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The Official Web Site for The State of New Jersey Hurricane Sandy Information Center

The Official Web Site for The State of New Jersey Hurricane Sandy Information Center

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Video: US provokes war on Korean peninsula' - YouTube

Fact Sheet: President’ Obama s Plan to Make America a Magnet for Jobs by Investing in Infrastructure US Konjunkturprogramm The White House

Fact Sheet: The President’Obama s Plan to Make America a Magnet for Jobs by Investing in Infrastructure | The White House

The President’s Plan to Make America a Magnet for Jobs by Investing in Infrastructure

Investing in infrastructure not only makes our roads, bridges, and ports safer and allows our businesses and workers to be as competitive as they need to be in the global economy, it also creates thousands of good American jobs that cannot be outsourced.  Since the President took office four years ago, America has begun the hard work of rebuilding our infrastructure.  But there’s more to do, and that’s why the President’s plan ensures that the money we invest in infrastructure is spent wisely by adopting a “fix-it-first” policy. 

Repair and maintenance of our existing roads, bridges and public transportation systems should take priority before we consider investing in new facilities.  This will ensure that our cities are safer and more modern.  But taxpayers shouldn’t have to shoulder the entire burden either.  We also know that America works best when we’re tapping the resources and ingenuity of a vibrant private sector. 

That’s why the President’s infrastructure plan calls for a Rebuild America Partnership that will attract private capital to build the infrastructure our businesses need most.  By acting on the President’s plan, together we can prove that there is no better place to do business and create jobs than right here in the United States of America.  

• Investing in a “fix-it-first” policy:  The President’s plan will immediately invest $50 billion in our nation’s transportation infrastructure, with $40 billion targeted to the most urgent upgrades and focused on fixing our highways, bridges, transit systems, and airports most in need of repair.
  
  
• Attracting private investment through a “Rebuild America Partnership”:  The President’s plan will partner federal, state, and local governments with businesses and private capital to provide America with the best transportation, electric, water, and communications networks in the world.
  
  
• Cutting red tape:  The President’s plan will cut timelines in half for infrastructure projects and create incentives for better outcomes for communities and the environment through a historic modernization of agency permitting and review regulations, procedures, and policies.
  

The President’s Plan to Put Workers Back on the Job & Build the Infrastructure we Need to Succeed in the Global Economy 

Despite progress over the last four years, too many construction workers remain out of work and too many of our nation’s infrastructure needs remain unmet.  The President’s plan would help put workers back on the job in the near term, while also building the infrastructure our businesses and workers need to succeed in the global economy:

• Investing in a “fix-it-first” policy.  The national transportation system faces an immense backlog of state-of-good-repair projects, a reality underscored by the fact that there are nearly 70,000 “structurally deficient” bridges in the country today.  The President’s plan for $50 billion in frontloaded transportation infrastructure investment would direct $40 billion towards reducing the backlog of deferred maintenance on highways, bridges, transit systems, and airports nationwide.  For example, the President’s proposed investments could bring almost 80 percent of structurally deficient bridges up to date, getting Americans home faster and making the flow of commerce speedier.
  
  
• Attracting private investment through a “Rebuild America Partnership.”  The President’s plan will bring together an array of new and existing policies all aimed at enhancing the role of private capital in U.S. infrastructure investment as a vital additive to the traditional roles of federal, state, and local governments:
  
  
  • Create a National Infrastructure Bank:  The President continues to call for the creation of a bipartisan National Infrastructure Bank.  The Bank will have the ability to leverage private and public capital to support infrastructure projects of national and regional significance.  In addition, the Bank will be able to invest through loans and loan guarantees in a broad range of infrastructure projects, including transportation, energy, and water, and will operate as an independent, wholly owned government entity outside of political influence.
    
    
  • Enact America Fast Forward Bonds:  Recovery Act funding for “Build America Bonds” (BABs) helped to support more than $181 billion for new public infrastructure.  The program’s innovative design ensured that all taxpayers—and not just the wealthiest—received the best bang-for-the-buck when the federal government helped states, localities, and their private sector partners invest in new infrastructure.  The President’s new America Fast Forward (AFF) bonds program would build upon the successful example of the BABs program, broadening it to include similar programs like the qualified private activity bonds program and relaxing certain limitations in the way the combined program could be used.  AFF bonds would attract new sources of capital for infrastructure investment—including from public pension funds and foreign investors that do not receive a tax benefit from traditional tax-exempt debt.
    
    
  • Implement the newly expanded TIFIA program:  The TIFIA program—which provides direct loans, loan guarantees, and lines of credit to regionally or nationally significant transportation projects—received an eight-fold increase in funding in the recent surface transportation reauthorization.  The program, which is especially important to mayors and local leaders, highlights the important role that infrastructure financing can play in catalyzing private investment, and its expansion was a significant step towards more innovative infrastructure financing.
    
    
• Cutting red tape.  The Administration’s infrastructure permitting initiative has shown that we can cut federal review and permitting timelines for construction projects such as highway, bridges, railways, ports, waterways, pipelines, and renewable energy by several months to several years.  This modernization effort will achieve time savings of 50 percent in the federal permitting and review process, while ensuring projects create better outcomes for communities and the environment.  The effort will bring federal permitting and review procedures into the 21^st century through expanded use of integrated planning, landscape and watershed-level mitigation, information technology, and publication of public timelines for permitting and review decisions to improve transparency and predictability.
  

Building on the Progress We’ve Made

• The Recovery Act was the most significant transportation public works program since the New Deal, providing $48 billion in Recovery Act dollars to more than 15,000 projects across the country.   Between Recovery Act and core infrastructure funds, American workers have improved over 350,000 miles of U.S. roads and repaired or replaced over 20,000 bridges since the President took office.  Over the last four years, the Department of Transportation has built or improved more than 6,000 miles of rail, 40 rail stations, and purchased 260 passenger rail cars and 105 locomotives.  In addition, the Obama Administration has made an unprecedented commitment to strengthen public transportation across the United States, investing in more than 350 miles of new rail and bus rapid transit, and helping to revitalize the American manufacturing industry by investing in 45,621 buses and 5,545 rail cars.
  

President Obama Speaks on Infrastructure and the Economy - YouTube

Remarks by the President on Rebuilding America Partnership in Miami, Florida | The White House

Remarks by the President on Rebuilding America Partnership in Miami, Florida | The White House 

PortMiami

Miami, Florida 

1:40 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, Miami!  (Applause.)  It is good to be back.  You know, I've been waiting for spring.  I realize I just had to come down to Miami.  (Laughter.)  It is wonderful to be here.  

We've got some outstanding representatives in Congress from this area -- Joe Garcia is in the house.  (Applause.)  Frederica Wilson is in the house.  (Applause.)  And we've got Debbie Wasserman Schultz here.  (Applause.)  I want to thank the Mayor of Miami-Dade County, Carlos Gimenez.  (Applause.)  And of course, it’s good to see all of you.  And I want to thank the gentlemen who just gave me a amazing tour of the PortMiami Tunnel. 

LITTLE GIRL:  Yea! 

THE PRESIDENT:  What are you yelling about?  Hey, sweetie.  (Applause.)

WOMAN:  She came just to see you!

THE PRESIDENT:  Okay, well, hello.  (Laughter.)  She’s going to be a politician because I could hear her without a mic from far away.  (Laughter.)    

Now, before we get started, I've got to get into a sticky subject right off the bat.  I know you guys aren’t happy with my Chicago Bulls.

AUDIENCE:  Booo --

THE PRESIDENT:  But I just want you to know the Heat are going to be just fine.  They’re going to be okay.  (Applause.) They are playing basketball the right way.  The Hurricanes -- they had a great season -- no, no, they deserve a big round of applause.  (Applause.)  Tonight you’ve got Florida and Florida Gulf Coast going at it.  (Applause.)  One of them will go to the Elite Eight.  So, let’s face it, Florida is the center of basketball right now.  (Applause.) 

But I’m not here to talk about hoops.  I’m here to talk about one of the plans that I put forward in my State of the Union address -- a plan to put people to work rebuilding America. 

I’ve come to PortMiami today because there are few more important things we can do to create jobs right now and strengthen our economy over the long haul than rebuilding the infrastructure that powers our businesses and our economy -- our roads, our bridges, our schools, and our ports just like this one. 

As President, my top priority is to make sure we are doing everything we can to reignite the true engine of our economic growth -- and that is a rising, thriving middle class.  A growing economy that creates good, middle-class jobs – that’s got to be our true North.  That's what has to guide our efforts every single day.  And to do that, we should be asking ourselves three questions every single day:  Number one, how do we make America a magnet for good jobs?  Number two, how do we equip our workers with the skills they need to do the jobs?  Number three, how do we make sure that hard work leads to a decent living?

When it comes to good jobs, no workers were hammered harder by the recession than construction workers.  Fortunately, the unemployment rate for construction has been cut nearly in half over the past three years, partly because the housing market is starting to bounce back.  But construction still has the highest unemployment rate of any industry.  Breaking ground on more projects like this tunnel that I just saw means more good construction jobs that can’t be outsourced.  They have to be done right here in America.  And they end up giving people good pay and good opportunities to raise their families.  (Applause.) 

Projects like this create a lot of other good jobs, too.  You ask any CEO where we they rather locate their business and hire new workers.  Are you going to set up shop in a country that's got raggedy roads, runways that are pot-holed, and backed-up supply chains?  Or are you going to seek out high-speed rail, Internet, high-tech schools, new state-of-the-art power grids, new bridges, new tunnels, new ports that help you ship products made in America to the rest of the world as fast as possible?  (Applause.)  That's what people are looking for.  That's what CEOs are looking for.   

When you ask companies who brought jobs back to America in the last few years they’ll say, if we upgrade our infrastructure, we’ll bring even more.  So what are we waiting for?  There’s work to be done; there are workers who are ready to do it.  Let’s prove to the world there’s no better place to do business than right here in the United States of America, and let’s get started rebuilding America.  (Applause.) 

Now, over the last four years, we’ve done some good work.  Construction crews have built or improved more than 350,000 miles of road.  That's enough to circle the globe 14 times.  We’ve upgraded more than 6,000 miles of rail -- enough to go coast-to-coast and back.  We’ve repaired or replaced more than 20,000 bridges.  We’ve helped get tens of thousands of construction workers back on the job. 

Because of these efforts, when the American Society of [Civil] Engineers put out their 2013 report card on our national infrastructure, they gave it the best overall grade in 12 years. That’s the good news.  The bad news is we went from a D to a D+. We still have all kinds of deferred maintenance.  We still have too many ports that aren’t equipped for today’s world commerce.  We’ve still got too many rail lines that are too slow and clogged up.  We’ve still got too many roads that are in disrepair, too many bridges that aren’t safe.

We don’t have to accept that for America.  We can do better. We can build better.  And in a time of tight budgets, we’ve got to do it in a way that makes sure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.

Now, what these outstanding folks here in Miami have been doing is a good example of how my plan would work.  PortMiami is a busy place.  Hundreds of cargo containers pass through every day.  Nearly one in five cruise ship passengers in North America sets sail from this spot.  All that commerce helps support a whole lot of high-paying jobs, not just in Miami-Dade, but throughout the region.  

But it also, let’s face it, creates some congestion.  Right now, 16,000 cars and trucks travel to and from PortMiami every day, and they’re stuck going through downtown.  And those traffic jams are bad for business.  Whether you’re a small business owner in South Beach, or a manufacturer in Atlanta trying to get your goods overseas, that congestion wastes time and money. 

Now, some smart folks decided we could solve this problem by digging under the bay, linking the port directly to the highway. State, county, and local governments got together and agreed to jointly fund PortMiami Tunnel.  Everybody had some skin in the game.  They did something else -- they partnered with a group of private sector companies to finance the design and construction of the project.  They made it clear that the payments to these companies would be linked to their performance so if there were big cost overruns, the private companies would have to eat those extra costs. 

Because of those efforts, construction workers are on the job digging this tunnel, doing great jobs, getting good pay, boosting the economy, strengthening it for the long run.  The port is in better shape, which means it’s going to be able to get all the containers that are coming in from all around the world, matched up with the improvements that are being done on the Panama Canal -- which means we’re not going to be losing jobs to other countries.  

We can do this not just here in Miami-Dade, but we can do this all across the country.  So today, I’m expanding on a proposal I made in the State of the Union.  I’m calling it a Partnership to Rebuild America.  It’s a partnership with the private sector that creates jobs upgrading what our businesses need most -– modern ports to move our goods; modern pipelines to withstand a storm; modern schools worthy of our children.

And my plan does three things.  First, we’ll set up an independent fund that will attract private investment to build projects like this one, and make sure companies share in the risk and returns.  Instead of picking projects based on pork-barrel politics, we’ll pick them based on how much good they’ll actually do for the economy, how much the projects make sense.  And we’ll better finance projects that involve more than one mode of transportation, or more than one town or state, with less red tape to gum up the works.  So all of this will make the process more efficient.  It will help us break ground on some of the projects that our cities and states need most, and they can do it faster and better. 

Second, we’re going to fund more projects, at less cost, by establishing a new infrastructure initiative called America Fast Forward bonds.  It’s going to give mayors and governors more flexibility and power to attract private investment for public projects.

Number three, we’ll strengthen a loan program that, in recent years, has helped governors and mayors leverage four times the money Washington put into it, and that means we’re helping construction workers get on the job quicker, repaying taxpayers their hard-earned money faster.  That’s the kind of approach we used to help PortMiami Tunnel get off the ground -– or I guess underground.  (Laughter.)

That’s the Partnership to Rebuild America.  That’s how we’ll create good jobs doing the work America needs done.  That’s how we’ll encourage more businesses to start here, and grow here, and hire workers here.  

And by the way, this should not be a partisan idea.  I know in Washington people just like to argue.  I guess it gets them on TV.  But the fact is you’ve got the Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO agreeing to better infrastructure, knowing that it will help both businesses and workers.  So if you’re got the Chamber and the unions agreeing, then the politicians should be able to agree, too.  (Applause.)  Building better roads and bridges and schools, that’s not a partisan idea.  And in fact, that’s where you can get mayors and governors from both parties to find some common ground.  

I know that members of Congress are happy to welcome projects like this in their districts.  I know because I’ve seen them at the ribbon-cuttings.  (Laughter.)  They’ll all say how, no, we don’t want to do it.  And then they’re all writing me letters saying, we really need this port.  Cut somebody else’s port out.  (Laughter.)  That’s what they’ll say. Cut somebody else’s road.  Cut somebody else’s -- well, no, we’re all in this together.  So if you think it’s good for your district, then it’s probably good for other districts, too.

We can’t afford Washington politics to stand in the way of America’s progress.  So I’ve put forward some ideas to get the private sector involved to protect taxpayer dollars.  But ultimately, Congress has to fund these projects.  And by the way, the three members of Congress who are here, they all believe in this, they all support it.  It will put people back to work and it will grow our economy in the process.  

So Miami-Dade, my main message is:  Let’s get this done.  Let’s rebuild this country we love.  Let’s make sure we’re staying on the cutting edge.  Let’s make sure we’ve always got the ports.  Let’s make sure we’ve got the best airports.  Let’s make sure we’ve got the best rail lines.  Let’s make sure we’ve got the best roads.  Let’s make sure we’ve got the best schools. (Applause.)

We’re going to push on this issue each and every day, and make sure we get the middle class going again.  We’re going to fix our economy.  We’re going to fix our immigration system.  We are going to make sure that our young people are getting a great education.  We’re going to prevent them from being victims of gun violence.  We are going to make sure that everybody in this country has a fair shot and is doing their fair share so that when we pass on this country to the next generation and the generation after that, we’ll be able to once again say that here in the United States of America, it doesn’t matter what you look like or where you come from, if you work hard, you can make it.

Thank you.  God bless you.  God bless the United States of America.

END

1:55 P.M. EDT

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