seriously invest in America’s economic growth,” DeLauro said.

Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) said he was inspired to co-sponsor the bill by his own woes of spending hours in traffic and at the airport commuting to and from his Long Island district.

“For me, infrastructure is not just imperative public policy. It’s personal,” Israel said.

Members also touted the bill’s impact in creating jobs, citing the American Civil Society of Engineers’ estimate that $2.2 trillion over the next five years is needed to repair America’s infrastructure. They also said every billion dollars invested in infrastructure creates or sustains 47,500 jobs and generates $6.2 billion in economic activity.

Moving the legislation will not be easy.  Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, opposes the creation of such a bank because he believes it will leave rural transportation and other infrastructure projects under-funded.

“Sen. Baucus has some serious reservations with the idea of a national infrastructure bank. Giving politically appointed bankers the ability to determine where we invest our infrastructure dollars could seriously jeopardize the needs of rural America,” said Tyler Matsdorf, a spokesman for the Montana Democrat.

In addition, the bill’s provision to create a neutral board to decide where federal spending would best be spent — Rendell compared it to the military base-closing process — would run against the Washington way of doing business. Members of Congress utilize the much-maligned earmarking system because it earns constituents’ votes back home.

“If a member of Congress wants something to get funded, he will find a way to get it funded,” said an appropriations lobbyist. “Earmarks will never end, in my judgment, as long as people vote for their members of Congress. They are going to want something for their vote. It’s the mentality.”

Lawmakers and Rendell are trying to garner as much as support as possible, and already have won 36 co-sponsors since introducing the bill in late May. Noting the crowded legislative agenda this year, members urged the forum’s audience of journalists, lobbyists and think tank executives to talk about the measure as much as possible.

“We need your help to get this idea out there in America,” said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), another co-sponsor. “This has bipartisan appeal. Everybody needs an airport they don’t have to circle. Everybody needs a bridge that doesn’t fall down.”