View of collapsed I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The collapse occured during rush hour on August 1, 2007.

In the 2017-2018 biennium, we promote federal investment in public works, because the public works that were built by the Greatest Generation have outlived their designed useful lifetimes, and because rebuilding what our forefathers built in the Twentieth Century will provide meaningful, well-paid employment for Americans in the Twenty-First Century.

Interstate Highway construction specifications written in the 1950's, planned for a useful life of the roads and bridges being built, of fifty years. In a time when meaningful investment was being made in technology research, there was hope that, in 50 years, transportation would have improved beyond the gasoline-powered passenger vehicle. But, the fossil-fuel industry discouraged advancement in transportation technology in the US, while Europe and Asia built Bullet Trains. In the US, we still have to move people and products by motor transport, and the roads and bridges are ten years past their intended lifespans. We need to invest again, as we did in the 1950's and 60's, with lots of tax dollars.

Even older than our Interstate Highways are the drinking-water distribution systems and sewage disposal systems that were built in many American cities in the 1890's. Many of those systems are deteriorated and leak, wasting fresh water or seeping sewage into our landscape. All of those systems could be made more efficient by installing newer technologies that have been developed over the past 120 years. Poisoning Americans with our own drinking water can not be accepted in 2017.

Bernie Sanders proposed that a "sales tax" on stock trades could produce a hundred billion dollars a year, or more, depending on the tax rate. If that stock-transactions tax is adopted, it could provide the trillion dollars over ten years, to restore our water systems, sewer systems, roads and bridges. Those dollars would be paid by the hedge funds and institutions that gamble on the stock market. Billionaire stock manipulators don't employ workers or build roads and bridges. The tax dollars that a fair tax system forces those financial speculators to contribute, pay the contractors that hire the workers and buy the steel that makes America's transportation and utility systems safe, and feeds the families of American workers.