American Decline-Infrastructure Edition

Marketwatch, via Ritholtz:

Analysts are pessimistic about the U.S. transportation system making progress. There isn’t enough money to maintain what the country has right now, much less to get to quality levels that are giving other nations a competitive advantage. “Substantial under-investment won’t affect the economy in the short run, but productivity will be affected in the long run,” said Gus Faucher, an economist with Moody’s Analytics. “People will be stuck in traffic more often, stuck at airports longer, and that lost time adds up over 10, 20 years.”
It will also mean higher transportation costs, whether rail, trucking or shipping, and that will make American-made goods more expensive overseas and less competitive, Faucher said.
Today U.S. infrastructure investments amount to 2.4% of the nation’s GDP, versus 5% in Europe and 9% in China, according to a data from the World Economic Forum.
“Long term, that’s going to hurt our economic position in terms of freight movement and maintaining the viability of our metropolitan areas,” said Peter Peyser, managing principal of Blank Rome Government LLC, a lobbying firm.
Deficits in the U.S. trust funds that support the country’s interstate system and civil aviation have been widening for years as tax revenue failed to keep up with inflation. To fill the gaps, Congress has been taking cash from the general till.
But tax revenue for the general budget has declined as well because of the economic recession and the Bush-era tax cuts, and now Congress is determined to eliminate the shortfall by reducing spending across the board.
In the latest House bill for highways, lawmakers envision sharp cuts in spending that could halt upgrades to federal roads and bridges, and leave barely enough resources to maintain the existing infrastructure.
Research points to economic consequences of that trend. For every $1 billion pulled from the U.S. budget for highways, an estimated 30,000 jobs are lost, according to a 2007 report from the Department of Transportation.
“Clearly, numerous major engineering and construction companies will be impacted by the shrinking U.S. federal budget,” said Gregory Garrett, managing director of the government and contractor services at Navigant, a consulting firm.

We've been underinvesting for decades.  This bill will come due in the future when we can't afford for it to.  The farm-to-market road system is already showing the wear.  Our county has hundreds of miles of roads, and they are able to repave less than 20 miles a year.  Those roads are starting to fall apart, and we will never have the money available to bring them back to the condition they were in 10 years ago.