State of Union Provides No New Infrastructure Details

President Obama delivered his sixth state of the union speech on Tuesday. In the speech, the President called for passage of a bipartisan infrastructure plan but added no new details to his previous infrastructure pronouncements. He repeated his previous suggestion that funding should come from corporate tax reform and specifically repatriation of U.S. businesses' overseas earnings. The repatriation idea has been proposed by others and been receiving increasing attention. House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) said this week that House lawmakers are looking at a proposal for repatriation to fund a long-term highways and transit reauthorization bill. This week Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Cal) joined with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) to announce their intent to introduce legislation specifically aimed at repatriation and directing the resulting funds to transportation infrastructure. Several other lawmakers, however, have said they would be reluctant to support the repatriation proposal if it is not part of a broader corporate tax reform.