Infrastructure needs our support

Infrastructure is a cumbersome word. But Investments in public works are key to economic growth in the 1990s.

Infrastructure spending means familiar things like fixing bridges, expanding airports and seaports, building and maintaining highways, and improving waste water treatment plants.

But infrastructure is also a lot of new things. It means digital switches and fiber optic cable, for example, which expand a community's telecommunications links - the highway of America's new economy.

It also means building "smart" systems - in homes, office buildings, automobiles and highways - that give workers and consumers more choices. It means finding places to store nuclear waste.

Infrastructure is scenic highways to tap the increasingly popular experience and recreation industries - tourism, adventure and ecotourism, especially in rural areas where funds for federal programs have been cut by 67% since 1980.

Infrastructure means new approaches to water management, such as the efficient use of pumps and plumbing to move water and solve water shortage problems in California, Arizona and other parts of the arid West. Water management is more than dams.

Infrastructure affects productivity. Economist David Alan Aschauer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago argues a major cause of the post-1970 slowdown in U.S. productivity growth is a dramatic decline in spending on public infrastructure that began around 1965.

One example: Delays at airports cost consumers and airlines over $3 billion in 1987, according to Rebuild America, a coalition whose aim is to boost infrastructure spending.

Investment in infrastructure is not just a job for government. Much of the cost for enhanced telecommunications, airports and other facilities is paid by private investors.

Achieving the needed level of infrastructure investment, however, requires a favorable investment climate. This puts the responsibility squarely on the back of public authorities.

State and local regulators should create incentives for regulated industries such as electric utilities and telephone companies to encourage their investment in infrastructure rather than other things.

Congress must rein in its deficit spending so more capital is available at lower interest rates for infrastructure investment.

Also Congress must stop highjacking federal gasoline taxes - meant for highways, airports and other infrastructure - to reduce the budget deficit.

These funds now total $28.8 billion collected through user fees and earmarked for infrastructure improvements. They remain unspent so the federal deficit won't look so bad, an accounting trick that leaves Congress free to spend in other areas.

The time has come to end bait and switch tactics. Congress should spend the money as it was intended. This will help stimulate our slumping economy and rebuild foundations for prosperity in the century.

Bricks, mortar, glass and vision are key ingredients for a competitive America in the 21st century.