Rendell suggests need for more transportation infrastructure spending

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) said Monday the Obama administration needs to produce a targeted investment plan for infrastructure spending to change the November election outlook for Democrats. 

To shift the tide back into the favor of Democrats, President Obama needs "a fairly strong economic initiative" and, at the same time, should pin the responsibility on Republicans for not passing a small-business bill that would provide tax cuts and other incentives, he said today during an interview on MSNBC.

"Republicans repeat it like a mantra, 'we've got to help small business', but here we can put $30 billion into a lending stream and Republicans have single-handedly blocked it," Rendell said about the small-business bill that has languished in the Senate. 

Rendell didn't provide a dollar figure for the infrastructure investment but said Obama has to move forward with "a significant program to invest federal dollars into infrastructure spending."

Infrastructure spending was "clearly the most successful part of the stimulus and everybody agrees in infrastructure spending, particularly transportation infrastructure."

"So I think the president has to free up some more dollars to continue that drive that's going on around the states to create new jobs on construction sites and back into American manufacturing into steel plants, asphalt plants, concrete plants and aggregate plants," he said. 

He suggested that Democrats should look to pass a larger surface transportation bill that the administration has opted to put off until next year because it could get some Republican support. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee produced last year a $500 billion bill that would revamp the way transportation dollars are sent to states and try to complete backlogged projects. 

Despite the improbability of any additional stimulus measures getting through Congress, Rendell said infrastructure spending could attract Republican senators such as Sens. James Inhofe (Okla.) and George Voinovich (Ohio). 

"You might find Republican votes for that."