Dear Future President

Infrastructure in America is incredibly important. Good infrastructure is required to help maintain the economy and health of the population. The failure of infrastructure can damage the economy, as well as endanger people’s lives. The problem is that the infrastructure in America is old and degrading. Due to a lack of government spending in recent years, America’s infrastructure is failing and it needs to be fixed.

Ideally, there should be something to grade how our infrastructure is doing, and luckily, there is. America’s 2013 Infrastructure Report Card from the American Society of Civil Engineering gives America a D+ in infrastructure overall. Included in that is America’s rating of a D for drinking water, schools, roads, and hazardous waste. People shouldn’t have to worry about getting clean drinking water in America, let alone worrying about hazardous waste. That is dangerous in some cases and certainly worse than we could do. We should prioritize giving our citizens a quality education, clean water, and good quality roads. That will help America overall as well by improving shipping and therefore the economy, as well as producing more highly skilled workers.

In the 1950s and 1960s the Government spent two times as much on infrastructure and its maintenance relative to the size of the economy when compared to today. As our infrastructure ages and we spend less to maintain it, it means there is less potential for growth in the economy. It leads to less growth for the economy since roads, bridges, airports, and ports are not maintained as well as they could be. Since bridges and roads are not maintained well, it leads to each citizen wasting approximately twenty more hours per year in traffic when compared to the 1980s according to Texas A&M Transportation Institute. That causes problems for both citizens and the economy, as previously stated. These are just a few examples of America’s infrastructure problems.

I believe that if you, the next President of the United States, supports improving infrastructure, then something will be done to improve it. If you can pressure Congress and state or local governments to put double or even triple the amount of money we currently use to maintain infrastructure, then something can be done about this atrocity we call our infrastructure. I seriously hope that something will be done about this soon before anyone, or potentially anyone else, dies from it.

Sincerely,

Thomas P