Aug 6, 2016 3 min read

The old saw has it that a broken clock will at least give you the correct time twice a day, and so it must be noted Donald Trump has served up at least a nugget of a useful idea amid his campaign of bluster, bigotry and self-aggrandizement.

The Republican presidential candidate said he wants to invest more in America’s infrastructure. Not being one for, um, specifics, Trump has said he wants to spend $500 billion or $1 trillion on the country’s roads, bridges, airports and ports. How he would pay for it while also calling for tax cuts and deficit reduction remains to be articulated, but maybe there’s a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow that will allow him to achieve all three goals simultaneously.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has also called for renewed infrastructure investment, though she has aimed for a more modest $275 billion. While $275 billion would certainly be better than nothing, it’s not enough to meet the need.

The American Society of Civil Engineers periodically grades infrastructure on both a state-by-state and national basis, and its most recent overall grade for the United States as a whole was a D+. Limping along like this does not help us compete alongside other global economic titans like China, the European Union or Canada.

Along with rendering its grim verdict on everything from our railroads to drinking-water systems, the American Society of Civil Engineers has reported we would need to spend $3.6 trillion by 2020 to get that infrastructure up to acceptable, modern standards. That an investment of that size would be necessary underscores just how much our infrastructure has been neglected in recent decades, not only by the federal government, but also by state and local authorities.

Robert Puentes, who directs the Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative at the Brookings Institution, told U.S. News & World Report in March that “it is going to come down to resources. We’re still a rich country. We do still have this infrastructure deficit, and a lot of it comes down to money and finance. …We have to stop just hoping that something will happen down the pike. We need to be specific about where the money’s coming from.”

Aside from reaping long-term benefits, investing in infrastructure yields immediate economic rewards. Estimates have it that for every $1 billion in infrastructure spending, 13,000 jobs are created. Moreover, every dollar earmarked for infrastructure spending brings a $1.60 increase in the gross domestic product.

Looking back seven years after the fact, one of the most exasperating blunders policymakers committed at the depth of the Great Recession is that they did not use that calamitous turn of events to push through even more infrastructure spending. It would have put more people back to work immediately. Contractors who were sidelined because of the hard times would have likely offered low bids in order to get hired, and interest rates were lingering at rock-bottom. With the economy having healed to a large degree, the costs to taxpayers are now bound to be higher.

It’s work that needs to be done. And it can’t be put off much longer.