FOR decades, we have neglected the foundation of our economy while other countries have invested in state-of-the-art water, energy and transportation infrastructure. Our manufacturing base has migrated abroad; our innovation edge may soon follow. If we don’t find a way to build a sound foundation for growth, the American dream will survive only in our heads and history books.

But how we will pay for it? Given the fights over the deficit and the debt, it is doubtful that a second, costly stimulus package could gain traction. President Franklin D. Roosevelt faced a similar predicament in the 1930s when the possibility of a double-dip Depression loomed.

For this reason, the New Deal’s second wave aggressively pursued public-private partnerships and quasi-public authorities. Roosevelt described the best-known of these enterprises, the Tennessee Valley Authority, as a “corporation clothed with the power of government but possessed of the flexibility and initiative of a private enterprise.”

A bipartisan bill introduced by senators including John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, seeks a similar but modernized solution: it would create an American Infrastructure Financing Authority to move private capital, now sitting on the sidelines in pension, private equity, sovereign and other funds, into much-needed projects.