By Roger Runningen and Hans Nichols
Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said the deterioration of the nation's highways, bridges, airports and ports is costly to U.S. business and threatens future economic growth.
Obama traveled to the banks of the Potomac River in Washington and an aging landmark bridge in need of repair to prod Congress to act on a provision of his jobs plan to put $60 billion into infrastructure repairs. He also announced plans to speed up grants and funding for surface transportation projects.
Aging infrastructure costs businesses and families $130 billion a year, Obama said. "You're paying already for these substandard bridges," he said. Fixing them would "save money in the long run."
Obama, who faces voters next year in an election that largely will turn on the state of the economy, is undertaking a public campaign that has included trips to battleground states and interviews with local television stations from Tampa, Florida, to Portland, Oregon. The administration argues that spending on infrastructure will make needed repairs to the nation's roads and bridges while also helping to ease the 9.1 percent unemployment rate.
"Of all the industries hammered by the economic downturn, construction has been hardest hit" Obama said in Washington. "It makes absolutely no sense when there's so much work to be done that they're not doing the work."
Aging Bridge
The Francis Scott Key Bridge, a concrete arch structure over the Potomac completed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1923, links northern Virginia with Washington's Georgetown neighborhood.
The bridge, about two miles from the White House and named after the author of the Star Spangled Banner, is Washington's oldest surviving span across the Potomac, according to the National Register of Historic Places. About 70,000 bridges across the country are deficient and in need of repair, according to the policy group Transportation for America.
Repairing every deficient bridge in the U.S. would cost about $140 billion, the Federal Highway Administration said in 2006.
Republicans, joined by some Democrats, have refused to pass the $447 billion jobs package Obama proposed on Sept. 8, so he's urging lawmakers to break it into smaller pieces in a bid for bipartisan support.
--With assistance from Laura Litvan, Steve Sloan and Cary O'Reilly in Washington. Editors: Joe Sobczyk, Bob Drummond
To contact the reporters on this story: Roger Runningen in Washington at rrunningen@bloomberg.net; Hans Nichols in Washington at hnichols2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net
Source:http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-08/obama-says-deteriorating-infrastructure-costly-to-u-s-economy.html
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