Infrastructure in the State of the Union

President Obama once again used his State of the Union address to show his support for infrastructure without offering any concrete ways to responsibly pay for the investments needed for the nation’s aging roads, bridges, ports, airports, waterways, and water systems.   AGC CEO Stephen Sandherr asked the president in a Jan. 23 letter to use the opportunity to outline to Congress his plan to increase public and private investments in infrastructure projects. While the president did call on Congress to complete action on the water resources bill and the pending surface transportation reauthorization bill, he offered no new funding ideas on how to address our nation’s long-term infrastructure needs.  Instead, he once again called for a business tax revision to “create jobs rebuilding our roads, upgrading our ports, and unclogging our commutes.”   The inherent concern with the president's plan to decouple corporate tax reform from individual tax reform, follows that the individual side of the code would not be reformed thus increasing the tax burden on an overwhelming majority of construction companies that file as pass-through entities. Moreover, Republicans in Congress agree that any reform effort should be revenue-neutral and that eliminating deductions and preferences should only be used to lower the rates for all businesses and not for unrelated spending. AGC issued a statement in response to the State of the Union and looks forward to the administration’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposal, which will hopefully provide more details on how to provide the investment necessary to responsibly deal with pressing infrastructure needs, including addressing the revenue shortfall facing the Highway Trust Fund. Two of AGC’s top priorities are passing a water resources bill and fixing the Highway Trust Fund.  We encourage AGC chapters and members to visit our Legislative Action Center and contact their members of Congress to ask them to complete work on WRDA and address the revenue problems facing the Highway Trust Fund. For more information, please contact Sean O’Neill at (202) 547-8892 or oneills@agc.org.