The idea of establishing infrastructure banks to help finance needed investment is not new to the United States. As of 2010, 32 states and Puerto Rico already had state infrastructure banks in operation, using them to enter into more than 700 loan agreements worth $ billion. 24 A handful of banks were established in the 1990s as part of a limited federal pilot program, which was expanded in 2005 to include all states. Since then, most state infrastructure banks have been capital- ized using a combination of federal and state funds, although a few have used only state monies to avoid certain federal.
