How The Clinton and Sanders Infrastructure Plans Measure Up

"Investing in infrastructure makes our economy more productive and competitive across the board." ~~ Hillary Clinton

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has announced a plan for infrastructure investment. How does her plan stack up against that of her chief competitor, Bernie Sanders?

Also, how will Clinton and Sanders pay for their plans? On that question, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) recently came up with a set of principles we can use to judge this.

Clinton's Infrastructure Plan

Clinton on Monday announced a plan for investing in infrastructure improvements. Meteor Blades laid out the need for infrastructure investment at Daily Kos in "Clinton proposes $275 billion spending for infrastructure":

"...11 percent of the nation's bridges are structurally deficient and a fourth of them are functionally obsolete. Similar deficiencies can be found in schools, dams, levees, railroads, the electrical grid, and wastewater facilities. In its 2013 quadrennial report card on U.S. infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers said the nation would need to invest an additional $1.6 trillion by 2020 to put its infrastructure into good repair. And that doesn't include innovative infrastructure like universal broadband."

Clinton's infrastructure plan is detailed at her website in "Hillary Clinton's Infrastructure Plan: Building Tomorrow's Economy Today." Here is a distillation:

-- $250 billion dollars in infrastructure investment, spread out over five years as additional spending of $50 billion each year.

-- An additional one-time $25 billion to seed a national infrastructure bank. The bank will support up to an additional $225 billion in direct loans, loan guarantees, and other forms of credit enhancement. These are loans to states and cities which will require tolls, fees, etc. to pay off.

-- Spending priorities include "smart investments in ports, airports, roads, and waterways"; "giving all American households access to world-class broadband and creating connected 'smart cities'"; "building airports and air traffic control systems"; "a smart, resilient electrical grid"; "safe and reliable sources of water"; "a national freight investment program"; "upgrade our dams and levees to improve safety and generate clean energy"; safe, smart roads and highways that are ready for the connected cars of tomorrow" and "the new energy sources that will power them."

-- A promise of "a faster, safer, and higher capacity passenger rail system." But the plan does not mention high-speed rail. (Note that a single high-speed rail system from Los Angeles to San Francisco is expected to cost up to $60 billion, which alone is almost one-fourth of Clinton's entire five-year infrastructure investment for all infrastructure needs.)

Sanders' Infrastructure Plan

Clinton's $275 billion infrastructure plan offers modest spending and contains few specifics. Contrast that with candidate Bernie Sanders, who has proposed a highly detailed, $1 trillion plan.

Sanders' infrastructure plan was originally introduced in January as a Senate bill called the Rebuild America Act. A summary is laid out on his campaign issues page, Creating Jobs Rebuilding America. The plan calls for spending $1 trillion over the same five-year period. Here's what his plan includes:

-- A $125 billion National Infrastructure Bank to leverage private capital to finance new projects.

-- $75 billion to upgrade our passenger and freight rail lines.