Every serious study of U.S. infrastructure has reached the same conclusion: More investment is needed -- and fast. But with Sen. Jeff Bingaman's amendment to the highway reauthorization bill, the Senate effectively penalizes states for using innovative infrastructure financing.

The Obama administration is going all out to attract Chinese companies to invest in the U.S., but at the same time, it has rebuffed the efforts of the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei to obtain contracts with major U.S. Internet providers or to take over U.S. telecom companies. At this event, a panel of experts will analyze the issues from both an economic and a security perspective.

To combat the economic malaise, the Obama administration is bending over backward to encourage companies to create jobs in America. So why is the White House - and the Congress - challenging Huawei, a high-tech firm eager to invest and compete in the U.S. market? 

To create private-sector jobs and raise wages for those now working, we must make America a magnet for investment from abroad. A trade agenda to promote exports is one piece of competing in a global economy, but without an aggressive campaign to draw in foreign investors’ resources, the United States will miss key employment and economic growth opportunities.

This article is the first to show that foreign investors care about economic freedoms, rather than political freedoms, in making decisions about where to locate capital. Hence more democratic countries may receive less Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows if economic freedoms are not guaranteed.

Consider the block of the Keystone pipeline expansion in the context of the Administration’s recent pattern of hostility to private sector investments.

The recession has pinned education policy in a tough spot: Our schools must both produce more skilled workers and do so as efficiently as possible. Innovative models of career and technical education could go a long way toward threading this needle.