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competitiveness


Current infrastructure causes companies to look for other nations to do business- plan solves

TYSON 10- professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, was chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers and the National Economic Council in the Clinton administration. She is a member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. (Laura, “Why We Need a Second Stimulus,” August 29, 2010, The New York Times, Lexis)//SPS

An increase in government investment in roads, airports and other kinds of public infrastructure would be cost-effective, too, as measured by the number of jobs created per dollar of spending. And it would help reduce the road congestion, airport delays and freight bottlenecks that reduce productivity and make the United States a less attractive place to do business. The American Society of Civil Engineers has identified more than $2.2 trillion in public infrastructure needs nationwide, and a 2008 study by the Congressional Budget Office found that, on strict cost-benefit grounds, it would make sense to increase annual spending on transportation projects alone by 74 percent. Over the next five years, the federal government should work with state and local governments and the private sector to finance $1 trillion worth of additional investment in infrastructure. It should extend the Build America Bonds stimulus program, which in the past year has helped states finance $120 billion in infrastructure improvement. The federal government should also create and capitalize a National Infrastructure Bank that would provide greater certainty about the level of infrastructure financing over several years, select projects based on rigorous cost-benefit analysis, invest in things like interstate high-speed rail that require coordination among states and attract private co-investors in projects like toll roads and airports that generate dedicated future revenue streams.
A national infrastructure bank is necessary to maintain economic competitiveness

Puentes 11 (Robert, Senior Fellow at the Brookings institution “Infrastructure Investment and U.S. Competitiveness” http://www.cfr.org/united-states/infrastructure-investment-us-competitiveness/p24585)
Most experts agree the United States must address the nation's aging network of roads, bridges, airports, railways, power grids, water systems, and other public works to maintain its global economic competitiveness. In 2010, President Barack Obama proposed a national infrastructure bank that would leverage public and private capital to fund improvements, and in April 2011 a bipartisan coalition of senators put forward a similar concept (NYT). Four experts discuss how the United States can best move forward on infrastructure development. Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution suggests focusing on increasing exports, low-carbon technology, innovation, and opportunity. Renowned financier Felix Rohatyn endorses the concept of a federally owned but independently operated national infrastructure bank that would provide a "guidance-system" for federal dollars. Infrastructure policy authority Richard Little argues that adequate revenue streams are the "first step in addressing this problem," stressing "revenue-based models" as essential. Deputy Mayor of New York City Stephen Goldsmith says that the "most promising ideas" in this policy area involve public-private partnerships. Infrastructure is central to U.S. prosperity and global competitiveness. It matters because state-of-the-art transportation, telecommunications, and energy networks--the connective tissue of the nation--are critical to moving goods, ideas, and workers quickly and efficiently and providing a safe, secure, and competitive climate for business operations. But for too long, the nation's infrastructure policies have been kept separate and apart from the larger conversation about the U.S. economy. The benefits of infrastructure are frequently framed around short-term goals about job creation. While the focus on employment growth is certainly understandable, it is not the best way to target and deploy infrastructure dollars. And it means so-called "shovel ready projects" are all we can do while long-term investments in the smart grid, high-speed rail, and modern ports are stuck at the starting gate. So in addition to the focus on job growth in the short term, we need to rebalance the American economy for the long term on several key elements: higher exports, to take advantage of rising global demand; low-carbon technology, to lead the clean-energy revolution; innovation, to spur growth through ideas and their deployment; and greater opportunity, to reverse the troubling, decades-long rise in inequality. Infrastructure is fundamental to each of those elements. Yet while we know America's infrastructure needs are substantial, we have not been able to pull together the resources to make the requisite investments. And when we do, we often fail to make infrastructure investments in an economy-enhancing way. This is why the proposal for a national infrastructure bank is so important. If designed and implemented appropriately, it would be a targeted mechanism to deal with critical new investments on a merit basis, while adhering to market forces and leveraging the private capital we know is ready to invest here in the United States.
The American Infrastructure Financing Authority will increase private investment in infrastructure and maintain American economic competitiveness

Likosky 11 (Michael staff writer at the New York Times “Banking on the Future” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/opinion/13likosky.html)
FOR decades, we have neglected the foundation of our economy while other countries have invested in state-of-the-art water, energy and transportation infrastructure. Our manufacturing base has migrated abroad; our innovation edge may soon follow. If we don’t find a way to build a sound foundation for growth, the American dream will survive only in our heads and history books. But how we will pay for it? Given the fights over the deficit and the debt, it is doubtful that a second, costly stimulus package could gain traction. President Franklin D. Roosevelt faced a similar predicament in the 1930s when the possibility of a double-dip Depression loomed. For this reason, the New Deal’s second wave aggressively pursued public-private partnerships and quasi-public authorities. Roosevelt described the best-known of these enterprises, the Tennessee Valley Authority, as a “corporation clothed with the power of government but possessed of the flexibility and initiative of a private enterprise.” A bipartisan bill introduced by senators including John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, seeks a similar but modernized solution: it would create an American Infrastructure Financing Authority to move private capital, now sitting on the sidelines in pension, private equity, sovereign and other funds, into much-needed projects. Rather than sell debt to investors and then allocate funds through grants, formulas and earmarks, the authority would get a one-time infusion of federal money ($10 billion in the Senate bill) and then extend targeted loans and limited loan guarantees to projects that need a push to get going but can pay for themselves over timelike a road that collects tolls, an energy plant that collects user fees, or a port that imposes fees on goods entering or leaving the country. The idea of such a bank dates to the mid-1990s. Even then, our growth was hampered by the inadequacy of our infrastructure and a lack of appetite for selling public debt to cover construction costs. Today we find ourselves trapped in a vicious cycle that makes this proposal more urgent than ever. Our degraded infrastructure straitjackets growth. We resist borrowing, fearful of financing pork-barrel projects selected because of political calculations rather than need. While we have channeled capital into wars and debt, our competitors in Asia and Latin America have worked with infrastructure banks to lay a sound foundation for growth. As a result, we must compete not only with their lower labor costs but also with their advanced energy, transportation and information platforms, which are a magnet even for American businesses.
NIB solves economic growth, jobs and competitiveness.

Tyson 11-Professor @ the Haas School of Business of UC-Berkeley, PhD in Economics @ MIT, BA Summa Cum Laude in Economics @ Smith College, former Chair of the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers, served as the Director of the National Economic Council [Laura, Harvard Business Review, “A Better Stimulus Plan for the U.S. Economy,” 2011, http://hbr.org/web/extras/hbr-agenda-2011/laura-d-tyson, DKP]

Although stimulus spending is a politically contentious issue, America is now in urgent need of a national infrastructure bank to help finance transformative projects of national importance. During the coming year I will work with the Obama administration; Senator John Kerry, Representative Rosa DeLauro, and other members of Congress; governors; mayors; and business leaders on legislation to establish and provide the capital for such an institution. I will also foster public support for its creation through speeches, interviews, and opinion columns like this one. Unlike most other forms of stimulus, infrastructure spending benefits the economy in two ways: First, it creates jobs—which, because those jobs put money in consumers' pockets, spurs demand. Analysis by the Congressional Budget Office indicates that infrastructure spending is a cost-effective demand stimulus as measured by the number of jobs created per dollar of budgetary expenditure. Second, the resulting infrastructure enhancement supports supply and growth over time. By contrast, underinvestment not only hobbles U.S. competitiveness but also affects America's national security as vulnerabilities go unaddressed. In its 2009 report on the state of the nation's infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the U.S. a near-failing grade of D. Perhaps that should not be surprising, given that real infrastructure spending today is about the same as it was in 1968, when the economy was smaller by a third. A 2008 CBO study concluded, for example, that a 74% increase in annual spending on transportation infrastructure alone would be economically justifiable. That calculation leaves out additional infrastructure spending needed for other key public goals such as water delivery and sanitation. Realizing the highest possible return on infrastructure investments depends on funding the projects with the biggest impact and financing them in the most advantageous way. Properly designed and governed, a national infrastructure bank would overcome weaknesses in the current selection of projects by removing funding decisions from the politically volatile appropriations process. A common complaint today is that projects are often funded on the basis of politics rather than efficiency. Investments would instead be selected after independent and transparent cost-benefit analysis by objective experts. The bank would provide the most appropriate form of financing for each project, drawing on a flexible set of tools such as direct loans, loan guarantees, grants, and interest subsidies for Build America Bonds. It should be given the authority to form partnerships with private investors, which would increase funding for infrastructure investments and foster efficiency in project selection, operation, and maintenance. That would enable the bank to tap into the significant pools of long-term private capital in pension funds and dedicated infrastructure equity funds looking for such investment opportunities. Crafting the law to achieve these goals is a serious and challenging undertaking, particularly in view of large budget deficits and a contentious political atmosphere. But I believe they are worthy of the political and legislative effort required to realize them. The U.S. must invest considerably more in its infrastructure to secure its competitiveness and deliver rising standards of living. This effort would also put millions of Americans to work in meaningful jobs. The time has come to make it happen.



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