"$1 billion of infrastructure spending creates 25K well-paying jobs that can't be outsourced": outgoing PA Gov. Ed Rendell

In the latest installment of The New Yorker's "New Yorker Currents" interview series, staff writer George Packer talks to term-limited Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell "about the 'lousy' state of the the country’s roads, bridges, and other infrastructure; why failing to make investments poses a threat to our economy and stature in the world; and how to build public support for capital investments."

"We're going to leave our children with roads that are so congested nobody's going to get anywhere, with a light-rail system that's a joke, with airports that are clogged and increasingly dangerous, with bridges that fall down. That's what we want to leave our children?"

-- Governor Rendell

The Nov. 29 issue of The New Yorker contains "some excerpts, condensed and edited" from the online video conversation between Governor Rendell and the magazine's George Packer. Here are some excerpts from the excerpts. -- Ken

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE COUNTRY THAT ONCE
BUILT HIGHWAYS, RAILROADS, DAMS, BRIDGES?

GOVERNOR RENDELL: We used to be a country that built things. And not just infrastructure: we built things for the entire world. American manufacturing is teetering on the brink of extinction, except for a little bit of high-tech manufacturing. If we become a nation whose economy is solely based on services, I think we're finished as an economic power.

The whole mania that's gripped the body politic and the public in the last twenty-five years: it's wrong for government to spend, we don't want to borrow, we'll borrow ourselves into debt, we're going to leave our children and grandchildren with debt. Instead, we're going to leave our children with roads that are so congested nobody's going to get anywhere, with a light-rail system that's a joke, with airports that are clogged and increasingly dangerous, with bridges that fall down. That's what we want to leave our children?

WHY HAVE YOU MADE THIS YOUR SIGNAL CAUSE?

GOVERNOR RENDELL: It's all about economic competitiveness. The port of Shanghai in less than five years will have more throughput than the top ten American ports put together. There's almost no investment in American pots going on right now.

It's also public safety. People died in New Orleans. They didn't have to die . . .

We need to grab the American public. We need to tell people that this is government spending that's going to improve their safety, improve the quality of life, create jobs -- one billion dollars of infrastructure spending creates twenty-five thousand well-paying jobs that can't be outsourced.

It's been lost or subsumed in this mania about the deficit. The federal government is the only government in the country that doesn't have a capital budget. Every state does, every municipality does. The federal government buys paper clips, which have a thirty-day life span, the same way it finacnes bridges that have a thirty- or forty-year life span. It makes no sense at all. No business would do it.

ISN'T THE PUBLIC PART OF THE PROBLEM, WANTING
THINGS BUT BEING UNWILLING TO PAY FOR THEM?

GOVERNOR RENDELL: When you spend time talkng to the public, people do listen and they are open-minded -- and they get it.

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