WASHINGTON—The I-35W bridge disaster in Minneapolis has reignited debate in Washington and in state capitols on how best to repair and invest in this country’s aging, creaking, and occasionally collapsing infrastructure.

“We have been saying for some years that much of the nation’s highway infrastructure requires repair, replacement, or expansion to handle the large increase in vehicle traffic, and that progress on this front has lagged far behind the need,” American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves said. “We look forward to seeing plans to accomplish this.”

The simple solution is to spend money. U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue, the former head of the American Trucking Associations, condemned the current state of infrastructure and called on the country to spend “hundreds of billions of dollars” in infrastructure investments.

It could take more. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates the total cost for improvements to the nation’s roads, bridges, dams, water systems and airports at $1.6 trillion. Just repairing deficient bridges would cost $188 billion over 20 years.

“We’re rapidly running out of capacity, and it’s already costing us jobs, productivity, competitiveness, mobility, and most tragically, innocent American lives,” Donohue said. “We must begin now to build a modern and safe infrastructure system. The business community must lead the way to make this happen.”

The business community seems to be onboard. According to Donohue’s opposite number at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), former Michigan Gov. John Engler, “A first-class transportation infrastructure is a key to our nation’s economic security.” Engler also said NAM “will aggressively seek solutions and resources to upgrade and modernize the transportation infrastructure system.”

The Chamber has started its own multimillion-dollar initiative called “Let’s Rebuild America.” It plans on documenting the problem with research, including state-by-state infrastructure report cards; educating the public and policy makers about the benefits of infrastructure and the cost of failure; unlocking pent-up private investment by removing legal and regulatory impediments; and boosting public investment.

The easiest way to boost public investment, according to Donohue, is an increase in the federal fuel tax which hasn’t been raised in 14 years even as construction costs have soared. Donohue said raising the fuel tax must be on the table. In a year before an election, however, that’s the longest of long shots.

The battle lines in Washington are clear: Democrats want to raise taxes to improve infrastructure spending; Republicans generally do not want anything to do with tax increases. President Bush already has indicated he has no stomach for a proposed 5-cent a gallon increase in the federal fuel tax. That tax—18.4 cents on diesel and 23.4 cents on gasoline—has been unchanged since President Clinton raised it 5 cents in 1993.

Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, wants an immediate five-cent increase to help rebuild the 73,784 bridges in the country rated “structurally deficient” by the U.S. Department of Transportation. He said a major reason why these bridges are not repaired, rehabilitated, or replaced can be attributed to a “tombstone mentality” in the federal government and states.

President Bush welcomed Oberstar’s suggestion by recently calling it “dead on arrival” during a recent press conference. Bush said Congress ought to set better priorities. It ought to hurry. The Highway Trust Fund, which as recently as 10 years ago had a $12 billion surplus, is slated to run out of money in 2009 because of the lack of an increase in the fuel tax at the same time building costs have risen.