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BUILDING AMERICA’S FUTURE

Executive Summary

Rebuilding America’s economic foundation is one of the most important missions we face in the 21st century. Our parents and grandparents built America into the world’s leading economic superpower. We have a responsibility to our own children and grandchildren to strengthen—not squander—that inheritance, and to pass on to them a country whose best days are still ahead.

Our citizens live in a turbulent, complicated, and competitive world. The worst recession in eighty years cost us trillions in wealth and drove millions of Americans out of their jobs and homes. Even more, it called into question their belief in our system and faith in the way forward.

Our infrastructure—and the good policy making that built it—is a key reason America became an economic superpower. But many of the great decisions which put us on that trajectory are now a half-century old. In the last decade, our global economic competitors have led the way in planning and building the transportation networks of the 21st century. Countries around the world have not only started spending more than the United States does today, but they made those financial commitments—of both public and private dollars—on the basis of 21st-century strategies  that will equip them to make commanding strides in economic growth over the next 20–25 years.

Unless we make significant changes in our course and direction, the foreign competition will pass us by, and a real opportunity to restore America’s economic strength will be lost. The American people deserve better. Since we first released this report in August2011, Congress has enacted a new transportation funding law called Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century or MAP-21. While it begins the process of reforming and modernizing the nation’s transportation policy, there remains much more to be done.

Download full report (PDF): Falling Apart and Falling Behind 2012 Report

About Building America’s Future
http://www.bafuture.org/
“Building America’s Future Educational Fund (BAF Ed Fund) is a bipartisan coalition of elected officials dedicated to bringing about a new era of U.S. investment in infrastructure that enhances our nation’s prosperity and quality of life.

Founded by former Governor Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, BAF Ed Fund boasts a politically diverse membership of state and local elected officials from across the nation.”

Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, BAF, Building America's Future, Edward Rendell, Falling Apart and Falling Behind, Michael Bloomberg, New York, Pennsylvania

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2013 at 12:35 pm and is filed under Accountability, Aging Infrastructure, Biking, Bridges, Competitiveness, Congestion, Economic Stimulus, Employment, Funding, High Speed Rail, Highway, Infra Views, Jobs, National, Public Transportation, Rail, Recovery, Roads, Transit . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.