Budgeting for performance.

• Author: Rivlin, Alice M.

Editor's note: The following remarks are excerpts from the keynote speech delivered to the National Conference on High Performance Infrastructure, Washington, D.C., July 9, 1993. The conference was sponsored by the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Clinton administration has put enormous emphasis on infrastructure, and interest in the subject is nationwide. It is also evident in Congress. For example, Representative Bob Carr (D-MI), chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Transportation, is pursuing actively ways of improving infrastructure analysis and criteria. Furthermore, the Vice President's National Performance Review is focusing heavily on better choices in the infrastructure investment area and better ways of doing regulation. Finally, the bipartisan interest on the Hill is about to give us the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, which will support improved management and performance of the government generally, including infrastructure. So I think things are coming together for a new focus on infrastructure and how to manage it well.

An infrastructure strategy is important and timely for three reasons. First, it can help us achieve the economic growth and productivity that we all want by improving our infrastructure investment and decision-making, and our infrastructure management. Second, it will help us to make the tough budget decisions that are important no matter what budget you're dealing with, whether it's the federal budget or the city budget or any other budget. We are all in the same situation; budgets are always a question of limited resources, but now the problems of using our resources effectively are much more serious than they have ever been. And, third, an infrastructure strategy will help us deal with the wider implications of infrastructure, such as the implications for environmental quality and safety.

Economic Growth and Productivity

The connection between economic growth and infrastructure is central to the administration's thinking. The President's plan for the economy is a plan for increasing our standard of living in the future: not just more jobs for Americans, but better jobs at higher incomes. That means increasing our productivity, because that is the only way people can earn higher wages. They have to produce more, and increasing productivity clearly means increasing investment, both public and private.

Not all of the investment needed to make the economy grow can be in the private sector. If we were to reduce the federal deficit at the expense of federal investment, we would be doing a very counterproductive thing indeed. If there is anything that we have learned...