Here’s the answer: The National Infrastructure Bank Act will create a $5 trillion public bank to build infrastructure projects. Last year the bill to create the bank ended with 48 sponsors in the 118th Congress and will be reintroduced. The new National Infrastructure Bank (NIB) will fund the nearly $4 trillion infrastructure gap identified in the 2025 American Society of Civil Engineers Report Card. The bank, with no new federal taxes or debt, will finance roads and bridges, power grids, high-speed rail, broadband access, large-scale water systems, and affordable housing. The federal government’s enormously successful Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) from the Great Depression and World War II is the proven model. 

With no new federal taxes or debt, President Franklin Roosevelt’s RFC spread electricity throughout the nation; built highways, bridges, tunnels and municipal water systems; financed the development of high-speed trains; helped people rebuild their lives destroyed by natural disasters; and saved thousands of homes, businesses, farms and banks from bankruptcy. Then, the RFC transformed the U.S. military from 17th in size into the world’s arsenal of democracy. The RFC built and owned the enormous plants that manufactured the airplanes, trucks, ships, and tanks required to win World War II and leased them to corporations to operate. The RFC created vital and enduring industries from scratch and produced and amassed strategic and essential materials at home and abroad, just like we need now. 

Join Emmy Award-winning author Steven Fenberg and former International Monetary Fund senior economist Alphecca Muttardy for a compelling Zoom dialogue on May 16, 2025. They will show how the profound successes of the RFC can be adapted to address the urgent needs of the United States today. 

Watch this critical and timely forum to learn how to help repair and rebuild our nation now.

Steven Fenberg has written extensively about the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Fenberg is the executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning documentary “Brother, Can You Spare a Billion,” narrated by Walter Cronkite and broadcast nationally on PBS. He is also the author of “Unprecedented Power: Jesse Jones, Capitalism and the Common Good,” a comprehensive, award-winning examination of the RFC. See www.stevenfenberg.com for more information.

Alphecca Muttardy is a former International Monetary Fund Senior Economist, IMF Resident Representative to Ghana, and is the chief economic advisor of the Coalition for a National Infrastructure Bank (NIB). Muttardy has given expert testimony in dozens of state legislatures and city and county councils across the nation on the NIB.