This, from Bloomberg News, should be a boost for infrasturcture stocks.

U.S. Must Spend More on Infrastructure, Senator Says (Update1)

By Angela Greiling Keane

March 11 (Bloomberg) -- Rising risk of drinking-water contamination and last year's bridge collapse in Minnesota illustrate the need to increase spending on U.S. infrastructure, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee said today.

Senator Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, said his proposal for a national infrastructure bank would be a way to quickly send more money to maintain aging roads, bridges and water systems. The American Society of Civil Engineers put the tab at $1.6 trillion over five years.

``Some might say that our legislation is too expensive or that we can't afford to implement such a policy,'' Dodd said in Washington at a hearing. ``I say we can't afford not to.''

U.S. highways, roads and bridges are paid for primarily by fuel taxes and municipal bonds. Dodd and Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel last year introduced a bill to create the bank, modeled after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, as a way to combine federal government and private funds for such projects.

``Closing the infrastructure deficit will require tapping all available sources of capital -- tax-exempt debt, federal- government funding tools and private sector funds,'' Tracy Wolstencroft, head of municipal finance and infrastructure at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., told the banking committee.

New York-based Goldman earned fees to advise Chicago and Indiana on long-term leases of their toll roads to private companies.

Help for States

Private funding has drawn fire from lawmakers including Representative James Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat, who say such deals may be risky. Oberstar is chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee.

Still, the U.S. may have little choice given its growing infrastructure needs, said Felix Rohatyn, the former Lazard Freres and Co. partner and ambassador to France who is now a senior adviser to Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

``I firmly believe one of the things we're going to do sooner or later is go borrow a billion dollars from the Chinese because that's where the money is,'' he told the committee. ``If you have investors from countries that are not very friendly, they're not going to walk away with the infrastructure because it's not something you can move.''

U.S. investors, especially pension funds such as the California Public Employees' Retirement System, are also interested in infrastructure investment because the assets pay returns over relatively long periods, Goldman's Wolstencroft said.

Dodd and Hagel introduced the infrastructure bill hours before the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis during rush hour on Aug. 1.

Dodd said that ``tens of millions'' of Americans get their drinking water from pipes that are more than 100 years old, which he said may jeopardize public health.

Let me get this straight. Forclosures are rising, inflation is rising, oil is rising, gold is rising, lay-offs are rising, jobs are decreasing, dollar value is decreasing, home values are decreasing and the S&P sees a bottom. We haven't even seen the damage from the defaults the credit card companies are going to have. Aren't these the same clowns that rate these thieving bond insures and other companies with bogus ratings to keep them out of trouble also. These guys are trying to by time for a miracle to happen and are gonna make things worse. Good luck folks, but I can hear the tick, tick, tick of this financial bomb.