Who Will Pay for America's $2.2 Trillion Infrastructure Backlog?

With the federal government unable to agree on much of anything, state and local taxpayers are bearing the burden for repairing and replacing America's aging infrastructure says a new report from Standard & Poor’s Rating Services.

1 minute read

October 29, 2012, 5:00 AM PDT

By Jonathan Nettler @nettsj


One of the many issues to have been largely left out of this year's presidential debates, America's growing infrastructure deficit (twice the size of the federal budget deficit) is unlikely to be addressed anytime soon by a federal government unable or unwilling to discuss trillions of dollars of new spending, reports Ashley Halsey III. In addition to the billions of dollars needed to replace aging roads and bridges, $30 billion is needed for the nation's ports, $107 is needed for the electrical grid, and $635 billion is needed to fix waste and drinking water systems. 

"We see an expectation in the foreseeable future for reduced federal
funding," said Geoffrey E. Buswick, the analyst who wrote a recent Standard &
Poor's report on the subject. "The longer there is a tepid economic recovery,
the more difficult it is to raise rates. There's already a gap in
funding and it's only going to get greater, so it's the longer term that
we're more worried about than the shorter term."

While some of the funding for necessary infrastructure repairs may come from private investors, local users and taxpayers are increasingly being targeted to fill the federal shortfall.  

Saturday, October 27, 2012 in The Washington Post

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