The idea of creating an infrastructure bank to leverage federal funds and funnel private investments into U.S. roads, bridges, transit and railways, has gained support from an influential private organization.

The group Building America’s Future recently release a report: “Falling Apart and Falling Behind,” and former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, one of the organization’s chairmen, called for urgent action by federal government to establish the infrastructure bank.

The infrastructure bank is backed by the Obama administration, but has found little support in Congress.

“Congress has to take a deep breath and listen,” Rendell said, when asked how to overcome resistance to infrastructure spending by the federal government.

“If we create the infrastructure bank and hold it for major transportation projects of regional significance, if  we fund it at $5 billion a year, $5 billion in credit subsidy from federal treasury, that would produce over  $600 billion in private sector investment,” Rendell said. “And in the end, because these would be loans that would be repaid, in the end cost to the federal treasury would be zero.  Zero. And we get $600 billion that we could invest in infrastructure repair in the next decade.”