Political Quotes

“We ought not dance around one of the issues involved in this infrastructure. That's, where is the money coming from? How are you going to pay for this stuff? Our colleague Rosa DeLauro for more than 15 years has made a proposal here in this House that we create what Europe has had for the last almost 30 years now, an infrastructure bank, a way to finance those projects that have a cash flow, the specific ones that you're talking about. The bridge has a toll, has the ability to pay off a loan. The water system has a fee associated with the delivery of water, the sanitation system. All of those are what I call cash-flow projects. Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut has proposed an infrastructure bank in which the Federal Government provides the initial capital, say a 10- year note. We could borrow at the Federal level for less than 2 percent now on a 10-year note, put that in the bank, go to the pension funds around the Nation, and they all invest in the bank. We may have $25 billion, $30 billion, $50 billion. And in some cases, depending on how robust you want to go, you could have $100 billion of capital available in the infrastructure bank to finance the kinds of projects that have a cash flow associated with them: toll roads, water systems, sanitation systems, airports, bridges. All of those things are possible.…”