Obama strikes familiar chord with focus on infrastructure in State of the Union address

Like in previous addresses to Congress, President Barack Obama placed a significant emphasis on transportation infrastructure and the role it can play in helping revive the economy and set the stage for future growth in his State of the Union Address last night.

“So much of America needs to be rebuilt,” said Obama. “We’ve got crumbling roads and bridges…During the Great Depression, America built the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge. After World War II, we connected our states with a system of highways. Democratic and Republican administrations invested in great projects that benefited everybody, from the workers who built them to the businesses that still use them today.”

Obama went on to say that in the next few weeks he will sign an Executive Order which will “clear the red tape” that slows down too many construction projects. And in order to fund these projects—which has long been a sore subject on both sides of the aisle—Obama proposed to take the money the United States is no longer spending at war and use half of it to pay down the nation’s debt and allocate the rest for “nation-building” in the U.S.

This effort, he said, comes at the right time, explaining “there has never been a better time to build,” considering that the construction industry was severely impacted when the housing bubble burst.

Transportation infrastructure stakeholders have long maintained that the White House’s focus on rebuilding the country is indeed one which has the potential to positively impact the economy at a time when it is badly needed.  What’s more, there have been repeated calls to get a new surface transportation reauthorization completed, rather than having Congress continually sign of on extensions of the previous bill, SAFETEA-LU, which expired in September 2009, has also received much attention both inside and outside of the Beltway. SAFETEA-LU has been extended eight times at current funding levels since expiring more than two years ago, with the current extension intact until March 31.
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John L. Mica (R-FL) agreed with Obama in that there needs to be a heightened focus on infrastructure, but he made his objections clear on how the President desires to fund this effort.

“America needs to rebuild its infrastructure but I do not support what appears to be the President’s plan to finance that effort by downsizing the military,” Mica said in a statement. “Next week Republicans will introduce a long-stalled major transportation measure—killed two years ago by the President—that will be financed in part by increased American energy production, creating jobs and lowering energy costs.”

But John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) praised Obama’s comments on infrastructure.

“The president’s words and recent actions by congressional leadership on both sides of the aisle give transportation proponents optimism that an agreement can be reached on a multiyear surface transportation reauthorization bill in the near future,” Horsley said in a statement. “Major transportation projects take years of planning, design, construction, and investment. State departments of transportation need the certainty and stability that a multiyear authorization bill brings. Passing one short-term extension after the other is not the answer.”

Aside from infrastructure, other notable comments of particular interest to freight transportation and logistics stakeholders made by Obama focused on:
-providing bigger tax cuts to American manufacturers making products in the U.S., with those relocating in the U.S. receiving financing for a new plant, equipment, and training for new workers, and stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas;
-being ahead of schedule regarding the White House’s goal of doubling exports by 2015, due in part to signing bipartisan trade agreements with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea; and
-announcing he is directing the Administration to open more than 75 percent of the country’s potential offshore oil and gas resources (and adding that American oil production is the highest it has been in eight years, with 2011 representing the year it has relied less on foreign oil in the past 16 years); and
-taking steps to safely develop the country’s natural gas supply that can last roughly 100 years and could create up to 600,000 jobs by the end of this decade, as well as power trucks and factories that are cheaper and cleaner.