Our country is literally falling down around us. Meanwhile, the best our politicians have come up with is the expensive, cumbersome, complicated, and jam-packed legislation passed during the Biden administration.

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First, let us unequivocally say that we’re all for spending money on our deteriorating infrastructure. The U.S. transportation system has over 13 million miles of highway; 20,031 airports; 204 ports; 8,042 cargo handling docks; 112,505 miles of railroad; 1,769,566 miles of pipeline; 621,581 bridges; and 25,000 miles of navigable waterways.

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Every year, this labyrinth carries passengers almost 3 trillion miles in their vehicles, over 6 billion miles in the air, and 1.3 billion miles by rail. It also transports, literally, a boatload of merchandise. In 2024, the U.S. transportation system moved approximately 20 billion tons of freight valued at $25 trillion – an average of nearly 55 million tons worth more than $68 billion every day. By 2050, federal transportation officials project that U.S. freight tonnage will reach around 28.7 billion, roughly 50 percent above 2020 levels.

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Until recently, practically every one of these categories has been neglected for decades, and it shows. Big time! In 2025, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave U.S. infrastructure an overall grade of C. Even though there have been significant increases in federal infrastructure investment, substantial deficiencies remain: nine of the 18 infrastructure categories are still rated in the D range.

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ASCE estimates that America needs approximately $9.1 trillion in infrastructure investment between 2024 and 2033 and warns that allowing recent federal investment levels to lapse would impose substantial economic costs over the next two decades, including roughly $5 trillion in lost economic output, $244 billion in lost exports, $1.9 trillion in lost household disposable income, and 344,000 fewer jobs by 2043.

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Our declining infrastructure is a textbook example of how critical it is that we be proactive versus reactive. Most people only think about infrastructure when it fails, but believe us, when busted infrastructure finally interferes with the lives of you or your family – and it eventually will – this otherwise boring topic will become very, very personal.

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This is happening. We can’t twitch our noses and wish a new bridge to appear, and we can’t afford to keep slapping Band-Aids on gaping wounds.

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It’s bad enough that things are about to collapse, but our outdated infrastructure also makes us look bush-league. We all know you can’t exactly be the shining city upon the hill if everything is falling down. We’re not talking about a third world country; we’re talking about the United States of America!

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There is no excuse for the world’s largest national economy to lack state-of-the-art airports, subways, railways and ports; sophisticated fiber-optic lines, bandwidth and wireless networks; modern schools, roads, bridges, levees, dams and water systems; hi-tech oil and gas pipelines and electricity-distribution grids; and extensive high-speed rail systems.

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We must get on this because the state of our infrastructure is intricately intertwined with our global competitiveness. It’s one of the main things global and domestic companies evaluate when they choose locations for their business operations, not to mention the absolute necessity of safely and swiftly moving the people, goods and services that are already here. Time is money, people!

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Modernizing our infrastructure creates a safer nation, increases our global competitiveness, and makes our economy more productive and efficient, but it also helps revitalize hard-hit sectors like construction and heavy manufacturing. Investment in infrastructure produces jobs, both directly (jobs involved in the actual projects) and indirectly (jobs created by the need for supplies and support for the projects). This, in turn, sparks a cycle of growth that will eventually create even more jobs – employed people spend money in the economy so more people will be needed to handle the higher demand.