Sen. Hagel is co-sponsoring a bill with Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. to create an "Infrastructure Bank," a public entity designed to leverage private capital to supplement the current levels of public spending infrastructure systems.

The combined effects of age and traffic congestion are hastening the degradation of the nation's highways, bridges, airport runways, mass transit, and drainage systems.

The Dodd-Hagel proposal was introduced with little fanfare last August, only hours before the failure of the I-35W bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.

While countries across Europe have done a superlative job of reinvesting in infrastructure, the U.S. has received a D grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers for its efforts.

Last week Congress began serious debate on the issue of how to fund an estimated $60 billion to fund the national infrastructure bank, which would be modeled like the five-member Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Under the proposal, the nonpartisan bank would guarantee loans and offer tax-credit bonds to support qualifying public projects valued at $75 million and above.

Nebraska's Sen. Ben Nelson has also offered a budget amendment that would double the funding for "ready-to-go" infrastructure projects bringing the total to $7 billion annually.

Aside from addressing critical infrastructure needs the Nelson and Hagel transportation funding plans would also help stimulate the economy by generating thousands of construction jobs for federal, state and local projects.

Before the nation can expect to see accelerated reinvestment in its infrastructure, the gridlock that permeates the permitting and regulatory process must be fixed. The slow, unduly complex and often nonsensical regulatory and permitting process that exists today is the result of 50 years accumulated intervention and overlapping dominions.

Well meaning environmental groups such as the Sierra Club have used this bureaucratic and legal quagmire to their advantage for decades, successfully delaying environmentally-sound infrastructure projects for years at the cost of billions of dollars to taxpayers. Environmental activists are now attempting to apply supposed climate change dynamics to long range infrastructure planning.

The consequences of this foolhardy thinking could have a deleterious affect on the economic prospects of an entire nation in this time of uncertainty.

American resolve and ingenuity can once again combine to create the safest and most efficient transportation system on earth while infusing the economy with a WPA-like range of stimuli.