January 20, 2015
By Sherrod Brown
Cleveland, OH—The infrastructure that helped create America’s middle class is crumbling, while Republicans continue to block funding for high speed rail. Here in Ohio, nearly a quarter of our bridges are classified as either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.
This issue is bigger than just Ohio’s bridges. All across America, our nation’s infrastructure is looking a little ragged. While China is exporting its high speed rail technology around the world, it’s high time to rebuild U.S. infrastructure.
Bridges aren’t the only structures that needs our attention. Forty two percent of our cities’ highways are congested. American ports need to be deepened, enlarged, and modernized so goods can flow freely from our factories to world markets and back. And I don’t think I need to convince anyone that our airports are clogged.
There’s no simple way out of this — we need to build this stuff, and that’s going to take time, money, and a lot of hard work. But we need to get started now.
Congressman Brown is the senior U.S. Senator from Ohio.
