By Nancy Spannaus
Oct. 5, 2025—Representative Danny Davis (D-Ill) has once again introduced into Congress his bill calling for the creation of a Hamiltonian National Infrastructure Bank (NIB). H.R. 5356 is currently co-sponsored by 32 representatives from states stretching from coast to coast. The bill, which was introduced on September 15, can be accessed here.
Davis’s initiative couldn’t come at a more propitious time. With the Congress deadlocked over the federal budget, and the accumulated deficit in infrastructure spending posing an ever-greater threat to the safety and well-being of the citizenry, national banking is more urgent than ever. Following the model set by Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and FDR, the proposed NIB calls for creating a bank capitalized by already existing Treasury debt held by private investors, which could lend up to $5 trillion. The credit created by the bank would be extended at low interest rates to the owners of the nation’s infrastructure, enabling them to meet the nation’s urgent needs in transportation, energy, water systems, and housing—to name just a few.
At the same time, this huge investment would create tens of thousands of well-paying jobs in the industries required to build the infrastructure. As with the national banks of the past, this investment will serve as a strong stimulus for growth in productivity and living standards.
This is the fourth time Rep. Davis has introduced a bill to create a National Infrastructure Bank. His 2023 bill (H.R. 4052) drew 48 cosponsors, including many leading Democrats, before the end of the Congressional session.
The Partisan Divide
Despite intensive grass-roots efforts by supporters of the Coalition for a National Infrastructure Bank, once again, all of the Congressmen who have signed on the NIB bill are Democrats. (See the list here.) On the state and local level, the Coalition is working with many Republicans, who are acutely aware of the nation’s infrastructure crisis and see the NIB as the only solution on the horizon. Unlike their counterparts in the Congress, these Republicans are prepared to work closely with Democrats to tackle their problems.
Exemplary of this dynamic was the process at the National Association of Counties conference held this summer. The NACo is dominated by Republicans, yet the full assembly of more than 1000 delegates endorsed the NIB unanimously. To many of these county leaders, the urgency of solving their local infrastructure problems is more important that hewing to an ideological party line.
Success in establishing the bank will depend in no small measure in the efforts of these level-headed Republicans to convince Republican Congressmen that infrastructure is not a partisan issue.
A Little History
As the introduction to H.R. 5356 points out, throughout the history of the United States,
national banks have played a crucial role in financing most of the public infrastructure of the United States;
(2) the largest national banks included—
(A) the First Bank of the United States, from 1791 through 1811;
(B) the Second Bank of the United States, from 1816 through 1836;
(C) the national banking system instituted by President Lincoln; and
(D) the Reconstruction Finance Corporation instituted by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from 1932 through 1957;
(3) those national banks were enacted with broad bipartisan support, and financed the construction of roads, turnpikes, bridges, canals, the Transcontinental Railroad, the Hoover Dam, rural electrification, manufacturing startups, and rail, school, and farm improvements in every corner of the United States;
(4) those infrastructure investments created the conditions for improved productivity, economic growth, and job creation, helped lift the United States out of the Great Depression, and contributed to victory in World War II. …
In each of these cases, the credit of the Federal government was put to work through national banking in order to build up the national economy. The cases of the First National Bank and FDR’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation are the most dramatic, in that they served to literally help bring the United States out of bankruptcy. By investing in projects that contributed to economic growth, including new technologies, these banks created more wealth than they consumed.
The principles which these banks reflected are those of Alexander Hamilton’s American System of Economics, a system on which I elaborated in my book Hamilton Versus Wall Street: The Core Principles of the American System of Economics in 2019. (A short summary can be found here on this blog.) Hamilton’s system was devised as a means of implementing our nation’s Constitutional goals, putting the general welfare of the nation ahead of private greed. For this reason, modern-day Wall Street considers it a deadly enemy, and has done its best to sabotage its revival.
The reality is, however, that the health and well-being – even the existence, perhaps – of the United States republic depends upon reviving the principles of the American System. The Coalition for a National Infrastructure Bank is actually waging a fight for national survival. You can learn more by clicking here.
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Tags: Alexander Hamilton, Danny Davis, H.R. 5356, Nancy Spannaus, National Infrastructure Bank
