GUEST BLOG: What the re-election of President Obama, Republican House majority, Democratic Senate majority means for the construction industry

During the 2012 presidential campaign, President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney gave relative lip service to the subject of rebuilding America’s faltering infrastructure. Rather than positioning infrastructure as an integral part of the nation’s fabric, both treated construction funding as little more than a jobs generator.

What’s more, many of the electorate (and fiscally conservative politicians) view any government funded construction as nothing more than pork with the underlying purpose to gather votes rather than an as entity that fuels commerce and provides punch to the economy. Sure, there is some pork in the recipe. After all, it’s the meat of compromise when cooking legislative stew. However, make-work projects are a relative few compared to the hundreds that are needed to keep the country on the path to economic progress.

What seems to be forgotten is that every taxpayer provides funding for public construction, whether they like it or not. Lest we forget that motorists pay 18.5 cents in federal tax per gallon of gas, which funds the nation’s 4 million miles of highways and bridges. In some states, drivers pay as much as 45 to 50 cents per gallon, including county, state and local taxes per gallon. This money is pegged for the Highway Trust Fund for the building of highways, bridges and other transportation projects.

However, often times these dedicated funds are diverted for such things as balancing budgets, funding pension programs or for social programs.

Note #1 regarding infrastructure funding: the 2012 Bridge Inventory report, as survey about the condition of bridges under the jurisdiction of each U.S. Department of Transportation, published by Better Roads magazine in its Nov. 2012 issue, shows that of the nation’s 602,000 bridges more than 135,000, 22.5 percent, are classified as “structurally deficient,” or “functionally obsolete.”

Note #2 regarding infrastructure spending:  Since the industrial revolution, the United States has relied on a strong infrastructure to support economic growth.  According to the World Economic Forum report on global competitiveness, the U.S. places 14th in overall infrastructure behind Luxemburg, Netherlands, Canada, Qatar and others. That’s up from 5th place in the early 2000s.

In addition, the American Society of Civil Engineers reports that the country has a backlog of construction repairs of $2 trillion! They say these repairs need to be done over the next five years in order to stay competitive.