THE WASHINGTON UNION PAPERS: NO. 20

INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT: THE KEY TO ECONOMIC GROWTH

To the People of the United States,

A nation that neglects its infrastructure is a nation that abandons its future. Roads crumble, bridges decay, water systems falter, and the arteries of commerce clog with congestion, inefficiency, and neglect. A republic that dares to call itself great cannot stand idly by while the very foundation of its prosperity erodes beneath its feet. Infrastructure is not merely concrete and steel; it is the backbone of the economy, the circulatory system through which the lifeblood of industry and commerce flows. Without investment, without vision, without the will to build, a nation condemns itself to stagnation, its people shackled by delay, its businesses strangled by inefficiency, its potential lost to the rust and ruin of what once was.

History teaches us that the greatest nations are built not only on ambition but on the roads that connect them, the ports that open them to trade, the power grids that illuminate their industries, and the water systems that sustain their people. The Roman Empire was not defined solely by its legions, but by its roads, aqueducts, and ports that ensured its dominance. The industrial revolution did not rise from mere invention, but from the railroads and canals that made expansion possible. And in the 20th century, the United States did not ascend to unparalleled economic power by mere chance, but by laying the foundations of a nation in motion—the highways, bridges, power plants, and telecommunications networks that connected every corner of this vast land.

Yet today, we have allowed ourselves to drift into complacency. Once the builders of the world, we have become spectators in our own decline, watching as the pillars of our progress erode beneath the weight of neglect and indecision. Our roads, once the veins of industry and commerce, now crack and crumble, choking productivity with congestion and decay. Our railways, which once connected a vast and growing nation, now stand as relics of a past ambition, overshadowed by the rapid expansion of high-speed rail networks in nations that have refused to surrender to stagnation. Our ports, once the gateways of global trade, are aging and inefficient, forcing businesses to absorb delays and higher costs as other nations streamline and modernize their supply chains.

Meanwhile, broadband—the very infrastructure upon which the digital economy is built—remains a patchwork of inequity, with rural communities and underserved neighborhoods left disconnected from the opportunities of the modern world. While other nations invest in fiber-optic networks, in universal connectivity, in the technology that defines the industries of the future, we have relegated progress to the whims of private monopolies, allowing access to be dictated not by necessity but by profitability. In a world where innovation moves at the speed of information, too many Americans remain stranded in digital isolation, left behind by an infrastructure that has failed to keep pace with the demands of a 21st-century economy.

While China builds, while Europe modernizes, while other nations prepare for the future with urgency and resolve, America delays, debates, and dithers. We are trapped in an endless cycle of postponement, where infrastructure projects are announced with great fanfare only to be stalled by bureaucracy, by political bickering, by the corrosive influence of short-term thinking. We have allowed investment in our nation’s foundation to become a matter of partisan dispute rather than a national priority, as though roads and bridges, power grids and water systems, broadband and rail networks belong to one political party or another. This hesitation has cost us dearly. It has cost us the ability to move goods efficiently, to connect workers to jobs, to sustain the industries that once made us an economic colossus. It has left businesses to navigate a logistical labyrinth, forced to endure delays and inefficiencies that sap their ability to compete in an increasingly unforgiving global market.

We once led the world in infrastructure, not because it was convenient, not because it was easy, but because we understood that a strong nation is built upon strong foundations. We built roads and bridges, tunnels and airports, not as luxuries but as necessities, as investments in a future where commerce could move unimpeded, where opportunity was not hindered by the failures of physical decay. Now, we fall behind, and the consequences are measured in lost opportunity—in businesses forced to relocate to nations where the cost of logistics does not outweigh the benefits of production, in workers who spend more time in traffic than at home with their families, in communities where aging water systems poison instead of provide, where power grids fail under pressure, where the promise of modern infrastructure is nothing more than a faded memory.

This decline is not inevitable. It is not the result of nature, nor the consequence of fate. It is a choice—a choice to delay, to defer, to abandon the spirit of ambition that once defined this nation. It is a failure of will, a failure of vision, a failure to recognize that infrastructure is not merely a question of maintenance, but of national strength, of economic vitality, of the ability to compete in a world that does not wait for those who hesitate. The nations that invest in their foundations will shape the future. The nations that allow their foundations to crumble will be left to lament the past. And if we do not act, if we do not reclaim the mantle of builders, if we do not once again make infrastructure a priority worthy of a great nation, then we will find ourselves as a country in decline—not because we lacked the means to build, but because we lacked the courage to do so.

This is not merely a crisis of neglect; it is a crisis of vision. It is the failure to recognize that infrastructure is not a cost—it is an investment. Every dollar spent on roads, on bridges, on high-speed rail, on modernized airports and power grids, returns in the form of jobs, of commerce, of industries that thrive because they are no longer shackled by inefficiency. The argument against infrastructure spending is the argument of short-sightedness, of those who see only the price tag and not the return, of those who fail to understand that an economy that cannot move cannot grow. Investment in infrastructure is investment in economic expansion, in national security, in the very stability of the republic itself.

A nation that refuses to invest in its foundations is a nation that chooses decline. It is not merely neglect; it is an act of self-inflicted decay, a quiet surrender to the forces of stagnation and obsolescence. The greatness of a country is not written in the rhetoric of its leaders, but in the roads that carry its commerce, the bridges that connect its people, the ports and railways that move its industries. A government that will not prioritize infrastructure is a government that condemns its people to live in the wreckage of past ambition, surrounded by the remnants of what was once possible but left unrealized. It is an abdication of responsibility, a betrayal of future generations who will inherit not a land of promise, but a landscape of disrepair.

The worker who spends hours in traffic because roads are outdated does not simply suffer inconvenience; he loses time that should belong to his family, his education, his personal ambitions. A daily commute that should take minutes stretches into an exhausting journey that steals productivity and well-being, not because the distance is too great, but because the will to improve his route has been abandoned. He does not measure this loss in miles, but in missed moments, in hours drained from his life, in opportunities that slip away as the economy sputters under the weight of gridlock.

The business owner who sees goods delayed because supply chains are constrained does not merely contend with inefficiency—he faces economic sabotage.

He cannot compete in a global market when his shipments crawl through a bottlenecked highway system, when his inventory is stalled in an outdated port, when his supply lines, stretched thin by neglect, choke his ability to meet demand. Every delay is a broken promise to customers, a lost sale, a weakened foothold in an economy that does not wait for those who refuse to modernize. His ambitions are not defeated by competition alone, but by an infrastructure that has failed him before he has even begun to fight.

The student in a rural town who struggles with slow internet because broadband infrastructure has been ignored does not merely suffer inconvenience—he is denied access to the very tools that define modern education and opportunity. While his peers in other nations learn at the speed of fiber-optic networks, he waits for pages to load, for lectures to buffer, for opportunities to reach him through outdated lines that were never meant to carry the weight of the digital age. He is not left behind by lack of intelligence, nor by lack of effort, but by a nation that has chosen to let technological progress be dictated by profit margins rather than public necessity. His future is diminished not by his own making, but by a failure of vision, by leaders who saw broadband not as a public investment, but as an afterthought.

And that price is not measured in dollars alone. It is measured in lost time, lost productivity, lost opportunity, and lost faith in a system that once promised better. It is measured in the weariness of a worker who sees no improvement year after year, in the frustration of a business owner forced to navigate inefficiencies not of his making, in the quiet resignation of a student who wonders whether his country truly values his future. It is measured in the diminishing confidence of a people who once believed that progress was inevitable, that every generation would inherit a nation stronger, faster, more capable than the one before. That confidence, once shaken, does not easily return. A country that refuses to build is a country that forfeits its right to lead. It is a country that will find itself not on the cutting edge of history, but buried beneath its rubble, a cautionary tale of what happens when a great nation decides that greatness is too costly to maintain.

Some will argue that the private sector alone should bear the burden, that infrastructure investment should be left to those who stand to profit. But this is the logic of a nation that has forgotten its own history. The transcontinental railroad was not built by private enterprise alone; it was built because the government recognized that commerce, mobility, and national unity demanded investment. The interstate highway system was not the result of corporate ambition alone; it was the product of a national decision that American prosperity required roads that spanned from coast to coast. The electric grid, the water systems, the communications networks that power modern life—none of these came into being without public investment, without the recognition that a strong nation requires a strong foundation.

The question is not whether we can afford to invest in infrastructure. The question is whether we can afford not to. For every project delayed, for every bridge left unrepaired, for every community left disconnected, the cost grows—not only in dollars, but in economic growth left unrealized, in businesses that relocate to nations where infrastructure is reliable, in industries that do not emerge because the framework to sustain them is not in place. If we wish to see America thrive in the 21st century, if we wish to remain a nation of builders, of creators, of competitors on the global stage, then we must commit ourselves to the renewal of our infrastructure, not as an afterthought, not as a partisan debate, but as a national imperative.

Let us not be the generation that allowed America to decay. Let it not be written in history that when the moment came to build, we faltered, that when the time came to invest, we hesitated. Let it instead be said that in our time, we chose progress over paralysis, vision over stagnation, action over delay. Let us build the roads that carry commerce forward, the railways that move goods and people with speed and efficiency, the power grids that ensure energy security, the water systems that provide for our citizens, the broadband networks that connect every town and city to the modern economy. Let us be remembered not as the caretakers of decline, but as the architects of renewal.

For infrastructure is not merely about steel and stone. It is not just about roads and rails, bridges and broadband, ports and pipelines. It is about power—the power of a nation to command its own destiny, to carve a future not dictated by the failures of the past but forged by the will to advance. It is about whether we will be remembered as the generation that dared to build or the one that chose to decay. It is about whether we will rise to meet the demands of the future or kneel before the weight of neglect, complacency, and cowardice. A nation that does not build is a nation that chooses decline. A people who do not invest in themselves are a people who have surrendered to mediocrity. But that is not our fate. That is not who we are. That is not the legacy we will leave behind.

Let us be clear: we stand at a defining moment in history. The path before us splits in two. One leads to continued erosion, to crumbling roads and stagnant ambition, to power grids that flicker in times of crisis, to water systems that fail those they are meant to serve, to an economy that chokes beneath the weight of its own inefficiencies. It is the path of hesitation, of half-measures, of excuses wrapped in bureaucratic delay. It is the path of a nation that once led the world but has become too timid to invest in its own strength. It is the road to irrelevance, a slow descent into obsolescence where the promise of America fades into the rust of abandoned projects and broken foundations.

But there is another path. A path where we refuse to accept decline, where we defy the voices that whisper that greatness is beyond our reach. A path where we do not merely patch and repair, but build anew—faster, stronger, greater than before. A path where we construct high-speed rail that links our cities, where ports are expanded to meet the demands of global trade, where roads and bridges do not merely exist but excel, where broadband is universal, where clean energy grids power the industries of the future. A path where investment in infrastructure is not seen as an expense, but as the most necessary commitment a nation can make to its own survival.

Let us build. Let us cast aside the fear of cost, the paralysis of indecision, the cancer of complacency. Let us recognize that the price of action is always less than the cost of inaction. Let us shatter the illusion that infrastructure is a matter of convenience rather than necessity. Let us invest—not with hesitation, not with empty rhetoric, not with the dithering of those too weak to lead, but with the certainty that a strong foundation is the key to a strong nation. Let us show the world that we are still a country that does not wait for progress, but demands it, drives it, builds it with our own hands and our own will. Let it be known that in this time, in this moment, we did not stand still and watch history pass us by. Let it be written that we did not cower in the face of challenge, did not wait for another generation to do the work that was ours to complete.

We chose to build. And in building, we secured the prosperity of generations to come. We chose not to shrink, not to surrender, not to settle for less than what America can and must be. We chose to reclaim our legacy as the greatest nation on earth—not in words, but in steel, in stone, in power, in permanence. And when the world looks back upon this moment, let them say: here, in this time, the builders rose again. And America rose with them.