The Public Infrastructure and Enterprise Act

A strong middle class depends on more than productive workers and competitive businesses. It also depends on reliable public services and infrastructure that allow people to travel safely, businesses to move goods efficiently, and the economy to grow.

Many of these services require continuous operation, long-term planning, and sustained investment over decades. Airports, air traffic control, ports, waterways, highways, and other essential public services cannot be managed effectively through short-term thinking alone.

Whenever practical, the people and businesses that directly benefit from these services should help support their ongoing operation and improvement through dedicated service revenues. Stable funding and responsible stewardship allow critical infrastructure to be maintained and modernized for future generations.

Many long-term public services are managed through annual appropriations and budget negotiations designed for general government administration rather than continuous operational enterprises.

Service revenues are often absorbed into broader government finances instead of remaining dedicated to the services that generated them. Capital investment is delayed. Modernization projects are interrupted. Deferred maintenance grows while infrastructure ages. Operational priorities shift with annual budget cycles rather than long-term public needs.

The result is aging infrastructure, higher long-term costs, less reliable public services, and reduced economic competitiveness.

This act establishes a Public Enterprise framework for qualifying federal public services that require continuous operation, long-term planning, and sustained capital investment.

Congress continues to determine what public services the nation provides, establish their missions, authorize their funding frameworks, and oversee their performance.

The President continues to appoint enterprise governing boards through the constitutional appointment process.

Public Enterprises become responsible for operating those services efficiently, maintaining the public assets entrusted to them, meeting published service standards, and planning for long-term infrastructure needs.

Where practical, qualifying Public Enterprises are supported primarily through dedicated service revenues paid by the users who directly benefit from the service. Those revenues remain dedicated to operating, maintaining, and modernizing the enterprise, while Congress retains authority to establish funding policies, authorize major capital programs, and provide supplemental appropriations when necessary to serve the national interest.

By combining professional governance with stable, service-based funding, this act creates a framework better suited to managing essential public services over decades rather than annual budget cycles.

Not every government organization should become a Public Enterprise.

Congress may designate one or more federal public services as Public Enterprises when they substantially satisfy objective criteria established under this act.

Qualifying public services generally:

• provide ongoing operational services rather than primarily making policy or exercising regulatory, judicial, military, or law-enforcement authority;
• operate essential public infrastructure or provide continuing public services to identifiable users;
• require significant long-term operational planning and capital investment;
• can reasonably support a substantial portion of their operations through dedicated user fees or service revenues where practical;
• benefit from professional operational governance while remaining publicly owned and publicly accountable; and
• can be evaluated through objective service, safety, operational, financial, or infrastructure performance measures.

Nothing in this act requires an entire federal agency to become a Public Enterprise. Congress may designate individual public services while leaving policy and regulatory responsibilities within their existing departments.