America is missing out on needed investment because Washington can't get it's act together. Christopher Lee and Sean Medcalf of infrastructure investment firm, Highstar Capital layout the situation facing foreign investors:

Despite our fiscal and financial problems, the U.S. remains the favored destination for flight to quality capital in an increasingly interdependent and uncertain world. Long-term institutional investors everywhere — from Dutch pension funds to Asian insurance companies to U.S. college endowments — want to invest in U.S. infrastructure. To successfully attract this capital and make it work for U.S. jobs and America’s global competitiveness, we need big ideas from Washington and the will to follow through. Not more partisan posturing.

Democrats and Republicans must come together to invest $250 billion in a bipartisan, independent Infrastructure Bank. Such a bank can mobilize up to three-quarters of a trillion dollars in private-sector capital (for a total of $1 trillion) to invest in U.S. job creation and economic revitalization through infrastructure, focused public-private partnerships.