(GEORGE CURRY MEDIA)—In the presidential campaign, we’ve seen libels on immigrants, fear mongering about Syrian refugees, arguments over Medicare for All and Obamacare, concerns about big money corrupting our politics and more. But too little attention has been paid to the one thing on which there should be consensus within and between the parties: the need to rebuild America now.
We didn’t need the horrors of children at risk from fouled lead pipes in Flint, Mich., to know that our infrastructure is dangerously decrepit. The American Society of Civil Engineers issues a report card every four years on our infrastructure, detailing the level of our investment deficit. According to the most recent report card, issued in 2013, simply to get the country’s drinking water—drinking water—in safe shape would cost more than $1 trillion over the next 25 years.
The report card pegged the immediate cost of fixing at-risk bridges at $76 billion. Add fixing unsafe schools, repairing mass transit, disposing of hazardous waste and maintaining other basics, and ASCE estimated an infrastructure price tag of $3.6 trillion by 2020.
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