Infrastructure could be big winner in 2016 presidential sweepstakes

According to the presumptive Democratic nominee: “When it comes to the physical infrastructure, we have to take care of what we already have, upgrade it, modernize it. We’ve had problems here in Washington, we have problems in New York—potholes exploding, all kinds of issues.”

And according to the presumptive Republican nominee: “Rebuild the country’s infrastructure; nobody can do that like me, believe me. We have to rebuild our infrastructure: our bridges, our roadways, our airport.”

To pile on to the candidates comments, The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) recently gave the United States a “D” grade on infrastructure, adding that there will be a $1.44 trillion infrastructure funding gap over the next decade.

According to the ASCE, this will affect exports and productivity and will cost the average American family $3,400 annually. “Poor road conditions are blamed for increasing congestion as well as a factor in about one-third of all highway fatalities, so investing in infrastructure will make Americans safer,” states a recent ASCE report.

On the campaign front, Trump hasn’t put together a specific proposal, but he has described it as a “trillion-dollar rebuilding plan,” which would be “one of the biggest projects this country has ever undertaken.”

Trump also suggests that it would create 13 million jobs—a figure that originates in the Senate Budget Committee’s estimate of how many workers it would take to fully modernize the nation’s infrastructure. Clinton, by contrast, has pledged to create roughly 3.6 million new jobs by spending $275 billion on new infrastructure over a five-year period.

Most experts in transportation say that the government needs to convince the public that infrastructure dollars will be well spent. However, they contend that much of the anger with Washington started with pork barrel projects. While Washington can always do more to eliminate waste, it needs to remind Americans that Congress has largely eliminated earmarks and is doing a better job of getting money to where it is needed most and will have the greatest national impact.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been in the vanguard of those calling for more infrastructure investment. While the Chamber always has stayed neutral on presidential politics, it’s clear on what the priorities should be for the next president.

“We simply need more money—public and private,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce concludes in its white paper on infrastructure. “Raising the gas tax (unchanged since Bill Clinton raised it in 1993) is not a popular idea in Washington, but a modest, phased-in increase makes a lot of sense.”

But the Chamber and other innovative infrastructure thinkers say not all the money must come from government. The Chamber estimates there is $250 billion in global private capital available for infrastructure investment.

“We must remove the barriers that keep this money from being spent,” the Chamber urges.