The House has now passed its near-trillion-dollar stimulus bill.

Absent significant changes in the Senate, the bill would slosh yet more borrowed money into the unproductive, unreformed pits of special-interest-driven state spending, largely Medicaid and education.

Even with a last-minute addition to transit, the bill would invest less than $45 billion–little more than five percent–in the nation’s aging highways, bridges, tunnels, and transit assets.

This result comes on the same day that the American Society of Civil Engineers has released a report card that gives the nation’s roads infrastructure a D- and its transit infrastructure a D.

ASCE estimates that we’ve got to spend $116 billion more than we do annually to upgrade highways, and $28 billion more to maintain and improve transit.

Yet this bill would barely encourage states to do some more maintenance of already neglected assets.

And it won’t discourage the states from continuing to allow social spending to crowd out investment in physical assets, as they have done for decades.

Yes, it’s good that no Republican voted for this bill.

But it’s not enough.

Republicans in the Senate–and Democrats, too!–should speak out in favor of a pared-down “rational investment” bill that would focus on how best to fix and upgrade the nation’s nuts-and-bolts infrastructure.

This bill may be the only opportunity that we have to make up for years of disinterest in the public assets that the private sector needs so that it can recover and prosper.

If the public sees that this money is misspent instead, it won’t support a second chance to get it right.

And a decade from now, we’ll be facing an infrastructure disaster that hampers private-sector growth just as the obligations for retiring baby boomers come due.