10-Point Plan
We Have The Solution
1. Increase
Increase federal infrastructure investment throughout the nation, including rural, urban, suburban, and historically underserved communities so that America has first-class infrastructure to fuel a first-class economy. This investment will have a “multiplier effect” on the US economy, benefiting employment, GDP, worker incomes, consumer activity, public health and safety, tax revenues and our country’s overall competitiveness.
2. Leverage
Leverage public and private investments in capital-construction projects to create structured, specialized career-training opportunities for historically underserved communities, including veterans (“Helmets to Hard Hats”), women, and communities of color, so that well-trained workers are able to provide for their families and complete projects safely, on-time and, when possible, under-budget.
3. Utilize
Utilize our nationwide network of local joint labor-management apprenticeship training program to enforce and expand the high standards that provide America with the safest, most highly-qualified and productive skilled craft workforce found anywhere in the world. Oppose and defeat special-interest efforts to replace the existing system with dangerous and less effective programs that would displace highly trained American construction workers, endanger military veterans, lower wages and remove safety protections. Notably, the existing system does not include any taxpayer money and is based on trained and skilled workers contributing a small portion of their hourly wage, in addition to contractor contributions.
4. Maintain
Maintain high standards for infrastructure projects by preserving and expanding prevailing wage laws which, according to independent studies, protect local contractors, local workers and local economies, and ensure dependable, safe and efficient infrastructure to meet our country’s challenges in the 21st Century.
5. Ensure
Ensure health standards by repairing and maintaining America’s drinking-water infrastructure, including the million miles of pipes and mains beneath our streets.
6. Promote
Promote and ensure efficient transportation and a strong economy by repairing and maintaining the levees that protect communities and farmland, our dams, ports, inland-waterways, locks and dredge channels, and wastewater and stormwater systems.
7. Expand
Expand and maintain America’s education and communications infrastructure, by connecting all Americans, in all communities, to the digital economy with Internet access, including affordable broadband and free Wi-Fi in public buildings and on public transportation, and by maintaining our nation’s schools and undertaking new school construction to provide safe, secure facilities to educate the youth of America.
8. Invest
Invest in America’s aviation infrastructure, including modernization of airports and runways, and get the Federal Aviation Administration to modernize our national airspace system.
9. Build
Build a world-class, higher-capacity and high-speed passenger rail system to meet growing demand and build a more mobile America.
10. Make
Make America energy self-reliant and a robust job producer by enhancing domestic energy capacity, based on a modern, comprehensive “all of the above” energy policy, including cutting-edge, domestically-developed and domestically-sourced clean-energy technologies, while also maintaining affordable and secure energy transportation, including new pipelines that help provide a diverse energy portfolio, in a safe, environmentally responsible way and in compliance with all applicable local, state and federal standards regarding the environment, health and occupational safety.