Carolyn Maloney: “According to a report produced by the Urban Land Institute, the United States has been conspicuously underfunding…”

“According to a report produced by the Urban Land Institute, the United States has been conspicuously underfunding infrastructure spending for the past 30 years. The report estimates that there is at least $2 trillion in funding needed just to rebuild and repair our crumbling infrastructure and our aging networks that are operating well beyond their planned life cycles. These systems include roads and bridges, waterlines and treatment plants, dams and tunnels, and mass transit that serve our Nation's vital economic centers. But we just have not had the political will to face the problem, we have not had the funds available to fix the problem, and we have not even had a bipartisan consensus that there is a problem. While at the same time, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News, U.S. companies have stockpiled approximately $1.2 trillion overseas in untaxed profits. As things stand now, that is money that is not likely to be brought back to the United States because large corporations find that it's far more profitable to just leave the money where it is and borrow any cash they need back home. There is just no economic incentive for them to repatriate the money. So we need some fresh ideas about how we can create incentives for corporations to bring home some of that $2 trillion and put it to work, helping to put more Americans back to work.…”