The most important thing we can do for our economy...

...is, I predict, to approve the National Infrastructure Bank being sponsored by Chris Dodd and Chuck Hagel. Commission on Public Infrastructure chairmen Felix Rohatyn and Warren Rudman explain the need:

The American people deserve railways as good as Europe’s, ports that work as efficiently as modern Asian port facilities and public schools that are not in ruins. The Economist reports that China will invest $200bn in its railways between 2006 and 2010 – the largest investment in railroad capacity by any country since the 19th century – in addition to having built 53,000km of expressways since the 1990s. It plans over the next 12 years to construct 300,000km of rural roads, as well as 97 new airports. Here, according to the Brookings Institution, congested roads, in 2005 alone, cost $78bn in lost productivity and higher freight charges.

Infrastructure is a "public production input". It's a thing that vastly and drastically increases an economy's productive capacity, but it's a thing that no private firm will ever put up enough money for, because the benefits are shared by all firms. So we absolutely need the government to build and repair infrastructure. With roads and ports, civilizations grow and thrive; without them, civilizations do not grow and thrive, no matter how efficient their private companies. Period. This will be a massive expenditure, but, as Rohatyn and Rudman point out:

There will be some who will say we cannot afford to meet our infrastructure needs, that our budget deficits are too large and our borrowing is too great. The reality is we cannot afford not to do this. Every year we delay will cause additional deficits and losses in productivity and employment. One of the most basic accounting concepts is the difference between capital investments and operating expenses. It is true our operating deficit is excessive and possibly out of control, much of it because of the war in Iraq. But our capital investments are woefully ­inadequate.

Time to make some capital investments. Past time, in fact.