committee on transportation infrastructure will come to order we are awaiting the arrival of our senior republican member on the committee enroute to we will have soon rule on providing for consideration of the amtrak bill and i know that several of our members want to be on the floor for that so i'll just get started with the my comments i want to thank you very outset our member panel for being here for their sincere interesting and persistence in thoughtful constructive work on financing infrastructure investments we'll hear from that panel in just a moment and also hearing from our colleagues and what's interesting is i've read through some of the testimony and proposals so far colleagues and i think we all the same we all have the same goal in mind and that's providing more net dollars for america's infrastructure and we've got three leaders here another one expected mister calvert to two are interested in making certain that america is not a third world nation as far as its investment and infrastructure a position which chairman oberstar and i maintain we have to stay ahead of the curve and as we look at probably the most comprehensive reform in transportation policy which will come with next year's expiration of our current legislation we want to make certain that we're all working together toward that goal of you some of the proposals as i say and they provide some additional net dollars available to infrastructure banking mr bloom and our has a proposal that is similar to one  that i that i have proposed and shared his desire also to try to get us to develop a national strategic campus structure and transportation plan fact i had a similar proposal to his which had a commission at the top and that was my first thought it legislation and that approach and and trying to  i came to that conclusion to reverse the process which was rather than have a commission that would come out with a reporter or study or recommendation and fact congress would have to be the ultimate arbiter of w jurisdiction they can produce to you instantaneously whether their infrastructure needs are as with mayor bloomberg and he has for new york city a strategic plan each day just about now has a comprehensive strategic plan and most of them incorporate most modes of transportation so we took the reverse approach and have those  flow from the grassroots up and having congress in the position which it ultimately will be and setting what our national strategic policy projects priority plans are we must also incorporate a way to finance them quite frankly i think some of the proposals offered by my colleagues are quite modest i believe that we need instead of five billion to what the chairman has said to two approaches half a trillion then through public through first of all through creative financing bonding and leverage financing finance an additional half a trillion dollars worth of projects my administration has not been conducive to to those types of proposals which i believe makes so much sense because we can't pay for all projects upfront we do need to finance them on a creative fashion which would give us another half a trillion and then the third half a trillion dollars would come from public private partnerships and if we define at the federal level whether public private partnerships are available whether it's dealing with the sale of our portions of our interstate whether it's  private partnerships developing in toll roads in a whole host of public private arrangements i think the potential for another half a trillion dollars in net value is there so that sounds like a lot of money richard nixon of course went and august i believe it was one hundred fifty four to lake george to the governors association conference the federal budget hundred fifty four was seventy eight billion dollars and he proposed a half a trillion dollars national highway system and i think that's the kind of conservative an issue out of that we need and they said times that we need infrastructure you know back to the chair and i'm delighted to hear of my colleague good friend mike to talk about that have a trillion dollars as a conservative investment and i welcome i welcome that conservatism because it's a progressive conservatism and it's investing in america's productivity and our future i have a number of comments that i intend to make at the outset that i saw in light of our amtrak the bill the rule on the amtrak bill coming up very early in this process i yield to the ranking member because i know you want to be explored other members of the committee want to be on the floor for the rule however i want to get on with this panel and then to listen very carefully read your testimony head of time we have second panel of financial and budget experts and i appreciate all the good work that you have done in the innovation that this committee is engaged and then to micah thank you i heard you on this morning on the news this morning on amtrak well done so and i thank you for your comments as well this is an important hearing and i'm delighted to have the opportunity to testify i'm also so pleased to be here with my colleagues are a blow on our delegates and i'm hoping we'll see mr calvert as we examined  these these critical critical issues as you know when the congressional budget office testified before this committee last month that indicated that as a share of gross domestic product public spending on capital infrastructure had been relatively constant for the past several decades yet the studios review suggests that billions of dollars of additional spending on infrastructure each year would make good economic sense indeed with our national economy struggling the smartest national investments the ones that create jobs today and continued to pay off for years down the road and whose benefits reach our entire community the national service transportation policy and review study commission january report recommended an annual two hundred twenty five billion dollar investment to maintain and improve our transportation system approximately one hundred forty billion dollars more than it's currently invested the g a o says our national water infrastructure will need from four hundred eighty five billion dollars to nearly one point two trillion over the next twenty years and according to the american society of civil engineers a number of unsafe dams in america has risen by more than thirty three percent since one thousand nine hundred eight to more than thirty five hundred in two thousand and five it is clear we need a bold national infrastructure policy of course we need a little leadership on this issue from the from the very top from the white house but congress a lso has a critical role to play as well to provide both a vision and a way to realize it which is why i've introduced a national infrastructure development act to create an objective process for evaluating our infrastructure needs and leverage private dollars to help rebuild our nation's infrastructure such as highways roads bridges pipelines and public buildings the legislation would create a national infrastructure development corporation and a subsidiary national infrastructure insurance corporation and initially as a federal entity the corporation would make loans purchase securities and issue public benefit bonds to finance infrastructure projects and the insurance corporation would further reduce the costs of those projects by ensuring the investments the development corporation would include a board of directors consisting of twelve members nine appointed by the president demonstrated expertise in the field of infrastructure project development finance related disciplines the board would determine which projects to be fun based on how they would meet national critical infrastructure needs and the degree to which private sector finance is being leveraged it would also consider whether providing funds will help expedite the project in question we would fund the corporation with nine billion dollars in appropriations over three years after five years it would develop a plan to transition into a government sponsored enterprise entirely sell finance or user fees and the sale of public stock we face a critical moment and this proposal represents i believe a powerful opportunity to accomplish two important objectives first to establish an entity that can carefully look at projects and fund those which are the most critical to our nation's continued growth second the proposal leverage is private sector investment to the largest degree possible this could not be more important during tight financial times in which federal and state governments simply cannot finance these projects alone safety lou is expiring and we face funding constraints on our aviation water and school building systems among others we need a new funding mechanism to supplement what we are doing this legislation can fill that gap and meet our responsibility it is endorsed by the associated general contractors of america the american society of civil engineers building and construction trades department and the u s chamber of commerce among many others but i believe my proposal as well as the proposal of my colleagues here today offer innovative and effective ways to take our national infrastructure policy in a positive and in this strong direction by ensuring our nation can continue investing in its in structure we can rebuild america keep our nation highly competitive throughout the twenty first century and i thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning you join the ranks of many graduates of the com and i feel that i am just on leave from the committee i deeply appreciate the decade that i spent sabbatical with you and look forward to my other committee assignments to find a way to help you generate the resources to be able to rebuild and renew america the legislation that i have speaking to today compliments what my good friend from connecticut talked about i'm intrigued with the notion of an invest infrastructure bank what i hope to offer up for your consideration is the leadership from this committee to develop a vision for how all of the infrastructure pieces fit together  are in the midst of an infrastructure crisis i think if anything we've understated it from water rail the transmission of electricity  right down the line all of the infrastructure we are actually i think investing the last as a percent of our gross domestic product than we have in recent memory and we have on a regular basis evidence in the sinkholes opening up levees failing the strains on the system and it's going to be only come pounded by the impact of global warming and climate change the numbers are staggering in terms of one trillion two trillion we are losing the infrastructure investment race with our competitors overseas some are concerned about china and potential nuclear  military confrontation i'm worried that we're losing the infrastructure race to china it was not ultimately our missiles and atomic cannons that brought down the soviet union was their inability to compete with us economically and we at this point are in a situation where we're losing the capacity to compete economically with the european union with china with japan even india is investing eight times what the united states is in terms of its gross national product but it is not just more money and i will work with you as a member of the budget committee as a member of ways and means to find more resources but it is how we spend the money and what we spend it on twice in the past the united states has developed a large vision for infrastructure development you pass legislation several months ago commemorating the two hundred anniversary of the gallatin plan that was commissioned by president jefferson with his secretary of transportation treasury albert gallatin to develop a plan that led to the erie canal that led to the transcontinental railroad the homestead act that helped knit a ragtag group of thirteen colonies into a transcontinental nation and it served us well in the hundreds a century ago president roosevelt convened a similar conference in washington d c that led to infrastructure for hydro projects for the national park service and actually planted the seeds for the national plans that ultimately resulted in the interstate highway system we need a vision on the scale of what roosevelt and jefferson did so that we can bring people together on all in a comprehensive fashion for what infrastructure should look like i'm suggesting that we have a commission that would be jointly by the appointed by the ledges by the legislative branch by local governments and by the new administration so that we have a buy in to how we're going to go ahead and do this we have a demographic strange where we're going to have fifty percent of the population fifty percent increase in our population by in a few minutes to talk about your amtrak reauthorization and that's one other element where we're not putting the pieces together in terms of a robust rail passenger system at a time when we have airport congestion where one third of the trips for air transport are three hundred fifty miles or less and the economic model doesn't work one hundred forty dollars a barrel oil it's why we need to look at it comprehensively i strongly urge that you consider a commission like i'm suggesting i know my friend from minnesota is going to re emphasize and has an approach there but unless and until we have you help us frame what the big picture is and we get the buy with the new administration with local governments and have this conversation take place in congressional districts across the country we're not going to have the consensus the momentum and the insight to be able to have the big picture not a lot of studies you know what the need is but we need to bring that together in a comprehensive fashion and get a bi and into a bigger picture for how the infrastructure pieces fit together i appreciate your courtesy i appreciate your past work in terms of putting the spotlight on plans in the past and hope that this committee can help set the tone for how we're going to rebuild and renew this country thank you very much thank you for your energy and for your enthusiasm and for your ideas mr olson my good friend called a first term member from minnesota proved himself and work for holding this important hearing on the condition of our nation's infrastructure and proposals needed for improvements to it the issue of investing in public infrastructure in the state of our ailing public infrastructure the very real issue th demands our immediate attention you and i stood together shook up and amazed at our own infrastructure tragedy in minnesota when i thirty five bridge collapse we'll never forget those moments and but those moments help us focus our attention on the needs of our country now which unfortunately other members of our body can talk about tragedies that happen in their areas but it's bigger than just tragedy it's a question of our economic viability and that's why i'm so happy to appear before the committee today to discuss the national infrastructure bank proposal which is a chair at thirty four to one that i have introduced along with representative barney frank of massachusetts this legislation would create an independent national bank with an initial outlay of about sixty billion in tax credit bonds the bank would also be able to receive private capital and hints would be able to potentially leverage millions of private dollars the bank is modeled after the european investment bank whose financing of public projects has created one of the most modern and efficient transportation infrastructure systems the world  ever seen they have a structure bank would not displace existing formula grants or earmark infrastructure it would target specifically large capacity building projects that are not adequately served by the current financing mechanism eligible infrastructure product projects to the banks jurisdiction would be limited to publicly all mass transit systems roads bridges drinking water wastewater treatment systems and public housing properties we ensure  focus to ensure that we focus on public investment projects with a broad regional or national impact only projects that require a minimum federal investment of seventy five million would be eligible for bank financing and these projects must demonstrate a substantial regional or national significance like other modern investment banks once the bank identifies an investment opportunity they will develop a financing package this package would include direct subsidies direct loan guarantees long term tax credit general bought don't purpose bonds most importantly these bonds would be backed by the miscible and state revenue which makes them some of the safest and most attractive investments i believe this infrastructure bank a play a crucial role  tackling the major infrastructure deficit that currently exist in america according to the american society of civil engineers in its two thousand and five report card for america's infrastructure it would take an estimated estimated investment of one point six trillion by twenty june to just bring the nation's existing infrastructure to working order in addition the research is clear that investing in public infrastructure can help stimulate economic growth according to department of transportation each one billion of infrastructure investment creates forty seven thousand five hundred jobs many of these will be high paying high school jobs that can't be outsourced or offshore we also need to consider the cost mr chairman no doubt there will be a chorus of diverse opinions on these issues some will say we can't afford to meet our infrastructure needs but in reality we cannot afford to not meet our infrastructure needs and the time to act is now i believe the infrastructure the tragic interstate thirty five bridge collapse which occurred in our state serves as a national call to action for this congress and our nation to focus on improving domestic infrastructure in addition to health and safety to maintain our competitive edge in a world america needs to dramatically increase our investment in public infrastructure americans deserve and need a public infrastructure of the twenty first century that meets the demands of our lives and  the twenty first century i look forward to working with this committee and other members of congress to make a new a new national commitment to public infrastructure in this country thank you thank you very much congressman ellison ellison and for  your remarks about the i thirty five w bridge to paraphrase benjamin banneker the tragedy is a terrible thing to waste we wasted an opportunity with that tragedy they had the congress  in session for one more week i think we would have an act of legislation that i proposed conceptual form there was an opportunity and by the time august passed and labor day passed and appetite for this not being completely rebuilt because of but not completely rebuilt i should say as a gusset plates are being restored replaced and reinforced and the bridge and in st cloud and there are many others this is what the bridge maintenance and repair and inspection is in the stone age it still lives we've got to pull out of it and we've got to make some investments to make sure those things don't happen again thomas calvert you have an interesting proposal  southern california that encompasses some of the fastest growing communities in the nation my constituents have found to have the highest commuting costs in the nation and the healthiest commute in america while the region i represent faces infrastructure challenges on a number of fronts i would like to focus my comments today solely on the emerging goods movement challenge as many of you know all too well this challenge is not exclusive to southern california trade gateway communities all over the nation are experiencing increased burdens on infrastructure surrounding air land and sea ports during most of last year i met and discussed goods movement issues with a variety of stakeholders including industry leaders think tanks which represent truckers railroads port operators retailers and transportation planners and a proactive attempt to address the freight challenges i introduced along with my colleague jesse jackson jr the on time act the bill h r fifty one o two which was introduced on january twenty third of this year will fund the construction of higher priority transportation projects which will alleviate congestion in our nation's gateway chorus to a dedicated trade based funding stream the on time act with direct united states department of transportation to designate transportation corps or national trade gateway corps is extending out from every official air land and sea port of entry in united states project eligibility under the on time act is limited to transportation projects located within the national gateway corridor furthermore the legislation limits funding surface transportation projects such as highway improvements truck climbing lanes truck bypasses great separations and interchanges on key freight routes publicly owned intermodal freight transfer facilities improvements to the transportation linkages out of port facilities also qualify as eligible projects the bill grants states with the project selection authority not the united states department transportation or congress to ensure all interested parties have an opportunity to engage in the project selection process the legislation requires states to seek the input from other government agencies as well as the public and private freight stakeholders on time ag derives its trade based dedicated funding stream  with a cap or a maximum of five hundred dollars whichever is less the procedure interrupted by the establishment of this which is conservatively estimated to be approximately sixty three billion dollars over the next ten years will be deposited into a national cargo owner rather than the transportation service providers such as shipping lines trucking or railroad companies additionally the fee is designed to be collected and administered by the existing federal government agencies for the use of existing forms and processes to the fullest extent the bill apportions the funds collected by the newly established to the transportation improvement project with the national trade gateway corridor in which it was collected there for all funds generated from the application of the goods imported and exploited at the port of charleston for example would be apportioned to the transportation projects within the national trade corridor or designated for the port of charleston while i recognize that a proposal like the on time act is most appropriate as a possible component of the next highway authorization in the short term the committee could move forward by advancing legislation that would simply direct the department of transportation to designate the month ago i traveled to slovenia to the annual meeting of the ministers of transportation twenty seven ministers of the e u who are having their conference asked me to  speak are still being french dutch whatever else but to discuss with them also their trans european transportation network three hundred  you can do for dragon are to see it from where i sit it is thirty individual projects three hundred fifty billion dollars the most ambitious of which is to link the north atlantic through the danube to the black sea saving hundreds of hours of transit and hundreds of millions of euros annually in transportation costs and others deal with their extending their existing high speed passenger rail systems expanding their freight rail network moving more goods from truck to rail or reducing their fatalities which five years ago were fifty three thousand a year and their comparable highway network to ours but in five years they reduce that down to the level of fatalities on the us highway system forty three thousand there's they're serious about this they have a plan they didn't engage in commission they engaged their ministers they engaged their top policy makers to lay out the needs of the sources of investments and to make the investments in there about  half of the way through already ahead of schedule you each of you in your own specific ways or are proposing something similar it's really simply takes political will to get there and we know we haven't had the political will to make those bold investments that we need at the white house in the last eight years there's been will on the part of the congress recall very well mr schuster moving challenging the clinton administration and house republican leadership to fence off the highway trust fund to truly make it trust and not subject to withholding of funds to build up surpluses and make deficits look smaller and we succeeded in that  effort was a bipartisan effort mr young advocated with the white house for three hundred seventy five billion dollar investment to surface transportation as recommended by the department of transportation the white house said speaker hastert made the same appeal finally told me that he was told by the white house staff he's welcome any time at the white house but not to talk about transportation investment in going beyond i think that's total total infrastructure investment not just transportation so mr laurel let let me ask your testimony says that the board that you would establish would determine which projects to fund based on how they meet national critical infrastructure needs what are the criteria you spell those out and you leave that up to the board to determine percent of the gross domestic product of the nation passes or the golden gate bridge on the west coast which is a privately owned and operated structure but to which we've committed federal funds to strengthen against earthquake and terrorist damage how much total investment will the nine billion dollars over three years in the corporation generate let me just start with that first of all i would imagine that create the opportunity for there to be public and private investment because i don't believe we can succeed alone in this effort i think the scale of the problem is that serious we're looking at one point six trillion dollars annual shortfall of funds and we i think we all know that that kind of money is not going to come from the from the federal government and i think that we will succeed if we have the engagement of a public private partnership start with three billion a year over three years and thirty million dollars in terms of a start up cost and this would become over the time it would become a government sponsored entity in s that in the consideration of safety legislation i crafted the megaprojects proposal and it sailed through the house we're going to have seventeen billion dollars that eventually was cut down to  six billion dollars because we had a couple whole program back and then when we got to the conference with the senate they didn't want criteria they didn't want any national standards i envision maybe six or seven national megaprojects were going to get a billion dollars to solve a critical juncture of confluence of goods movement people and congestion the senate senate told us very frankly we know how to make these investments and we'll make a decision that will take half of that money and and spread it out so it all got frittered away out on the national stage we have to go into this with a clear national be able to streamline this process as i mentioned briefly in my testimony we don't have to have any original study there is ample documentation about cost about challenges i hope synthesizing that information and being able to take the show on the road to help develop the criteria you talk about we i would hope that within the course of the next two years of the new administration in the new congress that we would be able to use this to supplement the work that this committee would be doing to be able to have the overview to give for what you've tried to do in terms of buying into a big picture adding criteria having grassroots support which is why the commission that i'm proposing would have a minimum of fifty hearings around the country to be able to give the sort of stamp of approval for the big picture and help us with the synthesizing process one of the challenges we face is that the responsibility is spread in congress throughout the primary thrust is here with your committee we have commerce we have ways and means we have that trouble i think the national transportation policy and revenue study commission did a good job in eighteen months but i worry about commissions having observed them over many years with very little like college professors who come in with a i've never seen a college professors study proposal for less than three years they're usually five year grant proposals or at least three years and we need some we need some tangible it's more about how you compress that whole process into a much shorter timeframe i appreciate your admonition mr chairman would look forward to working with you in the committee and doing that one of the part of the good news is that the rest of america is not waiting for the chamber of commerce is right rolling out i think forty hearings that they're going to have around the country we've been working with some groups that are looking at  r conferences and public gatherings we're having one with senator cardin baltimore on monday the number of national unions including the labor union are moving forward i think with your help we could craft an admonition for a short time frame gauge the new administration a grassroots effort so that it comes back in a quick enough time that we can do this integrated process and i look forward to committee and i and senator hollings from south carolina advocated very much what you're proposing a container security fee and the white house vigorously resisted finally  and i mr senator hollings just said well we'll drop it let's get to the framework port security policy in place and then figure out what we're going to do from there and i remember at the white house at the we'll do that we'll get there but we haven't and i think that your container the idea is a good one a maximum of five hundred dollars you know you know what the cost is  transportation cost of moving a container from long beach los angeles to the east coast significant eight hundred dollars minimum we getting more these days with the price of fuel so you r maximum cap on this would would be minimal would review no how much money do you have any idea ballpark idea what would work with that talking about sixty three billion dollars over a ten year period given what united states we're into danger motile applications yes sir and also great separations truck dedicated lanes biggest cost items in the in the portfolio as correct thank you duncan well thank you very much mr chairman and thanks for calling this hearing i have made extensive comments on this issue when we had the hearing with the national surface transportation commission several weeks ago and then again last week when we had a hearing before the ways in transit subcommittee and so i want to make additional comments at this time except to say that i missed laroche hit the nail on the head when she says that it will take obviously public and private investment there is certainly an important role for this committee and for this congress in regard to our nation's infrastructure as i've pointed out many  times people in california use the infrastructure in tennessee and vice versa and there is a legitimate and important national role and i share some of the chairman skepticism about another commission but because i have such great respect for my friend mr bloom an hour who was such a fine man this committee have co sponsored a bill and i think you said in the  suggestions from all members especially i think mr talbot's made some good suggestions so i'll have a chance to talk with all these members and so i'm not going to ask i'll save my questions for the witnesses on the next panel thank you very testimony and i correct in saying that these projects would have to be self funding ultimately ultimately they become self sustaining through user see through told those kinds of so a project that could not be self sustaining because it's more it was more important for whatever reasons or more expensive than it could recall been user fees or tolls could be could be financed in part through this bank bu total that that may be what we want to try to do here is to try to make the entity after the initial period a self sustaining one and the best way to try to do that in my view is  instance with water projects there are already of already fees associated with water usage it's a safe investment usually thought to be by the investment reason i ask is that clearly there are many infrastructure investments that are very important that could be self sustaining over the long term but also many that are very important they could know that we have to make sure we provide for them too well let me let me just if i can for a second because this is not meant to take the place of be a mistake and we could you could look at other ways in which you might be able to address some of the some of these issues and mr chairman i also might add while i said to you that the criteria would be established by the board of directors of corporation there are further and i won't go through them that are listed within the bill where the proposals can come from projects ready to go projects in the first three years of valu so for example i have two questions one is a a tunnel or a bridge for rail freight coming from a port that would qualify the the local commission will determine whether or not that is a priority project when i understand that it would qualify as a pilot it could very well qualified ok thank you my second question to bill a portion is the funds collected by the newly established me to transportation improvement charleston if we're looking at a national infrastructure system and i know nothing about charleston we're just using it as an example because you use that might not be the case for example and isn't this the purpose of the federal government among other things that you might it might serve a national purpose to invest more in the port of los angeles than could be generated notice and just maybe take some money from charles and give it to us angeles or vice versa is that why we have a federal government well in other words not every port has to be self sustaining and if it serves the national interest we should be able to just as we don't say that every dollar of taxes collected in new york has to be spent in new york the assumption behind us by the way is not th fee would raise enough money to take care of all of the problems in the transportation network related to freight there would be additional revenues that are collected by the federal government can be determined to go to to a port that may be deemed as a higher priority certainly the busier the port the more revenue that that port would generate certainly the port of l a long beach is significant port facility and state support of new york generates a significant amount of revenue and are significant projects that are needed to help alleviate some of the problems of those port facilities or are you have a make no question that my question is if you're setting up if we're saying we have a national infrastructure crisis which we clearly do and if we're looking for various revenue streams to support projects and to prioritize projects within that national need shouldn't we set up those financing mechanisms to rise to the right it wherever the greatest ne users of the system are paying the fee and so those after a year of talking to the freight forwarder the truckers the railroad folks the retailers that are using the system obviously to move goods the consensus was that they did not want to see those amounts diminished by others who would determine what the priorities of those projects should or should not be if the fee was in effect collected where the the facilities need to be improved and they were more or less in favor  of this process moving forward if the monies were diverted by well meaning folks like appropriators to other to other projects there was less there was less enthusiasm for this approach billion dollars for the dulles rail extension the projects are getting very high dollar amounts i met with some financier's in new york  was up there promotion of our high speed rail private sector and initiative and they were one of them told me he's working on a forty nine billion dollars project i thought it was in japan but i know  was in asia that they're they're working on financing so i i just have questions about the numbers of dollars that's why i said i want to look towards a half a tr taking some of the revenue stream and expanding it some for bonding some for loan guarantees some for government backing some for creative leveraging a host of those so i think we're on the same target mr from your your bill the goal mr mica is to develop a national infrastructure vision about how the pieces fit together and that and i agree with you that we don't have that but out do i get from the commission creates that and then in order to enact it we have it has to be incorporated into law absolutely and how do you get from what we're going to part of what needs to happen is that congress needs to be operating under an overall framework for how infrastructure pieces  blueprint and the law absolutely and what i would hope is that if we would finally have a comprehensive infrastructure vision for this century that it would guide what happens with the reauthorization and we're going to have communities across the country spend billions of dollars to take farm waste and fertilizer pollution out of drinking water if we had a framework that could be used to guide legislation as it goes through we could have the various pieces fit together i think we both agree that we need a strategic moving the process forward mr allison which is my four hundred thirty seven day process plan which is the amount of time that's going to take to replace that bridge and a hapless staff tells me that normally that takes six or seven years there's a normal process but we should be able to do that for most projects that are basically in the same footprint and finally mr calvert i've got a great proposal why i think it would generate revenue but i think it needs to be part of a more comprehensive plan like mr bloom and our is proposing and i'm proposing because even if i solve southern california's problems that i get to the nevada or i get to some other jurisdiction and my road narrows from ten lanes down to four lanes and my rail goes to single track and my other infrastructure is not adequate  and things instead of getting clogged up at the dock are getting clogged up somewhere else so yes we need i think some of the vision you provided that needs to be mashed into the larger plan so that we're doing the rest of the puzzle to make the whole thing work would you agree well certainly you're correct this is a step forward there isn't a freight strategy in this country  as you all know and there are certain areas in this country are suffering the consequences of that and i can't think of any area more so than just one of a plan nationwide i just want to take your plan nationwide well it is nationwide revenue stream that you talk about i concur that this needs to be a massive investment but i think the degree to which we can work with the private community in terms of that investment will be very honest with you  proposals that provides the interest to the investment community of getting engaged with the public sector in order for us to carry out truly a national infrastructure development policy and we need to be beyond that we get into the areas of the porton very interested in your comments mr calvert in regard to being able to at some additional  cost to the shippers what i would also like to see is being able to fund homeland security to inspect them to see what's in them so you can have the alarm because at one point several years ago one of my our colleagues i meet your colleagues from your neck of the woods indicated that if we were able to inspect every rail car every us citizen would have seven lawn chairs because that's how they are manifested is reinvestment in job development for this country which would build the economy to the to the extent that it hasn't been done indicates that is critical to be able to insert not just money into people's pockets but jobs that are really not necessarily useless i just need to learn more about what each one of you're proposing and how we can meld and marry this is not a one size fits all for funding for all the other areas that we have and i'd like to hear some of the comments about how you feel that this can help this country's economy begin to get back on track by providing jobs and infusing a lot of what is needed in this country well i think that the main premise of what i've been talking about is a way in which by serious investment both by the federal government continued serious investment by the federal government which has been historic in the areas of infrastructure and that in today's world given that the public sector and we're not going to do the kinds of things that we have done historically with the millions and millions of dollars that went into what they call the public works project project and that what we now are looking at is the need for the public and private sector to come together to look at this one point six trillion dollars shortfall that we have in being able to  nation and we build rail nationally we did communications nationally we've done other areas and that kind of that kind of investment created economic growth and with economic gro that is the problem with stablish in a trust fund you have to wall off reservations by executive branch and by the legislative branch to make deficits look smaller to ship dollars elsewhere to be a cover for some other purpose going to stablish trust funds that we have that the trust of the money will be used for the purpose for which he was collecting the gentleman from wisconsin thank you very much thank you very chairman for having scheduled this important hearing to help set up the authorization service transportation act and other areas thank you all for being being here i just want to make an observation first and generation now and yet in our history every from the beginning when they were all interested in developing this great continent and then almost every fifty years since then we've had leadership that has has managed to lead the country to renew its commitment to having a person infrastructure from henry clay and the expansion westward to lincoln and the huge railroad investments that were a public private partnership  to go ice and howard who led us to build the biggest public works project in the history of the world that transformed our our economy and our country but now to maintain that actually cost twice as much as to build new because people are using that road and so they have to repair it and improve it working around existing traffic and we are spending less we did it when eisenhower was president as a country india china others are stepping up to bat and increasing their investments dramatically because they know that that is the way to maintain and improve their standard of living and yet we if we can't figure out how to do it we'll see ourselves gradually slip down these things don't happen overnight but a generation of neglect followed by a second generation of relativism that will act will send us into a situation where we may not be for procrastination i think the chairman expressed that concern that we don't really want to provide another occasion for delay we need to marshal our forces and get the job done so i'd like to if you could to address that in the second question is that  i think the public will run provided leadership and increase investment but they would want to get have a good plan not have it wasted and not have unnecessary delay and we  have tied ourselves up like go over is little people we have a lot of well meaning regulations and so on and they do we do have to have a good environment but do we have to send ten or twenty years to build a new airport me i took the chairman's admonition to heart i mean the whole thrust behind this is that there is a sense of urgency now i think there's a recognition that infrastructure is in crisis and that it's going to become pounded by global warming and international competition and the fact of the highway trust fund is going into deficit for the first time in history so it's the whole thrust behind the creation of the commission tying this stand is to make sure that it is not an excuse for procrastination but instead provides a framework so that we can move forward and it is not i am convinced a question of just more money we do need more money but the value proposition how the money is spent and what it is spent on i find it fascinating that as we look around the country that there are local initiatives for transportation for transit for water park and recreation and seventy five percent of them pass and they are financed by property taxes and sales taxes that are not always the most popular but it's because they've had the vision they've had the connection and they've had a plan to move forward people know what they're getting but it's my hope that we can create a national commission have a sense of urgency with the new administration to move forward and that with that sense of urgency and direction that it would be easier for people to make the adjustments in financing that are going to be necessary for another government entity is going to build a great separation they should be given the same exemption it would save millions of dollars per grade separation saving the taxpayers a tremendous amount of money without any really lessening transportation act which would have tremendous effect throughout the country gentleman's time has expired the gentleman from california raises an interesting point which i'm not quite sure is accurate but at any fifty states is critical to our nation's economic health and all fifty states are experiencing huge gaps between their infrastructure needs and the funding to provide for these needs so i'm interested in i'm looking at the practical application of these proposals how it is the most isolated land mass in the world and so statutory language requiring substantial regional or national significance poses challenges for us because if two narrowly interpreted one our people argue that because of our isolation what happens in hawaii stays in hawaii and that is not true so mr ellison i'm as a bill are both of your bills use this kind of language and i a proposal that includes the application to all fifty states this is not you know cherry picking anything else this is meant to deal with infrastructure national and as far as i know  most dependent on goods coming through shipping and so i hope that as we discuss your proposal further that that that kind of unique situation where there are no highways there are no alternative ways for people  hawaii to obtain their goods ninety plus percent come from come through i think the ports in california that we can give recognition of the potential very very adverse impact on the within the states in the communities because of the provisions of the interstate commerce clause which which many in the in the freight industry claim is unconstitutional and many attorneys agree so more likely a fee if one is to be placed has to be done by us here in the united states house of representatives and not by the state and local communities so i'd be happy to work with the gentle lady from hawaii to make sure that equitable to you know why benefits from this not be  previous hearings witnesses have advised us that one of the reasons that we have a surging infrastructure problem is that some communities have not maintained their infrastructure and had no plan for place but if this is true and i'm inclined to they did it is do you all agree with that it would be reasonable to ask as a condition of receiving the natural federal financial assistance that this problem be members i think in the course of the my plan for infrastructure bank would be that communal local communities and regional projects would be presented and i'm hoping that this would be a spark for greater planning about regarding local needs so that we would have communities thinking about what they need over the longer term so that sort of the idea behind focusing on projects of regional significance because in they would it would force communities to say what are our needs how are how are we maintaining what we have anybody else part of yourself and part of what i would hope would come out of a national infrastructure vision would be a reassessment of what the appropriate role of the federal government should be and i would hope that out of that comes the notion that there will be local skin in the game everywhere the era of one hundred percent federal money or largely federal money i think it as it relates to infrastructure should go away and i would hope that part of what we could do in the context of an infrastructure plan for the country would be to harmonize what the match ratios would be for different types of infrastructure right now you get eighty percent for a road project you might get fifty percent for a transit project you get something else for a water infrastructure and we find that the federal formula sometimes drives the decision not what is the best transportation solution so i would hope that there would be local skin in the game a uniform federal match ratio and that we rethink the myriad of all these goofy little things that we have embedded in statute over time that's one of the reasons why it takes so long is because we have so many permutations that no longer makes improvements along the way and maintain that equipment and good working order and government that's not the case and unfortunately the governments are reacting to a disaster such as what's happened in  obviously well publicized events here in the united states we ought to when we finish an infrastructure project delivered to whoever the recipient of that project is going to be a should also deliver to us a maintenance program and how they're going to maintain that project in the future calvert dollars let me ask you this what is the protocol effect of applying davis vacant prevailing wage laws colorado thank you mr caldwell i think that i think you raise of the question of maintenance i think has got to be a very very much a part of the discussion debate whatever entity we tried to to put together i think we and i come infrastructure and when it collapses our economic development in our revitalization and a thriving economy collapses with it thank you all very much m back mr arcuri thank you mr chairman i'd like to thank the panel just one brief comment that i have you know you talk about how we're going to fund this and obviously that's that's critically important but after we decide how we're going to fund it my concern comes to what priorities do we use and mr berman are you brought it up i think it's no matter where i go in my district people talk about water sewer that's their number one concern every mayor every county executive has that that concern and how they're going to fund broadband everyone wants that then we move into the areas of energy and transportation there's a lot of controversy as to what is the best thing for the nation for the region for the state how do you think that we prioritize these different projects what suggestions do you have once we get the funding in place for setting up priorities do we have a national priority do we do we make the priorities based upon what what the local communities want or do we set a national priority list in terms of how we fund these would be my hope that this process particularly one that for the first time the federal government really does engage people at the state and local level in terms of the formulation will help develop a consensus i find as i work around the country every month i go to one or two different communities i find that there's much greater consensus about what the needs  are complying with federal requirements with clean air with clean water with congestion that there is less controversy than one would think when people are given a chance to come together and work on it if we system what the federal partnership is going to be if we streamline the proposition so there aren't people human right now in the department of transportation there are people cranking away on a stupid cost effectiveness formula  for transit that has no relationship to how any agency in america is operated but they're still spending time and money on it in republican and democratic administrations we've got to get to a point where we strip the stupid stuff out that we streamline what it is that the federal government's going to do when we give greater accountability for the money according to a broader framework i think that this is something that get the push pull between do we move to road construction energy you know what how do you make that decision or what priorities having stablish for example criteria that transit projects are going to have to reduce the carbon footprint i mean i think that is a reality and deal in a uniform fashion in terms of how we're going to move the greatest number of people for the amount of money involved it will enable  very as a nation to stop subsidizing airplane trips that are nineteen minutes from here to philadelphia for instance i mean the economic model i mentioned a moment ago doesn't work for one hundred forty dollars a barrel oil it would argue for shifting more resources to rail passenger service and giving people flexibility giving corridors opportunities in terms of how you're going to solve congestion problems in some cases it will argue for beefing up rail as opposed to short for aviation i think get us to the thirty twelve member board not nine of the members on board of directors who are appointed by the president people who have experience in the area of transit public housing roads bridges water infrastructure public finance related disciplines where there is with an examination of what it is that we need and where we need it and now we have the american society of engineers we have all kinds of groups that are moving forward with what our priorities need to be what areas are out there so this is not  but there is it is a way of if you will look at lifting the decision making process out of what is beneficial to yourself or to me in terms of my own community and obviously that will continue because we have a local perspective we listen to local government but i'm saying it is about trying to utilize an independent board if you will with representation from government etc in helping to create that you had the ministers when the chairman pointed out what the european governments have come up with here they laid out a plan and it was based on some very serious analysis of where the shortfalls are we have again a number of repeating myself a number of entities today that do that year in and year out and most of the time those projects implants lay on the shelf and they collect dust i think we can create a mechanism and we've tried to lay that out in this which will help us to make those kinds of determinations with the  have so many similarities i come from a state who has a lot of infrastructure needs but some of our needs are not restructuring what we already have a repairing or redoing it still trying to reach people with clean water and waste water and broadband and we know that to reach these areas it's become so expensive and that's why they're not being reached so i would like to see something where we have a combination of not just restructuring what we already have but still high prioritizing people who never had that chance never had never had the ability to access clean water in a fashion that a lot most of our constituents have the other thing i think that certainly have similarities on and i don't know if you addressed this in any of your bills the time is money aspect of infrastructure i mean i have a road in my in my can my congressional district route thirty five you know if we start building it when we first got our first estimate oh i wish we had because now it is so inordinately expensive to complete this is going to be a challenge for years to come and so i think that's why gardy bonds and those kinds of things have been attractive we did a design build the governor did a design build on this segment of the highway but i don't know how you how you answer that question or how you meet that challenge of moving forward i do believe it goes back to what congressman blumenauer was saying is you've got to have a lot of local skin in the game in order to set the priority to move it forward and but it also has to be vetted i think a lot of people in our local community their project is the number one project for them and so that's where it really becomes hard and as we all know we're political people it becomes very political and same time i don't know if the time is money aspect of infrastructure development this is something that you all got into and totally unserved areas but if anybody has any fact is delayed at the port facilities whether it's air land or sea so you're absolutely correct that it's necessary to get freight moving in america because that would help alleviate costs to manufacturers make them more competitive and have less jobs go offshore because of that so it's an important thing that we that we dress for this process and the reference i made to the value proposition in the plan when we have construction costs going up forty percent in the last three years and it's going to be higher than that going forward that is a huge potential benefit if we can get our act together and i would  toward projects that are ready to go and so the notion that somehow we can move and how we can get going and then i think you're right in terms of the length of time that it takes and i think that this is what we're trying to do is to not have the kinds of delays that we've had in the past but specifically talked about first three years in this ng it's stuff that's ready to go and i'm hearing about all the time that there are projects ready to go in there just in the financing to deal with it and the purpose of the infrastructure  development capital is really one of my primary concerns has been that there are areas of this country that don't have the kinds of services that the rest of us have and because the financing i look at that particular chair of the ag subcommittee of appropriations and i look at broadband we are just not just not doing it and it's not happening and i think that's why it has to be public and private in order to make it happen thank you  have this this effort and trying to leverage essentially and that maybe i have made this point strong enough with regard to this proposal that this bill is about public private partnerships to specifically with the shortfall that we experience every single year and being able to finance infrastructure the chairman recalled some of the difficulties that we've  had in recent years with administration actually i recall as a member of the committee we were arm wrestling with clinton administration and o m b we've certainly had our differences with the current bush administration and a lack of vision and a different approach the commission that i am recommending would have the new administration be part of the formulation so that it makes it easier to work with them in a cooperative would have local and state because capital is talking about we've got lots of different needs around the country we want to have them to be participating in the bayou and last but not least as important as this committee is it doesn't have exclusive jurisdiction in the house we have issues that take place in some of the super fun playing up in terms of water with commerce with natural resources with old land security even with the department of defense which is the largest manager of infrastructure in the world so by having a comprehensive commission state and local the administration and other elements it would give us an opportunity to have a comprehensive effort so that increases the likelihood that we're pulling in the same direction because we have no time to waste do you want to sort of ben bernanke for transportation so be answered a lot of ways but i would like to say on the job front for every billion dollars spent we're looking at about forty seven thousand five hundred new jobs generally union paying jobs actually jobs you can offshore  committee is that we need to do a better job of actually assessing the economic impact because there's been talk about dynamic scoring but the current system does not take into account develop a mechanism to collect that fee or tax and whatever mechanism you have that it's an equitable one and that those that are using the system pay obviously an equitable amount and those who benefit from the system benefit at least to the amount that they pay and so we go through that process by thinking we can keep that basic tenet that will be just fine as a blue dog i don't like to spend money we don't have to about important issues for a nation i'll just say on the record that i do support public private partnerships and i appreciate the good discussion and some of the ideas and i didn't get to hear everything discussed today but little bit of it and i agree that we do need to have a national plan for infrastructure especially in light of the rising fuel costs congestion delays the issues that we have with our airlines and and costs involving them the aging of our infrastructure in general whether israel roads bridges airports whatever might be so i appreciate the discussion of having a group that comes together of all the parties involved and one of the issues is very important i him put into what's a priority for our state as far as our spending and so i guess my question is how can we ensure that our states have a good role to play and determining the priorities of how that many will be legislation the department transportation would pick the national gateway corps however the bill states that the projects selection authority would not be the u s department of transportation or congress but a local state and local driven process in which those priorities would be driven and also the users of the system including the private entities that would be using the system but also be involved to make sure that the system is prioritized to  make sure that the money is spent the proper way the infrastructure commission that i'm proposing would have representation from state and local in terms of the formulation and one of the past of creating a national infrastructure vision is to refine the role of the various partners in that equation as i mentioned earlier i think hundred percent federal money should not return i think we ought to look at balancing the partnership and providing a framework so people can work comfortably within it and one of the will follow up question to one of our other big concerns is that we s fund taxes in many times we don't get as much money back at some other state so that's also been a huge concern of our state is we don't mind doing our share but we also want to have our share back to have you ensure that states will be treated fairly well obviously from california's perspective being the largest state in the country that's certainly an important issue we have port needs in our own states but that's what they are so i mentioned to mr carney any process that we do here whether it's a republican processes or a democratic process it has to be thought of as equitable and that california is willing to do its fair share as other large states but the  but it has to be for a national purpose where we all believe that we're getting something out of the process and and hopefully that's what will happen in future transportation if you do it comprehensively for infrastructure and you're dealing with transportation and water and broadband and energy transmission aviation and rail if you do it comprehensively it's easier to have an equitable balance than if you're just picking one and another and so i would suggest the more comprehensive the easier it is to reach the objective that you're s  to heavy commuter districts we have thirteen bridges on the deficient list we have a number of dams on the deficient flagged list of dams in need of repair we have infrastructure needs that i wouldn't have thought of maybe until recently metro north railroad for instance is suffering from a lack of parking spaces since the price of fuel went up so much that a lot of people leaving their cars home and commuting to the new york area  to new york city region by train and so that's a kind of insert infrastructure that needs to be considered buses which may not be thought of as infrastructure but nonetheless in an area that's heavily populated westchester county where it's so dense populated it is hard to find a right of way for new rail transit it's been brought to my attention that buses that are designed to compete with  in other modes of travel would attract people to use the buses which are currently thought of still as the greyhound greyhound model and they have the added advantage of being able to have managed bus lanes while they go through the major routes and then they get out into the counties they can split and go on existing infrastructure roads that already exist to take people to diverse drop off points so just a couple of ideas there in terms of skin in the game for many of the communities in my district they are strapped for cash and property tax is a constant and yearly concern or for some a daily concern one percent cost share on a road or forty five percent cross year for a water grant is a high hurdle to climb how would these infrastructure proposals help them and what communities be able to band  and i think that there we want to deal with locality but i want to get in the game from the investment community in terms of public private partnership effort i think that we need to engage them and talk about we we worked at this in terms of when we did the cops program here we said hey you've got some money here for three years and then after that you have to take on some of the responsibility or all of the responsibility that and i think we can we can start that and i don't have a dollar amount for you i don't have a can go from there to figure out how it is that we make this actually when we say public private that is on the public side it's federal government and state and local government in terms of their participation i just point out in the  will work under my proposal these are projects of national or regional significance so absolutely local communities would be banding together with other local communities  of all i'd like to applaud my colleagues for your testimony today particularly your concern with transportation and what's going on in this nation given though many of you don't serve in this jurisdiction i really applaud your efforts to help us as we struggled to do better in this area i'm going to focus my questions because i'm limited in time to mr calvert because your proposal most increase impacts my particular district i have five questions for you so if you could be as brief as possible because i would like to see a closing comment number one do you have a list of supporting companies and organizations that are supporting h r fifty one yes i can supply that for you thank you number two why did you include exports in your proposal many would say that companies here in the nation are having a difficult enough time competing with products in japan and china and everyplace else so why did you consider including export the one there are some  regulations international regulations regarding trade this is a c and if you if you exclude exports it may be deemed as a disproportionate to imports and so in order for this to meet the legal requirements  under collection of exports were necessary and obviously exports do impact transportation as well as imports of third question what is the cost of collecting these fees in administ program you said you were talking about a sixty three billion dollars profit over a ten year period of time is that net gross or is this less that's gross is a very nominal fee because you're using the existing customs form on a ship and so in effect it would be a software change i understand from those who are involved that it would be somewhere in the about the two percent range ok and mr calvert i'm a little concerned about the wide scope of the use of the funds in the notes that was provided to this committee it said that the second option of where funds could be utilized is for construction of or improvements to a publicly owned intermodal freight transfer facility for providing access to such facility or for making operational improvements to such a facility i will tell you in my district i'm the home of the seven ten freeway the four zero five forty five percent of the and entire nations cargo almost half of the entire nation's cargo is going through my district so could you describe why you felt the need to include the use of funding for construction of the intermodal facilities given that your magic impacts on our roads and highways which is what this committee is really all about  community your community the state and the users of the system to find the points that are clogging traffic through the system and clear it to get those trains and trucks through the system through the e to help move freight certainly certainly rail is an important component of that and will continue to be important component is as you know we've built the alameda corridor or but we stopped building it and now the train traffic is backing up throughout southern california all the so this is a way for the local communities to collect which would alleviate that traffic and collect a significant amount of money to pay for those improvements ok my final question mr chairman although i do agree that mr calvert bill is well timed some point of this is absolutely needed i'd like to respectfully request that we do a hearing  particularly in my district since fifty percent of the nation's cargo is impacted by this idea in california right now the port of long beach in los angeles is in the process of instituting a container and i think it's quite timely for this com the many questions that were stated by committee members i think it really speaks to the need of this issue my final point though mr calvert i'd like to bring up of my concern of your bill your comment you said that the benefit should be at least as much as we put in and in your bill you talked about a quarter of three hundred miles well california we're pretty well congested still in my particular district three hundred miles goes past san diego into mexico three hundred miles goes all the way up to sacramento and i got to tell you i'm going to have a real hard time supporting why five percent of the entire nation's cargo is going through my district and yet you would say san diego would benefit you would say sacramento would benefit so my question to you is are you considering just meant in terms of that that would be that would be an extreme objection not only of myself but many of my colleagues who obviously with forty four percent of all imports and exports taking place tremendous amount of traffic but the trains the majority of the trains that leave the port l a long beach go through san bernardino and riverside county and the inland empire most of the distribution facilities where the trucks  going located in the inland empire state of california and so i would point out to the gentle lady that those impacts are shared by other communities not just not just los angeles and as a matter of fact the train traffic is so backed up in riverside the standard grade crossing now is twenty five minutes in the city of riverside the city of san bernardino so obviously we need to work together to help alleviate this is a regional problem southern california i've been working with the  i've found that it's not simple but happy to work with a gentle lady to try to come up with a with an equitable solution i welcome that and mr calvert i would say i agree with you there impacts throughout however a formula is definitely needed because it's not equal for remaining with us about this whole period of time usually members come and give their statement and run off to another hearing or to a floor statement but you've stayed with it and you've been responsive to all the searching questions that my colleagues on the committee and for that i thank you i invite you all and we'll make sure you get a copy of the statements of the good witnesses on today's hearings is a very informational reading very instructional and i think it's extremely substantive material that will add to your understanding of the already advanced understanding of the proposals for the problems we're all facing mr calvert i did want to observe however that whenever a railroad undertakes an action that triggers a review by the surface transportation board that also triggers a need to review should  a railroad want to add a second line for example it must seek under federal law review by the surface transportation board and that entails need to review mr chairman ask questions for clarification as could they ask for a negative declaration of that and and that that they ask for a what a negative negative declaration and the fact that that they have that review but usually when they're making an acquisition for example they will ask either for whose testimony has already been submitted and will be included in the record to welcome this panel thank you for your participation today for the splendid statements that do you have already submitted which i read it to great length i'm flattered by your invitation and to be on a panel with my three colleagues but i've submitted a statement let me speak broadly and discursive lee about our topic today of infrastructure finance we're here to consider the ways in which we pay for infrastructure because we find very frightening levels of need that come out of engineering statements and other estimates and the point that i want to make is that  perhaps we're entering the wormwood at the wrong hole needs when we talk about infrastructure are a biological not in economic terms when we have a statement of need for a dam or a bridge is the dam the best solution is it cost effective is simply the fact that it's in disrepair doesn't tell us for example whether or not we should rehabilitate it whether or not we should build a new one or whether we should let the dam obsolete the point is that we do not have a system that a value it's comprehensively all of our infrastructure opportunities and my belief is that if we want to get more out of federal resources that we would do better to look at not how we pay for these projects but how we select them this is particularly true because of credit scoring in the one nine hundred ninety act that now takes direct outlays loan guarantees other forms of credit arrangement and puts them on a parody dollar for dollar basis in the federal government the problem is  have that we don't have a a a new method of infrastructure finance that we have nine b ten or a b twenty caught sharing or one hundred percent cost bearing by the federal government regardless of the scope of national versus local benefits regardless of the presence of nonstructural alternatives regardless of whether or not user fees have been used to manage peak uses or are otherwise to maximize our use of the asset so the proposals that came out of the c s i s infrastructure commission is to create a single national infrastructure bank and not only would it be able to wield all of the tools that we've heard discussed and will he will hear discussed on this panel such as direct subsidies or loan guarantees or interest rates subsidies and the like or whatever kind of assistance the government wants to provide to make an infrastructure debt instrument credit worthy but rather to have a place where all infrastructure proposals are evaluated using consistent parameters for the valley all of time the interest rate the cost of capital  discount rate the value of human life to put all of them on an equal footing so that we know that we're allocating federal dollars to the most pressing needs in the infrastructure bank would create a variety of interesting different opportunities now highlight three very quickly members calvert and jackson have a proposal for a container system and they have an idea that users would be willing to pay for it and the point was made i believe  congressman mica that's inherently multi state ledge states come together with a package of user fee proposals with perhaps supplementary private financing go to the bank and say we think that this is worth federal involvement of x and that can be directly negotiated and give you another example new york city has a very daring vision for how it will exist in twenty twenty five but when it takes that vision and tries to get funding for roads versus mass transit versus water versus sewer it has to go to different places let it take that comprehensive vision and take it to one place to a national infrastructure facility that would allow it to say well new york if you raise this on your own in the state helps you we'll give you this or finally we have very innovative new private financing entering the infrastructure area and yet we have concerns about whether or not we're hocking assets or whether or not federal and state parole gives are being balanced let's establish a framework within which private money can refinance or more importantly finance the construction of new assets within the framework of the bank and let the bank be a true financing partner even though i dislike the term public private partnership i think the right term is business deal but let's make good business deals the private sector with the bank as the federal government pro thank you sir thank you very much for your rather concise statement of your presentation the remarkable feed we have a shared interest in my doings this floor in chairman over star ranking member duncan and the committee thank you for the opportunity to present to you today my name is mark florian i run the infrastructure banking group at goldman sachs and my twenty three years at the firm i focused on financing of infrastructure development it truly is my passion the nation's transportation system as the camino is in a crisis because current funding sources as well as financing tools are insufficient as a company knows we're falling behind the use of our highways doubled in the last twenty five years yet the capacity of the system is only up three percent the cost of maintaining and expanding the system has accelerated construction inflation is up forty percent over the last three years the cost of asphalt alone this year is up over twenty five percent the fuel taxes serve our country well since hundred fifty six but it's not keeping up there is no silver bullet to our nation's transportation crisis but there are number of actionable steps we can take in order to address our problems two main categories more funding for revenues available which will help us to use broader capabilities in financing infrastructure investments the gas tax is an important source of funding we could try to increase the fuel tax in the short term but it is a challenge for from both a political will and a public acceptance perspective when alternative that the committee is considered is to index the fuel tax i think that makes sense we can index it either to  i or to construction inflation that being said however i think most importantly for the long term it is imprudent to rely primarily on a funding source that's based on fuel consumption given the real the reality that americans are shifting to more efficient vehicles so consumption will naturally go down these of the the vehicle miles traveled and cars that don't even use gasoline are in our future and not the distant future when  most promising solutions for the funding shortfall is to explore greater use of direct user charges tolling or vehicle miles traveled charges we need to pursue greater use of user fees and availability of user fees in their various forms at the same time we need to be cognisant that there are citizens of our country that have less means and we need to provide alternatives for all of our citizens particularly those who don't have the financial aid capacity necessarily pay user market supplies about four hundred billion dollars a year of funding for infrastructure we need to encourage it and to expand it and it's provided a very attractive cost of capital as a result of this committee's efforts under safety lou private activity b to have been expanded and they have been an important part of our transportation funding in recent years we need to expand these programs in streamline them there has been a lot of interesting discussion about the exciting proposal for the national infrastructure bank i believe it's this national infrastructure bank will only be effective if we specifically figure out what we intend that conflicts with this tool there's no lack of capital to provide financing we have the deepest capital markets in the world in the u s we don't need another source of money to live and do projects but we can use a source to subsidize and to help assist in infrastructure projects getting them done better faster and cheaper first that banks could provide and interest cost subsidy lower rates we have taxes on bonds already it should be competitive with tax exempt bond financing or better second the bank to provide a credit subsidy essentially lending to projects that are higher risk much like to see a dozen day but perhaps more aggressively and third the bank could provide project cost subsidies with grants for early stage development it's always important to keep in mind though that while financing tools are incredibly important we need more funding without that funding we can't finance public private partnerships are also an opportunity we should encourage the structures since us our own u s pension plans are now interested in investing in them we've seen that calipers new york is using new jersey teachers texas teachers castors and many others are very very interested investing in infrastructure we should tap into that source of capital what our next steps what do we do from here as we look to improve the quality of our nation's transportation infrastructure i think the poor key objectives first faster delivery of projects second better choices for users more revenue available and using the broad range of financing alternatives while the committees focus on financing alternatives is consider continue your consideration of additional revenue sources they are all in underpinning that financing that is necessary to fund our nation's needs into the future thank you thank you very much  chairman and i would like to thank you and other members of the committee with your microphone up like to thank you and other members of the committee for this opportunity testify it is difficult to handle public investments in government budget the rewards from the investments are spread over an extended period while the cost of investing is a media that creates something of a bias against investment my ful testimony describes six options for dealing with the bias for highways and mass transit there are very strong arguments for raising the fuel tax but obviously that's difficult politically or related and i think that peary or option  probably not much easier politically as relying more on polling and congestion seas which are now much easier to collect because of technological advances they could generate very large amounts of revenue while increasing the efficiency of highway investment quite another approach as it would be to adopt capital budgeting for the federal government i don't think that would work very well in our system the basic idea of capital budgeting is to reduce capitals disadvantage in the budget process by allowing it to be some ants with boring while requiring the operating budget to be balanced with tax and other revenues the problem is that we seldom come close to balancing our operating budget and if you allow the marginal operating expenditure to be financed by debt you are no longer reducing capitals relative disadvantage if you do find a way to then there is a danger in the budgeting process that all sorts of things get defined to be capital my full testimony lots of various types of infrastructure banks and they can be designed in a great variety of ways with varying degrees of control by the federal government one form is a government sponsored enterprise but they have to be carefully regulated to limit their risk taking given the problems and dealing with institutions such as fannie mae i would suggest that the congress should think long and hard before creating any new one could create a revolving fund to deal with the problem of the lumpiness of investments for agencies that invest only president clinton's commission to study capital budgeting it is certainly worth an experiment the full testimony discusses public private partnerships by which i mean private ownership of parts of the infrastructure i think that could be a useful way to bring more resources to infrastructure investment last the testimony discusses ways of making federal subsidies for highways more efficient the structure of federal grants is very complicated but many think that a considerable portion just displaces investment that states and localities would make anyway it would be useful to study minimum effort and cost sharing requirements to see if they could be designed to provide the federal government more bang for the buck while that is not an easy path there is a much simpler improvement of fish and sea out there that could be pursued that is looking at the tax exemption i'm enough of obama it costs of federal government far more in lost revenues and it reduces interest costs lower levels the government carefully designed tax credit could greatly improve the efficiency of this the subsidy having said all that it is clear that getting money for infrastructure investment it's going to be very difficult social security medicare and medicaid expenditures are approaching one half of m congested roads to water systems etc i will not recites in here but i will say that the there's been a wide deterioration as a matter of fact most people who guard our infrastructure is broken  has become increasingly inadequate with passage of time that has not kept up with the practices of other advisers industrialized economies at the federal level infrastructure is funded largely out of general revenues and highway trust funds and at the state level the great majority of infrastructures fund is through the municipal bond markets as well as state and local budgets but these funding funding mechanisms have failed to keep pace with our national requirements the current economic slowdown and turmoil in housing and credit markets threatens to further constrain state and local capabilities for infrastructure spending because states and municipalities rely heavily on property and sales tax the housing correction and consumer slowdown will create a budgetary crisis even greater than we are having today in addition to the absence of a federal capital budget  prevention the lack of having a federal budget prevents as an appropriate sensible transparent and fully accountable method of funding the nation's investment in long term productive assets which is so necessary for global competitive a federal budget would better focus our national priorities in a timely fashion also it would better structure the payment and amortization of long term investment so as to match results and revenues derived from the investment i disagree with approach to the federal budget ng as being an additional problem most industrialized countries in the world do have a separate capital budget and operating budget and do very well with it and every business in the united states is able to manage that problem as well the major impediment to closing the infrastructure deficit is not lack of available cash is the midst of korean mention or because of high interest rates and that was standing recent credit problems and bank liquidity concerns the world is awash with capital and long term interest rates remain near historic low levels in fact there is no shortage of privately held funds to help pay for infrastructure reconstruction and development if it is undertaken in a market sensitive manner a new approach to funding infrastructure capital investment would open up new capital markets from international sources and domestic and initiatives have been introduced in the congress the dodd hago senate though as one nine hundred twenty six would create a national infrastructure bank representative ellison frank you and i have introduced similar provisions and search you know one and they were both of those issues today these bills would authorize up to sixty billion dollars in u s government guarantees for bonds with maturities up to fifty years for infrastructure projects properly structured government guarantee bonds could leverage up to three hundred billion dollars as proposed the national infrastructure bank would not operate as a bank but is a federal agency with no capitalization however however the loral legislation were modified for the bank to be capitalized for up to ten billion dollars the bonds would be sufficiently flexible to achieve investment grade status as well as access to broader markets in the house congress and the law i think is three eight nine six has proposed a infrastructure development act that's two thousand and seven which would be capitalized  nine billion dollars over three years this would act like a bank even though it is not called a bank it would be able to make loans issuance so that an equity securities all of these new institutional arrangements would help remove politics from the funding of infrastructure projects and provide needed professional expertise and standards to states and localities for project development they would also help states acquire financing for projects of national and regional significance further by offering federal guarantees state and local governments to keep borrowing costs low and provide both leverage and flexibility the adoption of a  significant significant elements of these combined pieces of legislation is strongly urge in order to achieve the following imperative is to create high skilled well paid jobs to put the economy out and that g here earlier today for example that for each one billion dollars spent in infrastructure the creation of forty seven five hundred thousand jobs secondly to divert the economic of our economic economy into long term investments and away from consumer stimulus programs which inevitably lead to excessive speculation i would like to stress this in particular the congress in its attempts to offset the lack idea economy pass legislation for stimulus that is short term and would be a consumer driven stimulus which in the end to the kind of excessive speculation that we have trouble with dealing however an infrastructure investment program provides for stimulation but through long term projects that continue to add to the economy as well and the future  third imperative is to enable us to close the infrastructure at a time of low barring cause to create significant wealth in the form of productive long term national resources to increase future revenue and to provide access to a new large capital markets here and abroad in summary public investment is the most responsible and reliable way to stimulate new private investment create jobs in the country and sustain innovation and productivity growth his country can ill afford to delay infrastructure investment and finally american competitiveness depends on a healthy infrastructure and needs long term job creation as part of this program i commend the committee for addressing this very long term but very very substantial issue for the country i think it is critical that this debate that we heard here today  fashioning a transit european transportation network above and beyond what individual member countries of the european union have  crafted and boiled those down to thirty major projects that are of significance because they are transborder projects and because they relate to priority of the sea fascinating concept high priority in their report has been given to more environmentally friendly transport  most and they have a map for each one of the thirty projects and a progress report how much money is coming from the european infrastructure bank how much come from national governments how much is come from private sources and the state of progress on each one of the thirty projects that's remarkably well structured thought through plan  some of the larger scale projects have been completed the fixed link between sweden and denmark airport railway line linking rotterdam to the german border and then the high speed brussels paris brussels cologne amsterdam london those are massive projects as the result of a paris brussels li is that there is no air service commercial air service between paris and brussels it's all by high speed train a trip that i took as a graduate or en route to a graduate program from paris to brussels in one nine hundred fifty six took six hours last year that trip was eighty minutes one train leaves every three minutes from brussels to paris and likewise from paris to brussels with eleven hundred passengers aboard at one hundred eighty four miles an hour from six in the morning till midnight carrying millions of people commute daily between the capital of europe and the capital of fr people commute from a business person commute from two in the southeast a large valley two hundred twenty miles daily to paris in an hour and fifteen minutes seventy five of the you can hardly get through security at the nation's airports to your gate in seventy five minutes and they're doing this now they have they have their nationals they have their european community budget they have something called cohesion fun they have the european redevelopment fun they have the erp in vestment bank and they have private sector sources but all of this investment which in the short term is three hundred fifty billion u s dollars but in the long term will  a critic of capital budgeting but i'm not but i suspect you would not you would not disagree that we should know what those capital needs are but i think that's very different from capital budgeting the capital budget is a way of planning how you divide your capital and operating expenditures and it just stops there we need we do that i think the advantage of capital budgeting if you do it right is that you can finance the capital with debt and you can pay it off as that amortize us therefore the citizens who actually use it are the ones who pay for it but that only works if you balance your operating budget and that's the great defect in our system we don't come anywhere close to that in my full testimony unless you have the discipline to do it right i don't think that at all that's the key that's a key that's very witness table twenty or so years ago david stockman said he was opposed to a capital budget because  we had one the congress would want to fund it however i said well we're doing it now but it's done in a haphazard fashion and we have no way of prioritizing those we know what those what the total portfolio needs the european commission has done that they've looked at the total range of capital investments and then narrowed it down to transportation to those that to those transportation projects that have met national that is european national benefits so i think we as my personal preference s we at least establish a capital budget so we have an assessment of the needs and then engage the political will to prioritize and to to invest in those and you're quite right dr fenner point out the difference very interesting distinction between financing infrastructure that compares new projects to managing the old ones and allows nonstructural wells alternatives the european commission also introduced in an element that i cited a moment ago environmentally friendly how do you why do you make that distinction because we pay for people to build things and we generally don't pay for people to pursue those nonstructural alternatives and they they might be better they might not congestion charge akin to the one  charge in london might be a better solution than building new mass transit or than other capital expenditures in a given urban area preserving wetlands or some planning land use might be a better solution to flood control than building new dams and levees the system we have now doesn't hunt up those answers what it does is encourage localities to apply for a capital grant so that they can get one hundred percent from the corps of engineers and if they don't get it that year to ride the merry go round for another year and come back and see if they can get it next year so what's lost is directing their attention first to nonstructural solutions and second to getting the best solution that can be funded now in place and so what we get are solutions biased towards capital and that are often delayed because of the process by which we select these pro so you're quite right to point out that distinction and the importance and we have in the water resources development act that present be to congress overwrote new direction for the corps of engineers to review non structural alternatives and that's a principle that we should probably extend to other aspects of our of our infrastructure portfolio  the tantalizing propositions for the sir this transportation program is in addition to the user of the gas tax vehicle miles traveled to which i would add weight no state of oregon is experiment thing with this vehicle miles traveled with requires a transponder in the vehicle satellites and downloading and gathering that information in some vehicle mouth travel has been quite successful and the way that system worked was basically your odometer when you go to the gas station is checked and extent you travel more miles you get a charge that's built into your gas bill  that's one technology in germany right now for the trucks there is a g p s system where transponders and the trucks are tracked across the country and when they travel over a highway there is a pennies per mile charge th allocated to them and one of my concerns mr chairman is i do think the fuel tax has been a terrific source of revenue for us but i think the world is changing it's not going to be a growing revenue source in the future and we need other alternatives highway trust fund as a cornerstone for investment mr schwartz you recommend that congress capitalize national infrastructure financing a national entity so they can leverage your capital what level of capitalization would be a pro given that some some thought you've dealt with billion dollar budgets in the private sector yes sir i have and most of those were adopted under the discipline of a capital budget which requires a certain amount of oversight to see that you beat your objectives  i think that was mentioned earlier today that a nine billion dollar capitalization over three year period would be adequate for the kind of  financing and i think that's probably right i favor strongly favor the dodd hago structure infrastructure bank not quite a bank but a method of financing and with the sixty billion dollars authorization to offer guarantees that would attract much capital in the united states to pensions and other  month so the government could save three to six billion dollars a year by replacing the tax exemption on municipal bonds with partial tax credit dr petter you've been there on the u s side  chairman because as i said in my default testimony the current tax exemption a lot more in terms of the revenues we lose than the benefit that actually goes to the state and local governments and i guess looking at the c b out testimony they figured that you'd break even out about a twenty one percent tax rate so that anybody above that is getting more of a tax advantage than the subsidy that's being conveyed to the lower level of government so it's certainly a carefully thought out that would be far far superior to what we have now seem to have such a structure in our system but we're yet to be confronted with the issue and therefore we have to devise a solution i would find it unfortunate if every business deal surrounding an infrastructure asset were a pretext to create a new regulatory structure but i think that it's possible through the kinds of contracts and arrangements that we've built into these deals to create equity at the example i used in my testimony is that we would want the private manager of the toll road the private own or any manager of a toll road to charge some kind of congestion fees to optimize the use of the road now that in essence says here is a monopoly on the road do with it what you will and so you would want to balance that with something that looks like rate based regulation perhaps saying we really can't make more than x or alternatively less than y on the assets but otherwise go and do what you need to do you can create a regulatory regime surrounding every deal of that scares away the money that you hope to deal with traffic we have three minutes remaining on this vote the house floor beyond the control of even the chair and even the house leadership and acknowledge that this short had to leave the indicated prior to his testimony that he had a commitment on the west coast and i understand if you miss your even when you have your own aircraft if you miss your departure time then you're in a long waiting queue and that's that's not good but  testimony as has been has been very valuable i want to return to the question of the vehicle miles traveled and awa two members ha long do you think it would take given where oregon is today with their experience with germany's experience of a similar initiative long do you think it would take to implement such a implemented in a broad base is complicated and we have tens of millions of vehicles across the country so it's in use in germany it has been for years the netherlands is putting doing a study and will likely put in a vehicle miles traveled charge for not only trucks but also for all of their vehicles as well so they're in the process of looking at it and the tension lamp on that and i think this could potentially be rolled dou if we studied it intensively with pilot program appropriate pilot programs in the next two to three years this could start to be i'm not saying comprehensive for all the calls across the country but we could start to roll this out perhaps starting with trucks perhaps starting with certain regions of the country so it is the technology exists we know the thing that would be very important if we want to use a g p s like system really be important for the  manufacturers to start to put that technology in all the goals so we could utilize such a system then there might be a cost that we need to analyze that figure that out but i actually think i am personally concerned that the gas taxes to go start to certainly be flat if not go down in pretty short order to actually have drivers in new york city or not buying hybrids tells you a lot so i think  i'm concerned about the gas tax and its viability unless it gets ramped up dramatically in the next couple years so there's an opportunity here and how do you do you factor wade into this is well the center if you can't promise i think the transition is very difficult you hear a lot of people voice privacy concerns and while the technicians s i think i'm only going to second to greater length what was said the privacy concerns are going to be very important there's but we were building precedent now because of the easy pass and other comparable use of the technology regarding privacy and this is an area that we should stablished what our expectations are early rolling it out to my thinking would take a period of something like three to four years new manufacturers would have to be given a mandate and then the cycle of either maintenance or environmental inspection could be a window to require old automobiles to conform to the new standards in the like the last point i'd made and this might be parochial view as an economist and i've talked about this with other transportation economists the system would give you the ability to analyze trips and therefore provide a database for comprehensive automotive transportation planning that we do not now have of we know about cars we know about families but what's the distribution of the distance of trips what's their timing we would now understand miles traveled plus weight relates more to the concept of a fee as defined by him be starkly over many years as a charge for a charge directly related to the service for which the fee is stress foot on the infrastructure of the roadways as a bridge is better than the amount of fuel purchased times and cents per gallon it's a different concept for highways than we have for the aviation trust fund where the the tax is a percentage of the value of your airline ticket not expressed in miles traveled although that ticket the congressional panel is that there we have kind of a two tier approach we have a cornerstone of financing through the highway trust fund but then we have we about its importance to the national transportation similar to the national economy but as as we dug into the issue particularly house senate conference i made some calculations and found that the wilson bridge transports one percent of the total gross domestic product of the united states there are other similar entry points intermo points that are vital to the national economy the transit of freight rail and passenger rail and interstate highway movements of chicago is one such choke point if you will  the nation's system if it takes as it does as long for a container to move seven miles through chicago as it does for that container to move eight hundred miles from long beach los angeles to chicago then there's something wrong with our system and and then it has to move called hundred miles to the east coast because seventy percent of that container traffic from the west coast is destined for the rest of the country and and more than half of the for the east coast the create projects in chicago merits national investment why shouldn't we have a national focus on on unlocking that part of the grid alameda corridor is another such example i think you could make the  too and not only north south interstate but an east west interstate that at that point that this cries out for a national spokesman now just using those examples would those kinds of projects qualify for something above the board whether to the type approach or national infrastructure bank approach or as one of you has suggested i don't remember know testimonies murdered in my mind a world bank type approach are those is that approach that sort of separating out onto a national scale these super projects that deserve special category of financing that goes beyond the highway trust fund be glad account mr chairman i think that there are projects of national significance that benefit all of us even though they might be in a particular locale to create project i know i'm from chicago i am very familiar with the great separation a lot of the key things that need to happen in chicago to get freight well through the city  and so i agree with you that is a project at that everybody across the country there's obviously a lot of congestion the tappan in southern california with the ports of long beach and los angeles that needs to be fixed  one of my colleagues in my group actually did the financing for the alameda or so i do think there is a real rationale for targeting specific projects that particularly in freight that will or better yes i i think projects like that could be financed under our current framework obviously you'd have to provide more resources for the trust fund one way or  other but i think there is a fundamental problem with higher ground strikes here in that so much of the money is given away by formula and that doesn't really induce states to prioritize taking the national interest into account and i think that really should be looked at very carefully and see whether we could make more  use of ca sharing grants or at least require more minimum effort because i don't think we're getting out of the states what we deserve her for the amount of money where sending them  and that's a very complicated business and i can't go on a great length about it but that is one area actually where a technical commission might help out sort out the main issues and how you might twenty years ago they want to reduce the number of categories and we had a one time fifty or sixty categories in the federal service transportation program that we got those down to well under thirty and a half dozen major get one of those was the bridge for the bridge program and they wanted flexibility so the if they didn't need to dedicate the money to bridge repair or reconstruction and rebuilding to use it elsewhere so it gives them that authority  they and just the last four years of flex four and a half billion dollars out of their bridge program to other categories of needham the state and other bridge collapses are legit oh my god we don't have enough money for the bridge program  the federal highway the highway trust fund is a kind of federal state revenue sharing programs that dr like that was there that was mine and i'll stand by it i mean it's it's the transportation equivalent of what i used to say to my kids here's twenty bucks have a good time when you get right down to it saying that we'll pick up ninety cents on the dollar or seventy five for local connecting roads and the like becomes an invitation to shop for that kind of money rudy is right in that if we were to make that that cause share negotiable in some way we would get out of the states far more and we would eliminate the bias he's inherent in saying we'll pick up ninety percent whatever it is there would remain in the freight projects we're talking about the multi modal issues the fact that there's money coming through several windows in the like and there's a lot of coordination and i want to go back to that because there's one thing that the projects we're talking about these national school projects have in common and that is they have a local steward in the city of chicago that that fact can't be avoided so we have to somehow get chicago's going to federalize it in some senses not to be any eminent domain exercised over it same thing in alameda we have to get that local stewards incentives in line with the country get it done now create workable balance between local costs and other users costs and the like create an opportunity for private money to enter i i can imagine that mark not understanding the chicago freight issue sees the opportunity for private money but it's got part of what's really a mosaic of different contributions from different classes of user and our own superimposition of the national need and a national cochere we need a place for all of that can get done and we can either do it on an ad hoc basis or we can do it on an institutionalized basis and in essence said the testimony that given you today prefers the latter will any such investment have a public credibility if it is unless it is a list of priorities are set by an independent entity let me let me present my colleagues for a second i think it will have credibility if the process that appraises it has credibility be independent it needs to be expert it needs to resemble the world bank is one model of the public company accounting oversight board  another of dedicated experts whom we wall away in some way to make these very important professional project appraisal decisions because if there is confidence in that process then the market will have an appetite for securities that derive their value from the projects that are being picked if if the people in securities markets look at this bank and think well who the heck is over there what are they  doing then there's going to be no appetite for their securities but if they have faith that they're transparent and experts standards being employed across a range of modes then understand the value much as much as the particular project and if there is a cost benefit analysis that shows that either that project that is getting done benefits the general populace in some way shape or form or because that project gets done it benefits others elsewhere and that if there is that linkage we've seen in other projects there's success if there isn't that linkage and doesn't have the credibility of a real benefit that comes from allocating dollars that way that's when projects become controversial i think too that's a real value moving toward a mile adjusted for weight and allowing  the private sector to charge such fees because of the amount of money you collect from a particular network of roads that is a very good indicator of valuable they are to the public  and if you don't like much money there isn't much of a case for expanding that particular network and then if you put it in private hands of course they're interested in making a buck so they'll do the work of analyzing what they might crucial element is having a central facility those words that picks projects coherently independently provide subsidies transparently faces a market test there are very few market tests that i've seen in any of the projects of state highway departments they're based on vehicle miles traveled are based on fatalities if you have a roadway that had no  but turn the page to transit and transit projects have to meet this very strict cost effectiveness index test that has some subjective elements to it but we don't impose that same responsibility on highway and bridge projects we do with the corps of engineers and we've raised the bar for the corps of engineers of the water resources development act that was passed over the president's veto last fall raised very much more rigorous testing than ever in the history of probably up that again in the future  but if you if you have locks that are six hundred feet long on the mississippi river barge tows that are twelve hundred feet in length and they have to split the barge to send six hundred feet through a seven x six hundred feet through last them together no wonder it takes eight hundred twenty hours for barge leaving clinton iowa northeast iowa to new orleans roundtrip and if you look at a map of the  same markets that are soybean farmers in the midwest are marketing west africa east africa pacific rim they have a twenty five hundred mile advantage because that's how much further so we're making these infrastructure investments and all based on somebody is on this committee somebody else from another region is on another committee and there's no there's no  they think in these big terms of how they're going to be competitive in the world marketplace and that's where i think this panel is leading us and if you've given us a real financial  investment which to make judgements for the future i think this may be the most important testimony that we've received in our evaluation of where we are where we're going where we're going to make the next  any other comments from any of you well look forward to this will not just can consider this a part of a continuing conversation and we will need to engage your your expertise  judgment your insights as we go further down this road my goal is that we have a surface transportation bill at least the outlines of it and much of the substance of it in place before the next administration takes office so they can't mess it up thank you very much thank you