Rebuilding our country’s infrastructure should be on top of the agenda for anyone who wants to strengthen America’s brittle economy. According to The New York Times, Representative Rosa DeLauro introduced a bill to create a national infrastructure development bank to fund projects of regional and national significance. Projects to build roads, bridges and schools are badly needed for our country’s success in order to strengthen our economic system and create jobs to battle back this current recession.

The Bill by Representative DeLauro would allow the infrastructure bank to issue bonds, provide loans and offer loan guarantees to finance large scale projects. These projects will create jobs, especially in construction, which will stimulate economic growth and slow down unemployment, currently at 8.9%. The recession, already claiming 5.7 million jobs, has had devastating effects on men under 35, men without college degrees, and black men. Construction jobs such as construction managers, architects, engineers, plumbers, and welders will all be needed to drive these projects to completion. The upward spike in construction jobs for qualified candidates will help ease the disastrous burden on these demographics. According to President Obama’s chief economic advisor, employment will not go up until sometime in 2010, at the earliest. Creating job growth now will only help to speed us to a point when the economy can take care of that for us.

Infrastructure is a word often said and forgotten in the same breath. It’s an important word. In fact, for America, it’s a foundational word – pun intended. Infrastructure is defined as “the basic, underlying framework of a system or organization.” Since 1927 it has also been used to refer “collectively to roads, bridges, rail lines, and similar public works required for an industrial economy to function.” Only when these two definitions are married are we’re able to acknowledge the importance of our roads, bridges and public works to America’s basic underlying framework. Why have we allowed their divorce for so long?

America’s foundation is based on its infrastructure, as redundant as that sounds. Our roadways are what allow this greatest democracy on the planet to develop. The word travel, in fact, comes from the word travailen which means “to work.” We need to strengthen our infrastructure to strengthen our economy. If we don’t, and still blindly expect America to unhook itself from this recession, we will be building a bridge from the middle of the river.