Since the end of last year, when the long-term surface transportation legislation expired, infrastructure investments have been continued on a temporary basis, even as a trust fund that finances them has fallen into insolvency, the White House said. Mr. Obama’s plan would call on Congress to enact a long-term reauthorization of that bill.
The idea for an infrastructure initiative, and in particular an infrastructure bank to leverage public money for private investment, is one that the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has been promoting for some time within the West Wing. It was not included in the original $787 billion stimulus program in early 2009 because the administration and Congressional Democratic leaders wanted to pass that package as quickly as possible given how fast the economy was sinking in the weeks before Mr. Obama took office; changes in the way public projects are determined and financed would have met resistance in the large committees of Congress that have jurisdiction.
Lately the White House has been consulting with Representative James L. Oberstar, the Democrat from Minnesota who is chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and who has been developing legislation of his own.
The administration also has consulted with an influential, tri-partisan trio – Ed Rendell, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania; Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican governor of California; and Michael R. Bloomberg, the independent who is mayor of New York -- that recently formed a group called Building America’s Future to press for more public and private partnerships to invest in and modernize roads and bridges, air traffic control systems, waterways, electricity grids and more.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/us/politics/07obama.html?hp
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