Over the last week, the Midwest has received a lot of rain. It also exposed our continued lack of maintaining our national infrastructure.

If you have been reading the news, you probably have seen the effects of flooding in Iowa due to dams and levees breaking down.

I have my own personal story in suburban Chicago. Last weekend, 8 inches of rain fell in a short time span, and 1/2 of a 50,000 town was flooded.

Our suburb is like Beaver Cleaver Land. Tree lined streets. Gas lampposts. A downtown with an old fashioned appliance store (think "That Thing You Do"), a movie theater with old pipe organs and a relic of the past - a comic book store.

The town has had a history of flooding. But ten years ago it came up with a brilliant plan. When the sewer system could not handle the volume of water, it was rerouted to a local quarry. But in 2007, the city cut back on maintaining the entire sewer system and the automated pumps required to open the quarry. In only three years, the system failed, and the town was devastated.

The southern area of the town's tree lined streets and gas lampposts were eclipsed by ruined furniture laying out in people's front yard. The main grocery strip mall was an inhabitable lake. Entries to expressway were impassable, rendering the entry and exit from the town impossible. All of this in a town that is upper middle class.

The Obama administration's stimulus plan set aside about $100 billion in infrastructure spending. While a positive step, it is a drop in the bucket. We need at least to increase infrastructure 10X to make any meaningful improvement. The Obama administration, concerned with persistent unemployment, signaled last weekend, that it was considering increasing infrastructure spending.

Not only does fixing a broken system of infrastructure, make sense, to protect property and increasing throughput in travel, but it increases jobs in the hardest hit portion of the economy. With the housing market under economic distress, causing a huge inventory of unsold existing and new homes, millions of construction jobs have been eliminated.

Instead of extending welfare, dramatically increasing infrastructure spending would put millions back to work and increase tax revenues. And by doing so, our nation's infrastructure would reverse a trend, where the U.S. is severely behind other industrial nations.

One of the biggest political problems in our country, is the government's accounting system. In corporate accounting there is a clear delineation between expenses and investment. Expenses are mainly government payroll and economic transfers of tax revenues. While investments would be treated differently.

By adopting GAAP accounting standards, investments would become depreciable assets. Expenses would be recognized as variable costs that flow in and out of the nation's balance sheets. While investments would be assets on the governments balance sheet for a long period of time.

In this new political light, politicians would have incentives to decrease expenses and increase investments. By clear rules of what is an expense and what is an asset, the political discourse would be more productive. Increases in expenses would be frowned on. Decreases in expenses would be looked upon favorably. And increasing investments, would add to the balance sheet of assets, and would be encouraged.

Increasing infrastructure investment would decrease welfare expenses. And that is a win/win proposition for a county on the brink.

- John Jazwiec