Congressman John K. Delaney (MD-6) and Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick (PA-8) have co-authored a letter to their congressional colleagues to support increased investment in infrastructure.
The Delaney-Fitzpatrick letter highlights the potential insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund and possible efforts to use repatriated earnings as a funding fix.
The text of the letter is below:
Dear Colleague,
We write today to call your attention to both the insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) and efforts to use one-time revenues from repatriated earnings as a temporary funding mechanism while the debate continues around how to ensure the long-term solvency of the HTF. These efforts have merit, particularly if married with other fiscally prudent ways of increasing infrastructure investment.
First and foremost, count us as strong supporters of finding a solution to ensure the solvency of the Highway Trust Fund. The importance of infrastructure investment to our economy and U.S. competitiveness cannot be understated. By now, we are all aware that the American Society of Civil Engineers grades the current state of our infrastructure as a D+. Merely continuing with our current level of infrastructure spending will not be enough to make up for this deficit and place us on a path of growth and prosperity in our economic future. That is why we write to advocate that using repatriated revenue to fund the Highway Trust Fund should be tied to efforts to INCREASE our infrastructure investment. One such way to do that can be found in the Partnership to Build America Act (H.R. 2084) which already has the bipartisan support of 31 Democrats and 31 Republicans in the House as well as 6 Democrats and 7 Republicans in the Senate. This kind of true bipartisan support is rare for bills with such huge economic impacts. The legislation would create an infrastructure finance entity, capitalized by $50 billion from the private sector in exchange for a tax break on repatriated earnings, which can be leveraged to provide $750 billion in infrastructure financing in transportation, water, energy, communications, and educational facilities. This will make it cheaper for states and local municipalities to finance their infrastructure projects and help move us towards a grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers that we can be proud of.
We urge your support for the Partnership to Build America Act, on its own merits and in combination with funding the Highway Trust Fund. Help us to advance the use of repatriated revenues to fund a net increase in infrastructure investment, not the status quo.
Sincerely,