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23–844 PDF 2017

BUILDING A 21ST-CENTURY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR 

AMERICA 

(115–1) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

FEBRUARY 1, 2017 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 

( 

Available online at: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/ 

committee.action?chamber=house&committee=transportation 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee, 

Vice Chair 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

ERIC A. ‘‘RICK’’ CRAWFORD, Arkansas 

LOU BARLETTA, Pennsylvania 

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas 

BOB GIBBS, Ohio 

DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida 

JEFF DENHAM, California 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois 

MARK SANFORD, South Carolina 

ROB WOODALL, Georgia 

TODD ROKITA, Indiana 

JOHN KATKO, New York 

BRIAN BABIN, Texas 

GARRET GRAVES, Louisiana 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

DAVID ROUZER, North Carolina 

MIKE BOST, Illinois 

RANDY K. WEBER, SR., Texas 

DOUG LAMALFA, California 

BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas 

LLOYD SMUCKER, Pennsylvania 

PAUL MITCHELL, Michigan 

JOHN J. FASO, New York 

A. DREW FERGUSON IV, Georgia 

BRIAN J. MAST, Florida 

JASON LEWIS, Minnesota 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR., Georgia 

ANDRE ́ CARSON, Indiana 

RICHARD M. NOLAN, Minnesota 

DINA TITUS, Nevada 

SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, New York 

ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut, Vice 

Ranking Member 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

CHERI BUSTOS, Illinois 

JARED HUFFMAN, California 

JULIA BROWNLEY, California 

FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida 

DONALD M. PAYNE, JR., New Jersey 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

BRENDA L. LAWRENCE, Michigan 

MARK DESAULNIER, California 

(III) 

CONTENTS Page 

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... iv 

WITNESSES 

Frederick W. Smith, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, FedEx Corporation: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 7 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 62 

Responses to questions for the record from Hon. Andre ́ Carson of Indiana 77 

David W. MacLennan, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Cargill, Incorporated: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 7 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 79 

Ludwig Willisch, President and Chief Executive Officer, BMW of North America: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 7 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 84 

Responses to questions for the record from Hon. Andre ́ Carson of Indiana 90 

Mary V. Andringa, Chair of the Board, Vermeer Corporation: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 7 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 91 

Richard L. Trumka, President, American Federation of Labor and Congress 

of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO): 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 7 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 103 

Responses to questions for the record from the following Representatives: 

Hon Peter A. DeFazio of Oregon .............................................................. 110 

Hon. Andre ́ Carson of Indiana ................................................................. 111 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Hon. Henry C. ‘‘Hank’’ Johnson, Jr., of Georgia ................................................... 59 

Hon. Elizabeth H. Esty of Connecticut .................................................................. 61 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Letter of February 1, 2017, from AAA, et al., to President Donald J. Trump, 

submitted by Hon. Bill Shuster, Chairman, Committee on Transportation 

and Infrastructure ................................................................................................ 113 

ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD 

Statement of Matt Smith, President, Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce ..................................................................................................................... 123 

Statement of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies, submitted by Hon. Brian Babin, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Texas ................................................................................................................. 125 

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(1) 

BUILDING A 21ST-CENTURY 

INFRASTRUCTURE FOR AMERICA 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2017 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

WASHINGTON, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:03 a.m. in room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Bill Shuster (Chairman 

of the committee) presiding. 

Mr. SHUSTER. The committee will come to order. Good morning. 

I want to welcome you all here to the first full committee hearing 

of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for the 

115th Congress. 

I want to welcome our new Members; we have about 14 new 

Members on the committee. And, of course, welcome to our returning Members. I look forward to working with each and every one 

of you during this Congress, which I believe will be a very, very 

busy Congress. And our committee will be very, very busy. 

This morning’s hearing is about looking into the future and how 

we build a 21st-century infrastructure for America. But before we 

begin, I would like—I think it is important for us to remember 

some of the successes that the committee has had in the last Congress. 

Our committee worked in a bipartisan fashion, was incredibly 

productive over the last 2 years. We were able to move large, complex pieces of legislation to improve America’s infrastructure. The 

FAST Act [Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act], the WIIN 

Act [Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act], our 

PRRIA [Passenger Rail Reform and Investment Act] and Amtrak 

reforms bill, the PIPES Act [Protecting our Infrastructure of Pipelines and Enhancing Safety Act], the Coast Guard Authorization 

Act, and other committee bills are now law because we were able 

to build consensus and get things done for the American people. 

Our track record speaks to the hard work of our Members and our 

staff. 

For our new committee members here today, take note. Our goal 

is the same level of success for this Congress, so get ready to roll 

up your sleeves and get to work, or get ready to jump in the ditch 

with the pick and the shovel. We got a lot of work ahead of us. 

America’s infrastructure is the backbone of the economy. As a 

people, we are bound together by our values, our dedication to our 

liberty, our freedoms. But physically, we are bound together by our 

transportation network. And this is a large country, and it wouldn’t 

be the great country it is today if it wasn’t for that physical connecVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:16 Apr 14, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\115\FULL\2-1-20~1\23844.TXT JEAN
2 

tion, coast to coast, northern border to the southern border States. 

And from the beginning of our very First Congress that authorized 

the first Federal lighthouses, the transcontinental railroad, to the 

Panama Canal, to the Interstate Highway System, to the Nation’s 

airports, the Federal Government has played a vital, constitutional 

role in ensuring the American people and our economy are connected through infrastructure. 

And, in fact, those of you in the audience, behind you we put up 

two of which I think are important pieces of history. First, Adam 

Smith, ‘‘The Wealth of Nations,’’ talking about what Government’s 

to do for the people. And basically, it boils down to three things. 

It is: provide security, preserve justice, and erect and maintain infrastructure to promote commerce. So that is a fundamental role of 

Government, whether it is the Federal Government, the State government, or local governments. 

And then, of course, the Founding Fathers, who all read Adam 

Smith, when they penned the Constitution, article I, section 8 talks 

about powers of Congress to protect the common defense, regulate 

commerce, and to establish post roads. And, of course, the post 

roads today are the highways and byways of our Nation. 

And I am proud to say that the first highway authorized and appropriations went to to build a road happened to go through my 

district and the home of one of our witnesses here, Mr. Trumka, 

right through Fayette County and Greene County, Pennsylvania, 

the national road, which is Route 40 from Baltimore to the Ohio 

Territories. 

So, again, from the beginning of the founding of our Nation, it 

is important to—and that highway, by the way, is over 200 years 

old. It was finished in about 1815 or 1816. So, again, from the beginning of our country, the Federal Government has had a role, 

and it needs to have a strong role. 

And a strong infrastructure means a strong America, an America 

that competes globally, supports local, regional, economic development, and creates jobs. However, our infrastructure will face significant challenges in the future, and we are facing challenges 

today to rebuild it. 

But in the future, the forecasts predict that our population will 

grow from about 320 million just last year to 400 million by 2051. 

The movement of freight is expected to increase by 40 percent over 

the next 30 years. And I have—right in my district I have Route 

81 that is a two-lane—or, excuse me, a four-lane highway that— 

it is—it looks like a railroad at night, because there are so many 

trucks on it, so much freight, so much commerce moving on that 

highway. And that is just one roadway in America. And there are 

many, many others that look like that. 

By the end of the next decade, air travel demand is expected to 

increase from 750 million passengers annually to 1 billion. And 

transportation technology continues to evolve. Driverless cars, commercial drones, and commercial space transportation are just a few 

examples of this change, but more changes are coming. Our infrastructure policies have to keep pace with these changing technologies. We must be able to meet our infrastructure needs of 

today, but also be poised to tackle the challenges of tomorrow. 

3 

One thing November’s election taught us was that the American 

people are ready for their elected officials to rethink the way we 

do things here in Washington and challenge the status quo. This 

election also raised the profile of infrastructure in the minds of the 

American people and policymakers. In fact, I believe this was the 

first time a President ever mentioned the word ‘‘infrastructure’’ in 

an inaugural address. 

This feeling of optimism is echoed by over 400 associations who 

wrote in support of investing in infrastructure and fixing the Highway Trust Fund. Their thoughts are contained in this letter, which 

I believe I have here—I am supposed to hold it up, but I don’t know 

where it went—this is the letter, 400 different associations have 

signed it. And I would like to enter into the record. 

Without objection, so ordered. 

What this means for us, it means that we now have a unique opportunity. The wind is at our backs, and it is time to act on our 

infrastructure’s needs. President Trump made a promise to the 

American people that he would reassert America’s greatness. And 

from my perspective, that means ensuring that America is competitive in the crowded global marketplace of today and tomorrow. It 

means reimagining and building and rebuilding a 21st-century infrastructure, leveraging resources from all levels of Government 

and the private sector. 

Modern infrastructure lets our people, goods, products, and crops 

get where they need to go more efficiently and at less cost. Improved roads and bridges reduce bottlenecks and problems that 

slow the flow of commerce. 

Modern infrastructure is an aviation system with truly modern, 

efficient, and transformational air traffic control technology. It is 

ports and waterways that let our farmers and manufacturers move 

their crops and products to remain competitive with other nations. 

It is rail systems that focus on more effective, efficient service in 

regions of the country where rail transportation works well. It is 

pipelines that can transport the energy products that will power us 

into the future. It is infrastructure that is resilient when natural 

disaster strikes. It is infrastructure that can be built faster, unburdened by bureaucracy and impediments to private investment. And 

it is infrastructure that encourages innovation and unleashes the 

next revolution in mobility. 

Modern infrastructure means jobs, because when transportation 

efficiency improves the bottom line for our job creators, then they 

can put more people to work. That is my vision for a 21st-century 

infrastructure, and it can be achieved if we work together and 

build it. 

I welcome our panel of experts here today, look forward to hearing from you. And your organizations have a unique understanding 

of our infrastructure needs. And as I look out there, they are all 

the users of the system and people that build the system but, 

again, use the system. And we really appreciate your taking the 

time to be here, from all of you. The positions you hold at your organizations are at the highest level, and I know that your schedules are very demanding, so we really appreciate you being here. 

And I think it demonstrates the importance of what we are talking 

about here today. 

4 

Your companies and workers depend on the functionality of our 

transportation system networks, so your perspectives are critical to 

helping us shape the future of America’s infrastructure. 

And with that, I would now like to yield to recognize the ranking 

member, Mr. DeFazio, for a statement. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I very much share the 

sentiments you have expressed. I was interested to learn that the 

first earmarked highway project in America did run through your 

district. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. DEFAZIO. So that is—hopefully we can—— 

Mr. SHUSTER. It wasn’t my father. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. DEFAZIO. We can—is that the one they named after your 

dad? OK. And I hope we can bring back congressionally designated 

spending, where we set priorities for some small amount of our annual investment. We know our districts and our States better than 

Washington, DC, bureaucrats of either party. 

I also agree with your sentiment about challenging the status 

quo. I am going to talk about that now. The status quo has been, 

we are frozen in amber. We are refusing to invest in our infrastructure. Yes, the FAST Act was good. But part of it is paid for with 

funny money that will never show up because we didn’t have the 

guts here to increase user fees. 

It is time to confront these issues. The American people get it. 

A number of all-red States have raised their gas tax. Nobody has 

been recalled or lost their election. The people get it. They are tired 

of sitting in congestion. So I am going to talk about real things. 

OK. Let’s index the gas tax—radical proposal. We can index it 

to construction cost, inflation, fleet fuel economy. Gas will go up 

maybe 1.2 cents a gallon next year. Anybody think they are going 

to lose their election over that? 

But if we do that over the next 30 years, we can issue 30-year bonds, tranched. We tranche the bond issuance of $500 billion, 

which would mean $20.3 billion additional per-year expenditure, 

and we would make the Highway Trust Fund whole through the 

next three authorizations, and we would bring the Nation’s infrastructure to a state of good repair in 14 years. 

And I think that’s what the President called for last week in 

Philadelphia. He said, ‘‘Fix it first.’’ We do need to fix it first. We 

need to fix the 140,000 bridges that are falling down. We need to 

fix the 60 percent of the pavement on the National Highway System that doesn’t just need another coat of asphalt, it needs to be 

totally restructured. And we need to deal with the $90 billion backlog in our transit systems, just to bring them up to a state of good 

repair, let alone offer new options. 

My plan would both allow us to bring it up to a state of good repair in a reasonable period of time, and to make new investments 

because it would make the Highway Trust Fund whole. That is all 

we would have to do, just index the gas tax, dedicate it, and issue 

the 30-year bonds. 

Now, second, let’s talk about, again, a little bit of political will. 

We are collecting a tax every day from every American consumer 

who buys any imported good. They are paying a tax. And that tax 

5 

is supposed to go to maintaining the Nation’s harbors. Well, it isn’t. 

Half the money, about, on an annual basis, goes into harbor maintenance work. 

That is why we have a $22 billion backlog to be able to accommodate the new ships, in addition to funds needed for failing jetties 

and other things. We are only spending half of the tax the American people pay every day. Every year. The rest of it is being diverted into la-la land. It is pretend deficit reduction. It is theoretically sitting in a $9 billion account in the Treasury. If we waive the House budget rules, and we spend that $9 billion—which we took from the American people—for the purpose for 

which it was intended, and spend the full tax every year for the 

next 10 years, we could invest $27 billion in our harbors. That 

means they would be ready to receive the big ships, we would take 

care of that $22 billion shortfall, and we could repair the jetties 

and make other improvements. That money is already available. 

We don’t need a new tax, we just need to push the Budget Committee objections and some of the appropriators out of the way and 

say no, we are going to make it into a real trust fund, like we have 

for surface, and we are going to actually spend the tax for the purpose for which it is collected. Now, all that takes is a little bit of 

a challenge to the status quo. You don’t even have to raise a tax. And then, third, our airports are in serious trouble: $32.5 billion 

backlog to accommodate growing passenger demand. You have all 

been there. You have gone through what are essentially Greyhound 

bus stations instead of state-of-the-art terminals. Now, we haven’t 

allowed them to increase the passenger facility charge. I have 

talked to all the airports. 

The largest airports have said to me, ‘‘Look, let us raise the passenger facility charge, a user fee only on people who go through 

that airport, and we will forgo the AIP [Airport Improvement Program]. You can give that money to the small and moderate-sized 

airports, so they can do needed projects, and we will pay for our 

own projects with bonding, by dedicating an increase in the PFC 

[Passenger Facility Charge].’’ Many of these airports are bonded 

out. 

Now, the airline industry says, ‘‘Oh, if you increase the PFC by 

$2, nobody will ever fly again. They will all get in their cars.’’ Oh, 

you can charge me $50 to put my bag in the overhead, and I will 

keep flying and smiling. But if I had to pay $2 so I don’t have a 

Greyhound bus experience when I go to fly on an airplane and 

stand in these unbelievable lines because we have inadequate capacity, I won’t ever fly again? I mean that is total B.S. We all know 

that. They have some economist somewhere locked in a closet who 

claims he can prove it. What they are afraid of is if airports expand 

we might have more competition. If we have more competition, that 

might mean that prices of tickets go down. That is the real reason 

that they object. 

So that takes a little political will. So here are three steps we 

could take to put nearly $600 billion to work, some of it tomorrow. 

Remember, there is a provision in the FAST Act that I got in there 

that says any additional funds allocated to transportation spend 

out immediately through the formulas we have already adopted. 

We don’t have to go through a multiyear process, we don’t have to 

6 

go through debates, or anything else. I would hope that we would 

add in congressionally designated spending for some portion of 

these new projects. But, other than that, no other changes are necessary. 

The Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, waive the House budget 

rules, spend the money we have taken from the American people. 

And, yes, stand up to the airlines and say, ‘‘Look, come on, you 

know, we want people to have a good experience both in the air 

and on the ground. Let’s rebuild America’s airports to meet the additional demand with a small addition on the passenger facility 

charge.’’ 

Now, passenger facility charge is in the jurisdiction of this committee. Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund is a shared jurisdiction, 

obviously. And then, of course, the indexation of the gas tax would 

have to be approved by our colleagues on Ways and Means. But I 

think if we joined together—like we did when we got an increase 

in the gas tax over the objections of many in Congress by having 

a bipartisan coalition to increase the gas tax in 1993, the last time 

it was increased—we could do it again. I hope that we can join and 

make common cause in these areas, because we do need to rebuild 

our country. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. DeFazio. And now I would like to 

welcome, again, our panelists. Thank you for being here. I will introduce you now in group, and then start the testimony. 

But first off, Mr. Fred Smith, who is the chairman, CEO, and 

founder of FedEx Corporation. FedEx is a Fortune 500 company 

with over $50 billion in annual revenue. FedEx moves 12 million 

packages daily through the global transportation system, which 

gives them great perspective on the challenges that we faced. 

Next, Mr. David MacLennan—Lennon, like Lennon, John 

Lennon, there. Good job, Cohen. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. SHUSTER. Sorry about that. Chairman and CEO of Cargill, 

Incorporated. Cargill is the largest privately held corporation in the 

United States, producing food, agricultural, financial, and industrial products throughout the world. Cargill exports more than 200 

million tons of dry bulk cargo each year, and it is a $120 billiona-year corporation. 

Mr. Ludwig Willisch, president and CEO of BMW America. BMW 

has invested over $7 billion to build and upgrade its manufacturing 

plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, which employs nearly 9,000 

people. Since it opened in 1992, American workers have produced 

3.7 million vehicles, exporting 85 percent of them through the Port 

of Charleston. 

And next, Ms. Mary Andringa, chairman of the board of the 

Vermeer Corporation, based in Pella, Iowa. Vermeer manufactures 

and distributes agricultural, forest, and utility equipment to over 

500 of its global dealerships. It exports 30 percent of its parts 

worldwide, and annual sales of over $1 billion. 

And finally, Mr. Rich Trumka, president of the AFL–CIO. The 

AFL–CIO is the umbrella organization for over 50 U.S. unions representing 12.5 million working men and women. And, of course, a 

fellow Pennsylvanian. Welcome to each and every one of you, and 

7 

I look forward to your testimony, and looking forward to working 

with you as we move forward. 

I now ask unanimous consent that our witnesses’ full statements 

be included in the record. 

Without objection, so ordered. 

And since your written testimony has been part of the record, we 

would ask you to limit your oral testimony to 5 minutes. 

And with that, we will start with Mr. Smith. Please proceed. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I don’t think your mic is on. Is it? 

Mr. SMITH. Yes, it is now. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Pull it a little closer to you, maybe. 

Mr. SMITH. Is that better? OK. 

Mr. SHUSTER. There you go, thanks. 

Mr. SMITH. I served in the Marine Corps, so I have to be instructed carefully. 

[Laughter.] 

TESTIMONY OF FREDERICK W. SMITH, CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF 

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, FEDEX CORPORATION; DAVID W. 

MACLENNAN, CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, 

CARGILL, INCORPORATED; LUDWIG WILLISCH, PRESIDENT 

AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, BMW OF NORTH AMERICA; 

MARY V. ANDRINGA, CHAIR OF THE BOARD, VERMEER CORPORATION; AND RICHARD L. TRUMKA, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AND CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS (AFL–CIO) 

Mr. SMITH. So, thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. DeFazio. Let me 

say hello to a couple of old friends, Representative Cohen, who represents our hometown headquarters, and Representative Duncan, 

from the more prosperous eastern part of our State. So it is good 

to see you. 

As you mentioned, my written statement is in the record. So let 

me make a few points. I think at FedEx Corporation we are 

uniquely situated to comment on these matters. I am proud to be 

here representing over 450,000 FedEx team members around the 

world. We have four transportation companies that are affected by 

these infrastructure questions: FedEx Express, the largest all-cargo 

and express air carrier in the world; FedEx Ground, the second 

largest ground parcel network; and FedEx Freight, the largest lessthan-truckload system in the United States; and finally, FedEx 

Trade Networks avails itself of the maritime transportation. 

We serve 220 countries, link 99 percent of the world’s GDP, operate 650 aircraft, serve 375 airports, operate 150,000 motorized vehicles. As you mentioned, we move 12 million shipments on average per day in the nonpeak season. We fly 255 million miles each 

year. And last year FedEx vehicles drove in excess of 5 billion 

miles on our highways. We strongly support a modernized transportation system that includes the best air traffic control system, 

updated sea and airports with the latest in technology, and well 

maintained and expanded highway systems. 

So let me talk briefly about all three of those. Improving the ATC 

system, ensuring transparency and the payment for that system, 

and assuring irrelevant provisions are not added to the legislation 

8 

should be priorities of this committee. We support an independent 

ATC system, and believe that such an enterprise will work more 

effectively and efficiently than the current one. The new ATC system must be allowed to operate as a bona fide stand-alone business 

organization separate and apart from the Government and responsible to its users. 

Regarding the interstate road system, our interstate system is 

now over 60 years of age. It is in desperate need of updating. Nearly 70 percent of all freight tonnage moved in the U.S. moves on 

trucks. I think you mentioned that, Mr. Chairman. We need both 

short- and long-term investment. The surface transportation industry has been virtually unanimous in supporting an increase in the 

Federal system to pay for this system. First, through the gasoline 

and diesel system, and moving to a user fee system, given the 

emergence of noninternal combustion engines in the form of electric 

and hybrid vehicles, some of which we are operating in Washington, DC, as we sit here today. 

And lastly, we strongly support a new Federal standard to move 

the twin trailer limits in this country from 28 feet to 33 feet for 

the less-than-truckload and ground parcel businesses. Quite frankly, these networks are being overwhelmed with the growth in ecommerce. Thirty-three-foot twin trailers are permitted in certain 

States. We have operated them for many years. They are safer, 

save millions and millions of gallons of fuel, reduce emissions. They 

take vehicles off the road, which gets to the congestion issue that 

you were talking about, Mr. Chairman. 

I might point out that the standard in Mexico is twin 40-foot 

trailers. So this is not a big stretch. This would have an instant 

improvement, environmentally and in the national productivity in 

our less-than-truckload and ground parcel networks. 

Let me just close with saying to you there has been a lot of conversation in Washington these days about trade. FedEx is ardently 

in support of expanded trade, not less trade. We certainly acknowledge the protectionism and mercantilism, particularly in China. 

But the secret to that is to expand our access to their market, not 

shut down the trading system that has made this country so prosperous. 

Thank you for giving me the time to make these remarks. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Smith. Now, Mr. MacLennan. 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Chairman Shuster, Ranking Member DeFazio, 

and distinguished members of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, I appreciate the opportunity to be here 

today. I am Dave MacLennan, I am chairman and CEO of Cargill. 

We provide food, agriculture, financial products and industrial 

products to the world, and our mission is to nourish the country 

and nourish the world in a safe, responsible, and sustainable way. 

Our company is a great American success story. It was founded 

in 1865 by William W. Cargill, with one small grain warehouse in 

Conover, Iowa. That elevator almost went bankrupt just a few 

years later, when the railroad stopped coming to Conover. Mr. 

Cargill knew that transportation drives growth in agriculture. So 

he followed the infrastructure. And today we have 150,000 employees in 70 countries around the world. 

9 

Thank you for your past leadership on reauthorization of WRDA, 

and—as well as the passage of the FAST Act. I am encouraged by 

the interest of this committee in modernizing our Nation’s infrastructure, and eager to discuss the challenges facing our agriculture support system. 

For much of our history, America’s infrastructure has been the 

envy of the entire world. It has allowed our country to become the 

economic powerhouse that we are today. And certainly for agriculture in the rural communities which serve agriculture, moving 

product for trade and export is critical. But while many other countries are building the roads, ports and railways of the future, we 

are falling behind. Infrastructure investments will allow American 

companies to compete effectively with our counterparts abroad and 

create long-term growth that will benefit and create jobs for all 

Americans. 

Twenty-first-century infrastructure includes shiny objects like 

electric cars and microgrids and high-speed rail. But as exciting as 

those new technologies are, we also need to think about our traditional transportation assets. So my testimony will focus not on the 

shiny objects, but on the ones that can get rusty, like rails, roads, 

bridges, and the waterways of rural America. 

Mr. Chairman, agriculture is the largest user of freight transportation in the United States, claiming 31 percent of all ton-miles, according to the USDA. And in our world of thin margins, when infrastructure fails it ripples up the supply chain, and we all feel it. 

Cargill supports multiple modes of transportation. What is most 

important to us is making sure our customers can get their goods 

from point A to point B in an efficient, safe, and sustainable manner. Unfortunately, our Nation’s transportation infrastructure is 

under unprecedented strain. Our inland waterways struggle because of aging locks and growing demand. Our seaports are not 

deep enough to accommodate newer and larger ships. Our railroads 

are experiencing capacity constraints, and our bridges and roads 

are crumbling, receiving a D rating from the American Society of 

Civil Engineers. 

If our ports fail, we cannot link Pacific Northwest grain farmers 

to the global market. If our locks and dams fail, we can’t move the 

road salt that we mine in Louisiana up the rivers to keep roads 

safe in the winter in Pittsburgh. If our bridges crumble we cannot 

cost-effectively truck fertilizer to family farmers in Platte City, 

Missouri. And if our railroads are over capacity, we can’t ensure 

enough ethanol makes it to New Jersey to be blended into gasoline 

for our cars. 

We know what it looks like when one mode of transportation 

fails and the consequences ripple up the supply chain. In 2005, 

when Hurricane Katrina shut down the gulf ports, we lost the ability to transport grain on our Nation’s waterways. Losing this very 

efficient transportation capacity greatly impacted the price of corn 

paid to farmers, with U.S. corn prices falling 30 cents a bushel. In 

2005, the U.S. corn crop was 10 billion bushels, so that is $3 billion 

in lost market value at the time. 

In the chairman’s home State of Pennsylvania, crumbling bridges 

near our beef plant in Wyalusing were recently bypassed for replacement. Reduced weight limits made them impassable for our 

10 

carriers. And in the rural town where we employ more than 1,700 

workers, trucks moving beef to our customers, are focused to reroute, which adds millions of dollars in cost to our business today. 

So, in closing, our ability to fix our infrastructure, compete in the 

global market, and keep our economy growing will be influenced by 

the decisions of the people in this room. I urge you to invest in the 

food and agriculture and rural economies by reinvesting in the 

state-of-the-art transportation systems that we all know clearly got 

us here in the first place. 

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to share 

Cargill’s views with you today, and I look forward to answering 

your questions. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. 

Mr. MACLENNAN. You are welcome. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Willisch, you may proceed. 

Mr. WILLISCH. Thank you, Chairman Shuster, and Ranking 

Member DeFazio, and members of the committee, for inviting me 

to participate in today’s hearing. My name is Ludwig Willisch, and 

I am the head of the Americas for the BMW Group. I represent the 

more than 70,000 people who have jobs provided and supported by 

BMW in the U.S. alone. This includes 655 dealerships across 48 

States; 11 distribution centers in 8 States; our headquarters in 

New Jersey; design studio, tech office, and testing facilities in California; a bank in Utah; financial services in Ohio; BMW Technology 

Corporation in Chicago; our carbon fiber manufacturing facility in 

Washington State, and BMW Manufacturing in South Carolina. 

Over the last two decades we have invested $7.5 billion in our 

South Carolina plant, now the largest facility in our global network. What is more, this plant earns BMW the title of the largest 

exporter of vehicles in the United States by value. We estimate 

that BMW had around $10 billion in U.S. dollars to export last 

year, alone. 

We have a talented team and achieve much within our company. 

However, no one in this industry can go it alone. Every auto company relies on a network of suppliers, service providers, reliable infrastructure, and the right regulatory framework to deliver for our 

customers. In this spirit, I would like to give you a sense of how 

important these issues are through BMW’s eyes. 

The current BMW X3 was designed by an American, Erik 

Goplen, out of our Los Angeles design studio, Designworks. Once 

the design was finished, it was sent to Munich for engineers to 

take the car from page to pavement. The next step is production 

in the United States. Our logistics network in South Carolina includes 40 nearby suppliers, the Greer Inland Railway Port, and the 

Greenville-Spartanburg Airport. We rely on these roads, rails, and 

runways every day. 

A finished X3 leaves the plant by rail, with the majority heading 

to the Port of Charleston for international export to 140 countries. 

On this point I would like to give special thanks to the committee, 

and in particular Chairman Shuster and Ranking Member DeFazio 

and Representative Sanford of South Carolina, for their support of 

the Water Resources Development Act. The Port of Charleston is 

absolutely critical to export success of BMW and a number of other 

companies. 

11 

The remainder of the domestic vehicles are trucked to BMW vehicle distribution centers in States across the country. From those 

distribution centers, the X3 is then delivered to dealers in 48 

States. Reliable transportation and infrastructure is vital to operating our business every day. Looking ahead at future mobility 

technologies, infrastructure becomes all the more important. Industry is making significant investments in automated vehicles, or 

AVs, to move them from test track to street. 

There are ways for the Government to support these efforts. 

Some of these opportunities are fairly straightforward. For example, the sensors and cameras in automated vehicles rely, among 

other things, on road markings and signs to orient and drive. Consistent AV performance can suffer if roads do not have adequate 

lines, road conditions are unpredictable, or signs and signals are all 

different. Consistent performance is vitally important, as it lays the 

foundation for customer trust. 

Other areas of necessary Government support are more involved, 

but crucial to the long-term success of AVs. BMW welcomed the 

Federal AV Policy Guidelines as a positive first step in creating a 

regulatory framework for AVs. Industry regulators and the public 

need to continue meaningful conversations to move forward. There 

is a lot of work to be done. But with so many stakeholder groups 

aligned on the desired outcomes, I am confident we can find a path 

forward. 

This is an opportunity that requires all stakeholders to bring 

their best ideas and open minds to the table. I look forward to continuing our conversation and working together to make tomorrow’s 

potential a reality. 

Thank you very much. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. 

Ms. Andringa, please proceed. 

Ms. ANDRINGA. Thank you, Chairman Shuster and Ranking 

Member DeFazio and members of this committee, for hearing a little bit about what it means for manufacturers to have an updated 

infrastructure system. 

Our company, Vermeer, was started 70 years ago by my dad, 

with one employee, one product, and really, distributing products 

locally. Today we have over 2,000 employees and 160 different 

products. And I realize those numbers are small in comparison to 

my fellow board members and panel members here, but, you know, 

it represents, really, a lot of small and medium-sized businesses. 

In our country, 50 percent of GDP and over 50 percent of employment is connected with small and medium-sized businesses. And 

so, what my dad needed for infrastructure back in 1948 is different 

than what we need today. And as chair of Vermeer and former 

CEO, I have also had the opportunity to chair the National Association of Manufacturers, which represents 12 million men and 

women who manufacture every day. When I first became involved 

with the NAM, we talked about how our goal was that the U.S. be 

the best place to manufacture. And in order for it to be the best, 

we need to have good, top-notch infrastructure. It has been at the 

top of our list for many years. 

So, in a company like ours, when we bring over 2,000 people in 

from anywhere from 30 to 70 miles’ driving distance one way every 

12 

day, we need safe, reliable roads for them to get to work safely, and 

also to be able to get home safely to their families. 

We also have 50 trucks, which ride every day into Vermeer with 

parts and pieces and go out as whole goods. So we need the good 

roads for that. Of the major roads in the U.S., 65 percent are 

deemed deficient. And also, I think we have to understand that 

road conditions often are a significant factor in fatalities on our 

roads. 

We also have hundreds of sales and service people who work 

with our distribution networks who are in urban areas, and they 

are dealing with congestion, particularly in the urban areas, and 

traffic delays, and sometimes a lot of frustration getting trucks in 

and out of the urban areas to our dealerships and to our customers. 

One of the things I thank this committee for is the work that you 

did on the FASTLANE grant. Because of that, we are going to now 

have an intermodal location in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which is much 

closer to us than trucking containers to Chicago or Kansas City. 

That will help relieve some congestion that we have had in getting 

containers to ports. 

Bridges have been mentioned before, but I know just in Iowa, 21 

percent of bridges in Iowa are deemed deficient. So again, it is a 

safety and a congestion and delay opportunity that we can fix. 

Airports are definitely in dire need of updates. We ship 400 to 

500 packages to our customers daily with air. We also buy a lot of 

commercial tickets, over 3,000 a year. And yet we have a lot of 

frustration with delays and airports. And I think some of the work 

that needs to be done yet on the longer term Federal Aviation Administration authorization bill is extremely important. Air traffic 

controllers are, in many cases, working without data and technology. And also, as we look at that NextGen implementation, the 

estimates are that that would be able to reduce delays by 35 percent, which would be significant. 

Manufacturers use energy, all kinds of energy. So it is very important that we have good and solid transmission lines. And it is 

really the internet of everything. So it’s the way we communicate 

with our customers, with our dealers, with our employees in the 

United States and around the world, that makes broadband infrastructure so important. 

And it is also important because today we have smart machines 

in our factories. We also have smart machines out on job sites. And 

many times they are communicating with the asset owners. 

Over the last years, Vermeer has been involved in continuous improvement, or the Lean journey. And one of the things with Lean 

is you need to have flow. So you need to have flow of goods coming 

in on a timely basis, and you need to have whole goods going out 

on a timely basis. 

But another aspect of Lean is total productive maintenance. And 

I think that one has some applications to infrastructure. It is when 

we take a machining center, maybe a $1 million machining center, 

and periodically tear it down to the parts that are going to fail— 

we know they are going to fail—and we replace them. And the result is that we reduce our downtime on those machines, like, 70 

percent, and we also reduce our cost of maintenance. And it seems 

to me that manufacturers know a lot about investing in our infraVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:16 Apr 14, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\115\FULL\2-1-20~1\23844.TXT JEAN
13 

structure to make sure we have a sustainable future. And I think 

that is the same kind of investment, proactive investment, we need 

in our infrastructure system in the United States. 

So, I would just like to say that this discussion has been going 

on for quite a while, and I really implore you all to take some 

major steps. We need a sustained, focused effort to really reverse 

the decline, and to make sure we have the infrastructure that we 

need to produce safe transportation, productivity, and also great 

jobs here in the U.S. 

So, thank you for the work your committee does. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. Now Mr. Trumka, please proceed. 

Mr. TRUMKA. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

DeFazio, members of the committee. It is a pleasure to be here 

with you today. This committee is known for working together and 

setting aside partisan differences and getting things done for the 

good of the country, and I want to thank you for that. 

In recent years you have passed many pieces of important legislation, and this year will bring FAA reauthorization, and hopefully 

a major new infrastructure bill. Our Nation faces challenges that 

are gray, and the task ahead is very daunting. 

We are all familiar with the American Society of Civil Engineers 

estimate that our infrastructure deficit is approaching $4 trillion. 

Yet closing that gap is only the first step. The reality is our infrastructure is rapidly becoming technologically obsolete. To truly be 

competitive in the 21st century, we must invest in the transformative infrastructure of the future: this century’s version of the 

transcontinental railroad and the National Highway System. 

Our failing infrastructure may be an obstacle and a challenge, 

but fixing it is really a powerful opportunity. During his campaign, 

President Trump spoke about $1 trillion in new infrastructure investment. We believe that is the right scale to be talking about, 

trillions. And the labor movement is ready to work with this committee to turn words into actions. 

Look at this panel before you. Business and labor may not agree 

on a number of things, but we do agree on the need for serious investments in America’s infrastructure. In the aftermath of the 2016 

election, there is no clearer mandate from the American people. 

And it should surprise no one that infrastructure is a top issue, because the American people have endured an infrastructure that has 

been underfunded and crumbling for decades. We want investments that create good jobs, that meet the real needs of our economy. Any other path takes us backwards, because investments in 

infrastructure create the foundation for a long-term growth. 

Building the infrastructure of the 21st century is vital to both 

our Nation’s competitiveness and to the hopes of hardworking people to lead better and more prosperous lives. So the labor movement is ready to fight here in Washington and across our great Nation to see a transformative and inclusive infrastructure program 

enacted. We need to bring 21st-century technology and good jobs to 

the entire country, to places as diverse as West Baltimore and my 

rural hometown, Mr. Chairman, of Nemacolin, Pennsylvania. 

And once that investment is made, the labor movement stands 

ready with the most highly skilled and well-trained workforce to 

get the job done. One trillion dollars in new infrastructure investVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:16 Apr 14, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\115\FULL\2-1-20~1\23844.TXT JEAN
14 

ment would make a big difference to working Americans, and put 

our Nation on the path to sustainable prosperity. How we invest 

matters. It must be real investment, and it must create good jobs. 

And let me be clear. If we want good jobs, we have to have high 

labor standards and protections for people who build and maintain 

and operate our infrastructure. 

That is not all. We need to make sure public money is used to 

support American jobs, American resources, and American products. 

Finally, it is imperative that we invest at the lowest cost of capital to the public. Anything else simply sacrifices jobs to Wall 

Street. So, finding significant sources of funding may be politically 

difficult. But the cost of inaction is unacceptably high. And it is 

real, and it is growing. Labor has and will continue to consider all 

types of funding, including our traditional support of user fees to 

fund surface transportation. Done right, other resources or sources 

of revenue could help. However, solving our Nation’s vast infrastructure needs will require major levels of public investment. 

I will be blunt, Mr. Chairman, we need to be bold, and we need 

to be aggressive. We need to be the America that can, not the 

America that can’t. We are eager to work with the leaders of both 

parties to make this investment a reality and help cure some of the 

problems that the country faces and my colleagues at this front 

table face. We stand ready to do that, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you very much. Now we will go to questions. I will start, and I want to direct it at Mr. Willisch and Mr. 

MacLennan. 

I appreciate that Ms. Andringa was very specific on projects that 

affected her business. Both of you made reference to it, but as we 

are looking at the 21st-century infrastructure, what in your world 

of Cargill and BMW—what are the specifics? Where do we need to 

invest for manufacturers like you to be successful and to continue 

to grow? 

Mr. WILLISCH. Well, very obviously, the first thing is roads. That 

is where our cars are operated. And that includes, as I said before—because we are on the verge of a big change, as far as drive 

trains are concerned, as far as automated driving is concerned. So 

road markings are really crucial to the working of an automated 

car. 

The second thing is, of course, when it comes to infrastructure, 

it is the ports that really matter to us, which we need to both send 

cars into 140 countries from this country, or receive parts and stuff 

that we need to build those cars with. So those two things are really, really crucial to us. 

Mr. SHUSTER. And to your bottom line, if that port isn’t efficient, 

if that port can’t take those bigger ships coming in to Charleston, 

that affects your bottom line. 

Mr. WILLISCH. Absolutely. And just think. We just dredged the 

harbor of Charleston so it can have bigger ships that can go 

through the new Panama Canal, because all cars that we ship to 

Asia go through the Panama Canal. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Right. 

Mr. WILLISCH. So it is really vital to us. 

15 

Mr. SHUSTER. And one thing is you’ve mentioned about the number of cars you export. According to what I see, you export more 

cars than General Motors. 

Mr. WILLISCH. Yes. Yes, we do. 

Mr. SHUSTER. And producing—— 

Mr. WILLISCH. Who would have thought? 

Mr. SHUSTER. Yes, exactly. 

Mr. MacLennan? 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Mr. Chairman, yes, I mean, it is kind of like 

your kids, you don’t want to pick one over the other, and we use 

highways, we use railcars, we use barges, and they are all interconnected. I mean, you know, you have a bit of a disruption in one, 

it flows back through the supply chain. 

I would say, relative to our business, and especially our focus in 

the rural economy, in the agricultural economy, I think rivers, 

ports, the waterways, they are environmentally efficient. They can 

carry bulk. They can only go so far, obviously. You know, they are 

limited. 

But I think, you know, rivers and ports and the access to the 

grain and the things that we move up and down, the products that 

we move up and down, we moved 97 different products on the river 

system in the last year. 

And the other statistic that I found rather staggering is that in 

the last year our Nation’s locks were closed for over 141,000 hours. 

So if you think about the disruption to the system—call it the backward ripple effect in the supply chain—I think I would probably 

focus on, for us, waterways, locks, the river system as being important. 

Mr. SHUSTER. And that has a huge impact on your bottom line. 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Significant impact on it, huge impact on our 

bottom line and the bottom line of our customers. 

Mr. SHUSTER. All right, which is the point of if you don’t pay for 

it in the front end, you are going to pay for it on the back end. 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Exactly. Pay me now or pay me later. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Right, right. 

Mr. Smith, you have the broadest use of the transportation system. We are in the 21st century. You know, should we be really 

targeting—and if we had to—if you had to pick one or two that 

really have a huge impact on what you do in the States and globally, which modes would you think are the most efficient? 

Mr. SMITH. Well, as I said in my remarks, Mr. Chairman, modernize the ATC system, expansion and the maintenance upgrades 

of our Interstate Highway System. There are 28 interstate highway 

projects that are basically engineered and could move forward if 

the funding was there to do them. 

I don’t think there is any question about the fact that President 

Eisenhower in the 1950s, launching the Interstate Highway System was one of the most important things that led to the prosperity 

of this country. And we are simply not expanding it and maintaining it to the extent that we need to. 

And, of course, I mentioned the—you don’t have to do anything 

in terms of funding to approve the 33-footers. Those are the three 

things that we think would have profound and near-instant improvements in the Nation’s infrastructure. 

16 

Mr. SHUSTER. And improve your bottom line, which helps reduce 

the cost to customers, ultimately. 

Mr. SMITH. Well, it improves our bottom line. And the thing that 

is just the nemesis for many parts of the country, the congestion 

continues to increase. And absent these investments in the infrastructure, that is not going to stop. So it is going to get worse and 

worse. And I—the—Mr. DeFazio’s remarks, I think, were spot on. 

I mean we have got to pay for it, and get started on it. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you very much. With that, I will yield to 

Mr. DeFazio for questions. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman—and it 

was just mentioned by Mr. Smith and others referred to it—the 

cost of congestion. So I have taken it upon myself to create an infrastructure cost of congestion clock, which I have posted on the 

Democratic side of the website. Hopefully it could be on the full 

committee site. 

And for reference purposes, since this President has promised 

that he wants a major infrastructure plan, is expressing some frustration that it doesn’t seem to be at the top of the agenda, I want 

to reinforce that. And this clock will recognize, on a daily basis, the 

cost of congestion to the American economy. 

And, as you can see, it is running right now. And this is since 

the day the President was inaugurated. So I share the President’s 

frustration, and hope that this committee can raise these issues to 

the top of the agenda, or the 100-day agenda. This reflects the cost, 

both to individuals and to business, in terms of congestion and 

delay. And, just for average people, it is 84 minutes stuck in traffic 

since the day of inauguration because of undue congestion. 

With that, let me go back to my proposal. Is there anybody on 

the panel—and now, Mr. Trumka, you represent millions of individuals, so you can speak for them. And all the rest of you are in 

business, and use fair amounts of fuel directly or indirectly in moving your goods or in moving goods. Does anybody here think that 

a one-half of 1 percent increase in the cost of diesel would cause 

an undue disruption to the American economy, or a taxpayer revolt 

that would threaten people’s political careers? Because that is what 

my plan would do. It would be about one-half of 1 percent, if we 

index the per-year increase. 

So, OK, that is great. And I think, when you look at that number, it looks like a pretty darn good investment. 

I would like to go back also to the harbor issue. We have—and 

probably, even Ms. Andringa, you probably import or export goods, 

too—so I think we have four people here directly involved in the 

import or export of goods, and some frustration about that. 

If you are importing goods, you are paying the tax. And I am just 

wondering, what do you think of the proposal that we should actually take the taxes that were collected to maintain our harbors and 

do away with this artifice of putting them in a theoretical bank account at the Treasury, and actually spend them to deepen and improve our harbors. Anybody got any reflection on that? 

Mr. MACLENNAN. I will take the bait. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Yes. 

[Laughter.] 

17 

Mr. MACLENNAN. So you said it effectively in your opening remarks, Congressman. I mean we have got this money that has 

been collected. We have paid it, it is there, and we need it. So, obviously, you want to get good, effective, scalable projects. But, you 

know, given what is—I mean, for example, the expansion of the 

Panama Canal, we are seeing more traffic on our riverways. I 

talked a few moments ago about the need for more efficient river 

traffic. It is environmentally efficient. And you can get over 50,000 

bushels on 1 barge, and you can get 1,000 bushels on a regularsized truck. 

So, I would support your proposal to spend the money, invest the 

money that has been collected from the users of the system. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I would reflect that Congress did—although most 

don’t know it—increase the inland diesel waterway user fee, diesel 

tax, in a yearend budget deal 2 years ago. Kind of had to hide it. 

We had advocated for that, but were shut down as we went to the 

floor. But later it got snuck into the yearend budget deal. It made 

a lot of sense. And this—in this case, we don’t have to increase it, 

we just have to spend the money as it comes in, and spend the 

money that has been accumulated. 

Mr. Smith, you referenced 20 projects. Were those major choke 

points that you said were already designed? 

Mr. SMITH. Yes, sir. I have a list of them right here: North-South 

corridor, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, U.S. Route 220, Pennsylvania, New York, Raleigh, Norfolk corridor, North Carolina and 

Virginia, I–69 corridor, U.S. Route 59. They are all right there. The 

DOT, if you put a funding mechanism, you can—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO. What are the—— 

Mr. SMITH [continuing]. Get started on them right away. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. What do they add up to? Did you add them up, by 

any chance, or—— 

Mr. SMITH. In terms of money? 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Yes, cost. 

Mr. SMITH. I don’t have the—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO. OK. 

Mr. SMITH [continuing]. Dollars invested here. But just the route 

extensions that would improve the national productivity, reduce 

congestion. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Sure, thank you. OK. And, Mr. Trumka, some people question, say, ‘‘Well, gee, we really don’t have the people to support and do the work, if we make these major investments. There 

just aren’t enough workers out there.’’ I mean, look, the unemployment rate, theoretically, is down to 4 percent. 

Could you reflect on that, whether or not there is a ready and 

trained and available workforce if we did a major infrastructure 

push? 

Mr. TRUMKA. I would be happy to. According to the latest—the 

latest—BLS reports, there are still 670,000 construction workers 

that are out of business. That doesn’t include discouraged workers 

who have stopped looking for the jobs. It also doesn’t include things 

like design engineering, operation, maintenance, and warehousing, 

which are in a different category. All of those are available, as well. 

This is the best-known secret in the United States: other than 

the military, the U.S. labor movement trains more people every 

18 

year than any other institution out there. No university does it better. We have highly skilled people. We are putting people through 

those apprenticeship programs on a regular basis. We are reaching 

in to disadvantaged communities, rural communities, with classes 

that will help them qualify, get through our entrance exam, and 

qualify as a career. So there is an ample supply of skilled workers 

ready, anxious, and willing to go to work. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Excellent, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. With that, Mr. Barletta. 

Mr. BARLETTA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Growing up in the 

road construction business, I learned that private industry needs 

long-term planning and dedicated funding sources in order to invest in our Nation’s infrastructure. It is simply a fact that no employer will make plans to hire more workers or purchase $1 million 

pieces of equipment without long-term security in Government contracts. And no State or local government, being a former mayor, 

can make long-term plans without certainty in Federal transportation spending. Do you all agree? 

That being said, can any of you speak to how uncertainty and 

short-term fixes to the Highway Trust Fund have impacted your 

ability to move goods and services around the country? Anyone who 

wants to take a stab. 

Mr. Smith? 

Mr. SMITH. Well, as has been brought up several times, the population and the commerce of the United States has gone up at a far, 

far faster rate than the expansion of the interstate—the Federal 

highway system, which is the backbone of our Nation’s logistics 

system. Seventy percent of every pound that is moved in the Nation’s commerce is moved on the highways. That is not to say other 

modes aren’t equally important, but we have allowed the highway 

system to atrophy for lack of maintenance. And, equally important, 

we have not added to it. And that was the point of me referencing 

these 20 projects that are out there that are basically designed. 

So, you can’t expect national productivity and economic wellbeing to improve unless you address these infrastructure issues. 

And in my mind it is just a matter of paying for it. I mean the system is there. 

Mr. BARLETTA. You know, spending on infrastructure will grow 

the economy more than anything that I know. When there is a lot 

of infrastructure work, people will make good money. There is no 

question about that. When they make good money, you know what 

they do? They spend it. They spend it right in our local economies, 

which helps everyone, not just the construction workers, not just 

the construction companies, not just the manufacturer of equipment. It helps the waitresses and waiters and little restaurants 

and diners. It helps everywhere. 

So, it is an investment. And I said it will grow the economy 

more. So spending on infrastructure is not the same as putting 

money into another program where you are just providing services. 

There is a return on that. 

Mr. SMITH. And I might just add I think my numbers are correct. 

We are now at levels of Federal infrastructure spending that have 

not been seen since 1948 as a percentage of GDP. So it is going to 

19 

get worse and worse, unless the Congress decides to fund these 

projects. 

And, as I mentioned, the industry that uses these systems, the 

surface transportation business, has been wholly in support of increasing or adjusting the Federal gasoline and diesel taxes for 

years, and replacing them with some sort of new user fee system 

because of natural gas and electric vehicles that will use them in 

the future. 

Mr. BARLETTA. And I agree, the American people are OK paying 

it as long as they know where it is going, and we make sure that 

every penny that we take from them is used to the best that we 

could. 

Pennsylvania is home to over 120,000 miles of State and local 

highways, many of them which cross through my district. I know 

for a fact of economic development projects that would happen if 

there was access to our transportation system. There is no question. 

Can you please explain what role highway accessibility plays in 

determining where you locate your facilities and how such accessibility affects your ability to efficiently get your goods to the customers? 

Mr. MACLENNAN. I will start, Representative, and we employ 

about 900 people in your district. We have a chocolate business in 

Lititz, and we also have a beef business. So if you think about the 

traffic that uses the local highways, in terms of delivering raw materials, taking the developed product—the chocolate, the beef—and 

moving it on, it is a significant consideration. Is it the only one? 

No. 

And going back to your first comment about do you need absolute 

certainty, no. But it is a world of volatility and uncertainty and 

complexity. It is a significant variable. So I would say that we will 

invest, you know, despite the uncertainty, but it certainly would 

help and encourage us in specific locations, knowing there is going 

to be expanded rail, waterway, or highway access. It would attract 

our capital to new investment. Thank you. 

Mr. BARLETTA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Barletta. 

Ms. Norton? 

Ms. NORTON. May I thank Chairman Shuster for opening this 

year by having—I think he has done this before—this across-theboard comprehensive hearing on our Nation’s infrastructure. And 

I applaud what this committee has done, very bipartisan committee. Not only the WRDA bill, the FAST Act, even when the rest 

of the Congress has not been moving as rapidly in its own mission. 

The FAST Act, of course, is the latest version, passed in 2015. 

And I think the committee deserves the compliments of the committee for passing the first comprehensive highway transportation 

bill in a decade. But I have to tell you that it broke my heart that, 

in order to get even a small bump—that is to say an increase, we 

had to reduce the bill from a 6-year bill to a 5-year bill. And, of 

course, the bill had to contain a number of gimmicks, as well. And 

that is even given the best efforts—and I must tell you, extraordinary bipartisan efforts—and there was great agreement on this 

bill. 

20 

The present strategy for our infrastructure is delay. That strategy is prohibitively expensive. We are not even doing maintenance. 

So what it means is that billions of dollars that those who had the 

guts before us have invested in our transportation infrastructure, 

which made this country what it is today, that that is crumbling, 

as well. 

So here is something that I championed, and that was done with 

great bipartisan support in the FAST Act. And it is such a small 

amount, it makes me blush. But it can—it is a provision that provides $20 million in grants to the States to themselves come up 

with alternative sources of funds for the Highway Trust Fund. As 

you know, the Highway Trust Fund—and I ought to, I suppose, 

give this to Mr. Smith—as you know, the Highway Trust Fund has 

just been stuck now, and we are doing nothing to replenish it. 

Mr. Smith, the reason I thought this was a question for you is 

I noted in your testimony something that surprised me. And I 

thought it was important to note that FedEx supports a broad mix 

of revenue sources in order to avoid overreliance—here I am 

quoting you—on a single option. I take it that single option is the 

one we have been using, which, of course, will run out even before 

this bill runs out, the gas tax. 

In light of the fact that we are asking the States to give us ideas 

about alternative sources, can I ask you, Mr. Smith, why you think 

the gas tax alone will not be sufficient? And what kind of alternative sources do you think should be put on the table so that, 

even if we were able to get the Highway Trust Fund with the gas 

tax, we would have additional sources to get going? Any ideas you 

have would be much appreciated. 

Mr. SMITH. Yes. Well, let me give you three, but let me address, 

again, the Highway Trust Fund. As I have said a couple of times 

now, we at FedEx, and virtually every entity in the commercial 

transportation surface transportation business that I know of, supports an increase in gasoline and diesel taxes indexed from the cap 

that was placed on them in 1994. So, having said that, here are 

three issues. 

First, the transportation system is moving away from complete 

reliance on internal combustion engines. There are increasing uses 

of electric and hybrid electric vehicles. And in the heavy freight 

area—I was in Oklahoma recently at the ribbon-cutting for our new 

compressed natural gas facility for FedEx Freight. So those two 

technologies are not captured by today’s gasoline and diesel system. 

There needs to be something, a vehicle mileage tax or some other 

mechanism to fund use of the Federal highway system by those 

types of vehicles. 

Second, we are strongly in favor of a revised United States corporate tax code, because we are not competitive. I think Mr. 

Trumka will agree that blue-collar folks need equipment and investment so they can have a high income level. Bulldozers, trucks, 

planes, whatever the case may be. So we are not competitive, and 

we are particularly not competitive with our global taxation system. 

There is only one other industrialized country in the world, 

Chile, that has a global tax system. So if we went tomorrow to a 

territorial system with some level of taxation to prevent gaming— 

21 

8 percent, or whatever the case may be—there would be hundreds 

of billions of dollars that could come back in this country tomorrow 

that could provide funding for infrastructure. 

And the last idea is congestion pricing. I mean we all know today 

when you go through a bridge or a tunnel in New York, or wherever, you don’t have to go up and pay somebody taking the money. 

We have a little RFID tag there that says you are paid going into 

Manhattan. That type of technology is cheap, it is available. It has 

been successfully tested down in southern Florida in order to reduce congestion by putting congestion pricing there, giving you incentives to use high-occupancy lanes, or to operate in noncongestion periods of time. That could be another source of revenue. So 

those are three. 

Mr. SHUSTER. The gentlelady’s time has expired. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHUSTER. With that, Mr. Gibbs is recognized. 

Mr. GIBBS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. MacLennan, in your testimony you talked about how important the locks are in our river system, which I agree with you 150 

percent. Are you aware—well, let me back up a second. 

We are able to get the Olmsted Lock and Dam project going forward. Got kind of off a different funding source that frees up 

money for the Lower Mon, the Kentucky and the Chick locks. And 

you might not be aware, but I am sending a letter today to President Trump, along with about two dozen of my colleagues, to make 

sure that they are aware that, in the current funding for the Army 

Corps, the Olmsted is taken care of, but the three locks, the three 

priorities—Lower Mon, Kentucky, and Chick—are not. 

And we want to make sure they get the funding here in the next 

few months. Because if they don’t, they will be possibly shut down 

and delayed, and the cost will be exponential, and going up. So I 

just wanted to make you aware of that, because I know you, especially at Cargill, understand the importance of our inland waterway system. So, you know, if you have a chance to weigh in with 

the Trump administration on the importance of that funding, I 

would appreciate that. 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Yes, thanks for making me aware. 

Mr. GIBBS. I just wanted to mention that. 

Ms. Andringa, in your testimony you talk about, for manufacturing too, our water infrastructure—be it our drinking water, the 

aging pipes, and all that—and you talked about Representative 

Duncan’s private activity bonds lifting the cap. Are you aware that 

I have a bill that is H.R. 465, dealing with integrated planning 

with the EPA that will help give our local municipalities the flexibility in their planning and their permits to get to their goals they 

need to get to but maybe can’t do it in the 5-year permitting and 

have a goal which will help get the projects done, but it would also 

be more efficient and not—the ratepayers that can’t pay that. 

So I just wanted to bring that to your attention, that there are 

some other initiatives going on. I don’t know if you are aware of 

it, the EPA’s integrated planning, which they say they support, but 

they haven’t done a lot to get it going, so we are going to try to 

codify it in this legislation. 

22 

Ms. ANDRINGA. Well, thank you. And thank you for making me 

aware of that. You know, we have talked about a lot of different 

kinds of infrastructure here this morning, and, really, they are all 

vitally important to our economic well-being, and certainly to us, 

as industry, manufacturers, and labor. 

And the NAM did a comprehensive report, really, on building to 

win. It includes really good data about things like water, and waste 

water is another one that is important, as well as the ports. Light 

rail, we haven’t talked a whole lot about that, different transit systems. But, of course, roads and bridges and ports are vitally important, and probably the biggest numbers that we need. 

But I would also like to say that there are quite a few ideas in 

here about ways to fund this, and Congressman DeFazio, it is some 

of the same things you mentioned earlier. 

And the other thing I just want to say is that, as manufacturers—and I think you have heard it here, and I feel we are all 

preaching to the choir in this room, but we as manufacturers have 

to invest in our business. My dad was extremely conservative financially. We basically didn’t have debt, and always tried to finance our own growth. But the one thing that he always said is 

we have to keep updating our equipment in the plants. Our welders, our machining centers, the tools that our employees use. 

Mr. GIBBS. No, I—yes. I fully understand that. 

Ms. ANDRINGA. Yes. 

Mr. GIBBS. I just wanted to make it clear that—— 

Ms. ANDRINGA. No, anyway, I think what the point—— 

Mr. GIBBS. We need funding, but I also want to make it clear 

there are ways we can be more efficient in doing things. And the 

integrated planning bill which I introduced is part of that—— 

Ms. ANDRINGA. Yes, yes. 

Mr. GIBBS [continuing]. At least on the waste water side of 

things. That is one of—— 

Ms. ANDRINGA. And again, I think manufacturers and those of us 

here are willing to invest. 

Mr. GIBBS. Yes, that is great. 

Mr. Willisch—did I say it right? In your testimony you mentioned making significant investments in mobility technologies, and 

automated driving, and autonomous vehicles. I recently learned 

that these investments—during discussions we have in Ohio, we 

have the Transportation Research Center located in central Ohio 

that provides for automotive testing services, and planning to build 

a winter indoor testing facility. So they have got thousands of acres 

there now, and a lot going on. 

I would like to hear any thoughts you might have on how proving 

grounds and testing centers play a role in developing these new 

technologies BMW would be interested in. 

Mr. WILLISCH. Well, first of all, I would like to say that, of 

course, the safety of people driving our vehicles is paramount to us. 

So we would not—never go ahead and test cars that are not fully 

developed with actual consumers. 

So, having said that, we are and will do a whole lot of testing 

before we have any automated vehicle available to the public. So 

that might be a thought, as well, yes. We have to test, and we have 

23 

to be quick, because that is going to be a technology that is going 

to be—— 

Mr. GIBBS. I just want—— 

Mr. WILLISCH [continuing]. Around in the next 3 or 4 years. 

Mr. GIBBS [continuing]. To highlight that this testing ground we 

have in Ohio is state of the art, and doing it—an inside test facility 

would be beneficial. I want to make sure you are aware of that facility. 

Mr. WILLISCH. Thank you, yes. 

Mr. GIBBS. Thank you. And my time is up. I yield back. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Ms. Johnson? 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, 

and thank you very much for holding this hearing, you and the 

ranking member. 

I know that every member of this panel is aware that we are in 

desperate need of making additional investments in order to build 

up and maintain our crumbling highways and railways and waterways and airport infrastructure. At the same time, we are also 

dealing with a great deal of technologies, and we are dealing also 

with nonresilience in materials that we use, which causes us to 

have to do some projects over and over again. 

I still await the President’s package coming over with a lot of enthusiasm, but I am very concerned about all of you commenting on 

how the industry is experiencing changes. One of the things that 

struck me, I went to Germany to the BMW plant last year, the 

year before, with the President. And it is a huge plant. It was larger than this complex. But I didn’t see 10 people working there. 

They were all robots. And I wonder. What is that going to have to 

do with the workforce in this country, and how do we handle it? 

And have you had any of those thoughts? 

Mr. WILLISCH. But we still have 70,000 people working in that 

plant you were referring to, so that is—it is not totally empty. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. We walked almost the whole day looking, and I saw about 10 in the whole plant. But the number is not 

nearly as significant as the process. And looking toward the future. 

People think of infrastructure producing a lot of jobs. And in 

many industries, that is not necessarily the case. And I wonder 

how it is going to impact your industries as we look at infrastructure. 

Yes, Mr. Smith? 

Mr. SMITH. Well, I have to tell you I am optimistic about this. 

As everybody in this room knows, with the beginning of the last 

century about 50 percent of the population in America was in agriculture. Now there is less than 1.5 percent of people in this country 

working in agriculture, and we are producing more agricultural 

products than we can consume, and it is one of our biggest exports. 

About 1 in 3 acres in the United States is produced for export. 

So, there are people in the container shipyards handling those 

exports. There are people in the railroads handling them, and so 

forth. So I am very confident, as things automate in other sectors 

of the economy, there will be plenty of good-paying jobs, as long as 

our educational system keeps up with it. And in Tennessee, as Congressman Cohen will tell you, we just passed a law, as I understand it, where any student in the State can go to junior college 

24 

for free. And that will be the bedrock of people learning new skills 

to operate in these different environments. 

I have been to BMW in Germany, and where all those people 

that Ludwig is talking about, they are not on the factory floor, but 

they are up in the offices, doing design and computers, and designing the robots, and things of that nature. So, as long as we have 

a climate where business wants to invest in the United States, and 

an educational system that supports people being trained for these 

new technologies, I am very confident that things will be OK. 

In our industry, for instance, I don’t think we are going to go to 

fully autonomous trucks, but I do think we will go to trucks where 

the truck driver becomes much more productive. They will have an 

auto-pilot. It will be safer, fewer accidents. They may have a robot 

truck following it that allows them to operate. And I think that is 

the trajectory that we will go on, as long as we incent investment, 

and we have the proper educational systems to support it. 

Mr. SHUSTER. The gentlelady’s time is expired. Before we go—— 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you. I was just getting started. 

Mr. SHUSTER [continuing]. Mr. Cohen has a—— 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you. Since my name was mentioned, I want 

to thank Mr. Smith for the reference to junior college. All of that 

money is from the State lottery that you helped me, after 18 years 

of effort, push across the line to fund that. Thank you, and thank 

you, Tennessee, for the State lottery. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thanks for the commercial. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Webster is recognized. 

Mr. WEBSTER. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question. 

Mr. Smith, you brought up Florida. I am from Florida. And the 

toll facilities down in Miami-Dade up to Fort Lauderdale, which 

were just on the interstate system, but there are several local expressway authorities that charge tolls on their roads, all the roads 

they have built. Then we have the Florida Turnpike Enterprise, 

which goes through the center of our State. And I am sure your 

trucks use those. 

Do you think that—especially the ones with the flexible congestion-type tolling, where it goes up and down, which is a good Republican idea—you pay for what you get—do you think the Federal 

Government should get involved and tell us—we have local toll 

roads, we have State-run toll roads. Do you think they should get 

in that? Is that a way to enhance the revenue? 

Mr. SMITH. Yes. As I was saying to Ms. Norton, as we move to 

more natural gas-heavy trucks and more electric and hybrid vehicles on the highway, you are not going to have gasoline or diesel 

taxes to fund the Federal highway system. So the most productive 

system, in our mind, is some sort of RFID system that allows you 

to collect a user fee for those types of vehicles to use the Federal 

system. 

Once you have got that system in place, which is very simple 

with today’s technology—that is why I used the example of going 

through the tunnels in New York, nobody even pays any attention 

to it any more—so it can also be used for congestion pricing and 

to incent people to have more occupants in a vehicle. So you can 

get a lot of productivity out of our transportation system. 

25 

And I might point out, Congressman, that we have been operating 33-foot twin trailers in Florida for years very productively. 

And our drivers tell us they are safer. And that reduces traffic on 

your highways, both Federal and the State-funded divided highways you have down there. 

Mr. WEBSTER. Yes. I remember in olden days, when I was in the 

State legislature, we approved that and it was good. 

I was just saying do you think that it would best be done by the 

Federal Government to use that, as opposed to State or local? I 

mean State and local do things that are local. They try to improve 

their—but in the end, how about if there were dedicated freight 

traffic roads that were paid for through tolls? Is that something 

you would be in favor of? 

Mr. SMITH. Absolutely. It would take a lot of trucks off the road 

and—but having said that, I think you can get an awful lot of productivity on our existing expanded and improved highway system, 

doing the things that I just mentioned to you. You don’t have to 

have dedicated truck lanes, but that would certainly be something 

that could be looked at. 

As to State versus Federal, I don’t think it makes that much difference, provided there is a dominant design, there is a common 

technology standard that allows the VMT to be administered the 

same in Florida as it is in California, or Connecticut, or what have 

you. That is the main thing, right there. 

Mr. WEBSTER. OK. Thank you so much. Yield back. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Larsen? 

Mr. LARSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Smith, first off, on ATC and ATC reform, some folks have 

said that to privatize the system, the reason to do that is because 

airlines aren’t receiving enough NextGen benefits. But I know in 

Memphis there has been some investment in NextGen, and FedEx, 

I believe, has directly benefitted from that investment in NextGen. 

Could you just cover that for us? 

Mr. SMITH. Sure. We were the prototype location for a NextGen 

application which allowed us to narrow the separation between 

landing aircraft and aircraft taking off. It has been a spectacular 

success. It has improved the productivity of the FedEx operation 

there, saved tens of millions of gallons of fuel, allowed us to serve 

our customers more efficiently, and keep on time. 

A NextGen application nationwide, but particularly in the Northeast, which is the linchpin of the whole ATC system, because of the 

population density and the proximity of major airports one to another, there is the opportunity to vastly improve the productivity 

of the Nation’s air traffic control system with the types of technologies that we demonstrated and prototyped at our major hub in 

Memphis, Tennessee. 

And I might add something here that is a little-known fact. In 

terms of the number of customs entries—not tonnage, because sea 

freight, obviously, carries more tonnage than air cargo—the largest 

port, in terms of customs entries in the United States of America 

is Memphis, Tennessee, where our super-hub is. 

Mr. LARSEN. Yes. 

Mr. SMITH. And the productivity of that hub, and the commerce 

of the United States because of those improvements in ATC pioVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:16 Apr 14, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\115\FULL\2-1-20~1\23844.TXT JEAN
26 

neered by FedEx with the FAA in Memphis has vastly improved 

the productivity not just in Memphis, but the entire national economy. 

Mr. LARSEN. Thanks. Mr. Chairman, you didn’t reset my clock. 

I think there was a minute 30 and—— 

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Larsen, I just looked and I said, ‘‘That was 5 

minutes?’’ 

Mr. LARSEN. Yes, I know. It seems like a long time speaking. 

Mr. SHUSTER. You put me to sleep. 

Mr. LARSEN. Yes, yes. 

Mr. SHUSTER. No, I don’t think his clock was—— 

Mr. LARSEN. All right. So I got about 3 minutes or so? Yes. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Three minutes? 

Mr. LARSEN. Yes, OK, great, thanks. I noticed. Thanks. 

Mr. Trumka, in your written testimony you discussed this, but 

you didn’t really cover it in your oral testimony. Can you talk about 

the—sort of the marriage of workforce development and apprenticeships with infrastructure investment, and maybe a lesson for us as 

we approach infrastructure investment? 

Mr. TRUMKA. We view—we believe that we have the best skilled 

workforce in the world. We train more people every year. We bring 

people out of the neighborhood to be able to create a very, very, 

very effective workforce. 

Infrastructure, we think, is really a job-creator for this country. 

How it is financed will have an effect on how important or how 

widespread the job creation is. If a Buy America provision is expanded, and we think it should, it will have a greater impact on 

the number of jobs that are created. If more waivers are created, 

then taxpayers’ dollars will be used to drive down wages and encourage outsourcing. 

That is why, on all the types of funding that we look at—private 

partnerships, for instance, have a limited applicability here, because they need a revenue source. So they won’t apply to repair 

and maintenance, they won’t do much in the rural areas. And if 

they do come about in those limited areas, we would like to see— 

we would need to see 13(c) protection, Davis-Bacon protection, domestic preferences, protection for rail and public-sector workers, so 

that those public dollars aren’t used to drive down wages and actually suppress the economy and dampen the economy, but actually 

grow it. 

So how you do it is important. We are full-scale behind infrastructure, because, as every witness here has said, our country depends on it. Our competitiveness depends on it. And we are anxious to get started and put people back to work. 

Mr. LARSEN. Thanks. Mr. Willisch, in talking about road sensors 

and markings and such, you know, when we talk about building 

roads, bridges, highways, we don’t talk about painting lines on the 

road, usually. But what you are essentially saying, I guess, is that 

we need to be—for the—to support automated vehicles, we need to 

be rethinking a little bit the definition of infrastructure to support 

autonomous vehicles. Is that true? 

And then, does BMW have something more complete that you 

can offer the committee? Not in your answer, but just maybe for 

us to read later. 

27 

Mr. WILLISCH. It is not really that complicated. We just need continuous marking, and that should be there, anyway. So it is not 

that we have to have a special thing for automated driving, it is 

just, you know, that the marking is continuing on the roadside and 

in the middle. 

Mr. LARSEN. Yes. 

Mr. WILLISCH. So it is not a really specific BMW—— 

Mr. LARSEN. Just that simple? 

Mr. WILLISCH. Yes, it really is that simple. 

Mr. LARSEN. OK. All right. Thank you. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentleman. With that, Mr. Massie is 

recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. MASSIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We just received some 

great news yesterday in Kentucky, but it is going to present another transportation infrastructure challenge to us. The Amazon 

Prime Air announced they are going to put their hub at the CVG 

Airport. And I would just say to Mr. Smith we have got UPS and 

we have got DHL, as well, in Kentucky. You are welcome to come 

over any time. It is a challenge we would love to face. 

But the challenge that it presents is how do you use the existing 

infrastructure, or how do you upgrade it, and how do you pay for 

it so that you can accommodate growth like that? You know, with 

UPS, DHL, and now Amazon Prime Air hub there, all feeding into 

I–71 and I–75, which are interstates that haven’t changed a lot— 

the bridge they cross, the Brent Spence Bridge, was built 50 years 

ago, before any of that logistics infrastructure for North America 

was moved to Kentucky. And so now we are dealing with this. And 

I would say there is not a person here today, you know, testifying 

that isn’t affected by that corridor, the I–71/I–75 corridor. 

But the real challenge, to Mr. DeFazio’s point, is how do you pay 

for it. Because we know in northern Kentucky and southern Ohio 

we need a bridge. We are debating about where the next bridge 

goes. The bridge that is there, thankfully, was built with American 

engineers and American labor, and American steel. So it is—the 

reason that it is obsolete is it just can’t carry the traffic that is 

there. So we need another bridge. We are having a robust debate 

about where that bridge should go, and how to pay for it. 

Mr. DeFazio had some good ideas, I think. And it scares me 

every time I agree with somebody on the other side of the aisle. 

You know, I like that he is in favor of user taxes, instead of taxes, 

per se—user fees, instead of taxes. But before I go back to my red 

district and ask them to index the—you know, the fuel tax to inflation and cost, I need to convince them it is a real user fee, and that 

the money is not being leaked out for other things that—where 

there are users who aren’t paying a fee. For instance, bike paths, 

beautification, mass transit. 

If we could convince them that all the incremental money that 

is going into that fund is actually going to the infrastructure for 

the users that are paying for it, I think it would be a much easier 

sell. So I would just—you came a little ways toward me, I am coming a little ways toward you. 

And also, on the passenger facility charge, I think you are on to 

something there. There is two ways airports are funded. There is 

a tax that comes to the Federal Government, and then they ask 

28 

mother may I, and we give them—we dole them back out the 

money. But there is another way, with the passenger facility 

charge, where they have local control and decide how to spend that 

money. So I would go you one better and say why don’t we just get 

rid of the passenger facility charge cap, and let the airports decide. 

And then they wouldn’t need to come to the Federal Government 

and ask for their taxes back. 

So, what do you think of that? If I yield to the ranking member—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO. I have just advocated a small increase. I think 

the—— 

Mr. MASSIE. Well, I don’t want to increase. I want to take the 

cap off. 

Mr. DEFAZIO. That would be a market-based approach, in a 

sense. But I think I can hear the screams coming from downtown, 

from the—I mean now you are—you know, we are not just talking 

a couple of bucks. I mean, who knows? I mean it might—— 

Mr. MASSIE. Well, I—— 

Mr. DEFAZIO [continuing]. The cost of putting your bag in the 

overhead. 

Mr. MASSIE. Let’s test the free market. But it is—I do—I did 

want to point out one of the benefits of serving on multiple committees is you see there might be solutions to problems that aren’t all 

within one committee. 

I serve on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and I found out there we spent $100 billion building Afghanistan. 

Not on military funding, rebuilding Afghanistan. And the inspector 

general tells us the infrastructure we are building there is crumbling the day it is built. A lot of it, not all of it. And it is $100 billion. We are on the hook for $10 billion more over there. I would 

love to bring that over here and spend it on projects that are going 

to benefit users in America. 

Finally, I have got a few seconds here. I want to ask—Mr. Smith 

mentioned the regulation on the length of the trailers. Are there 

other regulations, Mr. Smith, that we could lift that would let you 

use the existing infrastructure more effectively? 

Mr. SMITH. Well, I am sure there are some out there, but none 

that compare with the instant improvement and productivity of the 

33-foot twin trailers. 

Mr. MASSIE. Mr. Willisch, do you have some regulations you 

would like to see lifted? 

Mr. WILLISCH. Not really, what we would say—there is one specific one, no. 

Mr. MASSIE. Just all of them? 

Mr. WILLISCH. All of them, but what we need is consistent, we 

need rules and regulations throughout the Nation. This is what we 

need, and we need to have that—— 

Mr. MASSIE. Consistent. 

Mr. WILLISCH [continuing]. Consistently, that we have a consistent planning base. 

Mr. MASSIE. Ms. Andringa? 

Ms. ANDRINGA. Yes. On regulations I would say I think it is just 

important to know that for manufacturers, we have just had a lot 

of regulations coming our way. And just to be able to keep up with 

29 

compliance—again, for mid-sized companies, small companies, it is 

really hard to have the experts. Sometimes in your business you 

have to go find those people so you can make sure that you keep 

up with all the regulations. 

We bought a software system a couple of years ago just to track 

all the new regulations that were happening every day. And we 

would see 100 to 200 new regulations every day. Now, maybe only 

5 to 10 of those really applied to us, but it still takes time to filter 

through them and to understand them. 

And I know manufacturers did a comprehensive study on compliance and the cost of compliance, and some of those definitely would 

connect with our infrastructure. And it is anywhere from, depending on the size of your company, from $10,000 to $30,000 per employee per year to comply with regulations. 

So, I would say we just need to make sure that the regulations 

we have are consistent, and I think across State lines, but that we 

also make it possible for our companies to be able to comply with 

regulations. 

Mr. SHUSTER. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. MASSIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Massie. 

Mr. Capuano? 

Mr. CAPUANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to go 

on record to say that whenever Mr. Massie agrees with us, we get 

nervous, too. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. CAPUANO. To the panel, when everything is said and done, 

everybody agrees we need to do something. We all know that. That 

is kind of like the easy, lowest hanging fruit there is. But there is 

a minor little point. You all run businesses or large organizations. 

Somebody has got to pay for this. 

And the question I have, really—and, Mr. Smith, to my knowledge—I have been listening to most of everything that is said, not 

everything—I think you are the only one who suggested a way, 

other than spending the Harbor Maintenance Fund, which I think 

is kind of ridiculous that we have to make that argument, the tax 

has been paid and sitting there. But, absent that, I am of the impression that everybody on the panel at least implied that you believe we need to put more money into the system. 

Now, we are talking about highways, but I would—I want to be 

real clear. I believe in—harbors are critically important, rail is 

critically important, and transit is critically important. Because, 

even if you are not moving goods through transit, your people are 

moving through transit, especially in the urban areas. All that 

being said, we need more money. 

Mr. Smith, you have made some suggestions, and I want to be 

real clear. Thus far, the smoke signals coming out of the new administration is somehow we are going to do this with just publicprivate partnerships. No new money. 

Now, I cochaired a group looking at public-private partnerships 

with Mr. Duncan last year, and we came to the unanimous, bipartisan conclusion that they have a role, and they are good, but they 

are no better than maybe—maybe—10 percent of our needs. 

30 

So my question for you is, first of all, do you agree that publicprivate partnerships can’t do it all, can’t even do most of it? And, 

if so, I would like to hear your suggestions—Mr. Smith, you already answered this part—your suggestions of where you think we 

should get the money. Because I will tell you that—I think it was 

about 3 years ago we had the president of the Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, sit in that chair and tell 

us the Chamber of Commerce supported an increase in the gas tax. 

So, for me, that was my first time ever agreeing with the U.S. 

Chamber of Commerce. And—but at the same time, I would love 

to find a way, if—I am open to any way to fund this. 

And, Mr. Smith, do you think the public-private partnerships can 

do all of this? 

Mr. SMITH. No. I think it is something that could do some things, 

but what needs to happen is to increase the gasoline and diesel 

taxes, which haven’t been increased—the Federal ones, that 

haven’t been increased since—— 

Mr. CAPUANO. Have you told this to the new administration? 

Mr. SMITH. Yes, of course. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Have you told this to my friends on the other side? 

Mr. SMITH. Well, I hope they are listening right now, so—— 

Mr. CAPUANO. You just did. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. CAPUANO. Wake up, guys, wake up. 

Mr. SMITH. But the answer to the question, yes, I told it to 

the—— 

Mr. CAPUANO. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH [continuing]. Administration as late as yesterday. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Beautiful. 

Mr. SMITH. And then, secondarily, I think we should move to 

some sort of RFID-based vehicle mileage—— 

Mr. CAPUANO. You have no arguments with me on any of these. 

I am completely open. 

Mr. MacLennan, do you think the public-private partnerships 

can do the whole thing? And if not—— 

Mr. MACLENNAN. No, I don’t. So I think—— 

Mr. CAPUANO. Where do you think we should get the money? 

Mr. MACLENNAN. So I am not the tax policy expert. I mean that 

is the crux of the issue, isn’t it? It is a big spend. We have talked 

about the benefits that it brings to the economy, to jobs. So it has 

got to be some combination of private-public partnerships, effective 

tax policy. 

And also we would say that it has got to be balanced. But the 

users of the systems, whether it is rivers, roads, railroads, got to 

be—you have got to have some skin in the game. So it has got to 

be multiple constituents. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Have you expressed that to the administration? 

Have they asked? 

Mr. MACLENNAN. I have not been invited to—— 

Mr. CAPUANO. Well, neither have I, so, you know—— 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. MACLENNAN. I think you will get invited before I will. 

Mr. CAPUANO. I wouldn’t count on that. 

[Laughter.] 

31 

Mr. CAPUANO. Mr. Willisch, what about you? Do you think the 

P3s can do it all, or do you think that we need to increase revenues? 

Mr. WILLISCH. Experience tells you no, you cannot do that. But 

otherwise, I can tell you a lot about developing cars or producing 

cars, or distributing cars. But I am not a tax expert, either, so I 

would limit my contribution here to those three fields, rather than 

talking about—— 

Mr. CAPUANO. That is fair enough. 

Ms. Andringa, what do you think? 

Ms. ANDRINGA. Yes, thank you. I concur with my colleagues that 

it has to be an all-of-the-above. That is what we talk about, as 

manufacturers. We are going to need the gas tax, user fees. We are 

going to need public-private partnerships, maybe bonding, infrastructure bank. 

And the thing that I think we just want to remember is the stimulus package that happened in 2009. I think a lot of us thought 

more money would go to infrastructure in that package. 

Mr. CAPUANO. So did we. 

Ms. ANDRINGA. And it was, like, less than 10 percent. Now, there 

were other reasons, and we were in a different economic situation. 

But I think what is really important is that whatever package, bold 

package I hear coming from this group, is it does have to be—it 

really has to be used for what it was intended to be used for. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Totally agree. 

Mr. Trumka, I actually know your answer, but you should put 

it on the record, anyway. 

Mr. TRUMKA. No, we don’t. We think partnerships have—publicprivate partnerships have a limited applicability, because they 

need a revenue source. And, in fact, if you are going to attract public capital, or private capital, that is dependent on having a Government source of—stream of revenue involved. And unless you can 

show that on a regular basis—5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years out, then private capital is not going to get involved, even for the small percentage of the jobs that they could do. 

We would support an increase in the gas tax. We think it should 

have been indexed for inflation years ago. We would also agree 

with my friend at the end of the table that it ought to be broadened 

to capture those, as changing technology goes by to capture more 

of those people, so that as electric cars and other forms of transportation that use highways and use the infrastructure in place, but 

skip out on it, they should be paying their fair share, as well. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Thank you. 

Mr. Chairman, I would just like to go on record as saying I love 

this panel. Thank you for having them. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. SHUSTER. I am glad we made you happy, Mr. Capuano. 

With that, Governor Sanford is recognized. 

Mr. SANFORD. Two quick thoughts. One, I think it is important 

to give credit where credit is due. And with regard to BMW, I think 

it needs to be remembered the time that they came to South Carolina. It was 20 years ago. The textile industry was shifting out of 

our State. Manufacturing had been hit incredibly hard, and people 

were hurting. 

32 

And you know, BMW made a bet on our State, and they really 

brought—they were the leaders in bringing in a new era of sort of 

advanced manufacturing. And so, in its wake, Volvo, and Boeing, 

and a whole lot of others have come. But it was BMW that started 

that ball rolling. And I think it is important that I acknowledge 

that. 

I think what is also interesting, though, is, from the standpoint 

of global capital allocation, you have made a bet, in part, based on 

market share and entry into the United States market. But I 

think, going back to, in essence, the conversation we have been 

having with regard to infrastructure and how you stay competitive, 

the question is would you make that decision today. 

And if there was one single thing as you compare investing in 

India versus China versus the United States, what would be the 

one thing that you would change? 

Mr. WILLISCH. Very clearly, we would make the same decision 

today. And just let me say that, just by our latest investment of 

$1 billion additionally—we have now spent about $7.5 billion—we 

created almost another 1,000 jobs. 

So, I think, more or less, we would do the same thing today 

again, and we would be at the same location, with the proximity 

to the harbor of Charleston. I don’t think we would change—maybe 

we would think about our start, which was a little rough in the 

first 2 years. But otherwise, we would do the same again. 

Mr. SANFORD. I thank you. 

Then, let me extend this question over to you, Mr. Smith. You 

have been a visionary for a long time. You have been ahead of the 

curve, whether that is submitting a business plan in business 

school that was not exactly seen as the way to go, but you seem 

to be able to look around the corner. And I would ask you the same 

question with regard to competitiveness. 

You mentioned some good ideas, whether that is, you know, congestion pricing or territorial taxes. If you were, let’s say, Donald 

Trump, and you look at this notion of being a chief executive in 

this country, and you look at, again, capital allocation, how do we 

attract and retain more in the way of capital that leads to investment and jobs, are there a couple other things that we haven’t 

talked on today? 

Or, as you look around the corner at what comes next, are there 

things that jump out at you that you would say, ‘‘You know, as a 

committee, you all ought to think about X or Y’’? 

And let me throw in one last thought on that question. I think 

that one of the things that some of us struggle with with regard 

to taxes, not just a knee jerk reaction to a tax increase, but rather 

this notion of Thomas Friedman’s flat world, and how indeed competitive the global marketplace is. 

And so, if you look at CBO numbers, what they show is that deficits are projected to increase rather dramatically. And that is in 

sort of a best-case scenario. What is interesting is, in essence, a 

deficit is simply a tax. It is a deferred tax. It is handed to the next 

generation, but it is a tax. The taxes are already going up. 

And so, what a number of us struggle with is not a knee jerk reaction to a gas tax or other things, but how do we retain competitiveness if, overall, our tax environment begins to look less comVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:16 Apr 14, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\115\FULL\2-1-20~1\23844.TXT JEAN
33 

petitive than some of the other choices that FedEx or BMW or 

other places have around the globe. Any pearls of wisdom or 

thoughts on that front? 

Mr. SMITH. Well, assuming that regulations become more efficient, which the President started to do with his Executive order 

the other day—and you just heard an example down here of a wonderful business that—overwhelmed with regulations. 

But the single most important thing the United States could do 

to be more competitive is to lower the corporate tax rate for C-corporations. The top 1,000 corporations in America make 50 percent 

of all capital investments. Those are the tools that I was talking 

about that make our blue collar workforce more productive and 

able to earn more. And the same time that that happens, we 

should go to a territorial tax system with some sort of appropriate 

tax rate to keep from gaming the system. 

I saw the other day Chairman Ryan talking about this suggested 

border adjustability tax being equivalent to a VAT. It is not. Mexico has both a corporate income tax—much lower than us—and a 

border-adjustable VAT, which everybody sees and is eliminated at 

the border. 

C-corporations pay about $300 billion in taxes. If you lowered the 

corporate tax rate and went to a territorial system, I have no 

doubt, from talking to CEOs in industries around this country, 

CAPEX, GDP goes up, tax receipts would increase. The top 5,000 

C-corporations make 95 percent of the capital investments in this 

country. You can’t apply the same rates to C-corps that—to passthroughs. And that is the problem. That is what is driving this border adjustability concept. 

If you are a pass-through, a sub-chapter S, an LLC, and you 

want the corporate tax rate, then you can reincorporate as a C. 

And when you take that money out, you pay whatever the personal 

income tax rate is. But retained earnings in C-corporations are the 

feedstock of tomorrow. And the only way to pay those bills without 

increasing the deficit is increased GDP. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Governor. 

Mrs. Napolitano? 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And gentlemen, 

everybody on the panel, I would like to refer to that saying up 

there: ‘‘According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign 

has only three duties to attend to.’’ One, the third one, ‘‘The duty 

of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public 

institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual 

or small number of individuals, and to erect and maintain,’’ et 

cetera. 

Say it—that said, I hear what you have said in regard to the 

maintenance of bridges, roads, all of that. Do you know that the 

Army Corps of Engineers has a $40 billion construction backlog, a 

$20 billion operations and maintenance backlog, and appropriated 

only $4.5 million this year? Makes sense to you? Would you do that 

to your company? Anybody? 

[No response.] 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. So, I would, in all fairness to the administration, ask you to pose to them the question of whether we can conVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:16 Apr 14, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\115\FULL\2-1-20~1\23844.TXT JEAN
34 

tinue on this road of not funding those that maintain the areas 

which you have a great interest in. Am I correct? Any comments? 

[No response.] 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Mr. Trumka, I am very happy to say that I 

am—take my hat off to the best workers that you have. They are 

recognized worldwide for their professionalism. And I hope that we 

understand that you build to last, that you do your work so that 

everybody knows that when a union person has done it, there is 

no change order, there is no backlog on things to go back and 

change. 

In regard to the increase, Mr. Smith, there is a current understanding that the electric batteries are now holding more. You are 

going to CNG. Are you considering going to electricity? 

Mr. SMITH. We have a number of all-electric and hybrid-electric 

vehicles in our local pickup and delivery operations. Those are generally lighter trucks. In the heavy-truck sector, we are converting 

a significant amount of our infrastructure over to compressed natural gas. Neither of those are picked up in the current Federal gasoline and diesel excise tax. 

And so there would have to be a different system to pick up over 

the road operations of personal automobiles and heavier trucks 

that are natural gas-powered. That is why I suggested the RFID 

solution. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. All right. The gas mileage is an issue. We 

have been debating of how we can collect more taxes from those 

that have electric vehicles, CNG. Somehow we have been on this 

conversation for years. We have yet to come to an agreement. Will 

you have any suggestions? 

Mr. SMITH. Well, again, if you want to build infrastructure, it 

would be a relatively simple task, with today’s technologies, to 

build an RFID reader system throughout our Federal highway system. A small tag, just like you have when you—if you are a regular 

user going through the tunnels in New York that read when you 

pass by and send you a bill on your credit card, I mean, that should 

be an integral part of infrastructure spending to develop an alternative electronic system that allows users to help pay for the system. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. But it is easier for you to say. You try Government trying to come to an agreement. 

Mr. SMITH. No, I understand. I have been testifying in this exact 

room for 43 years. So I have watched you all very closely—— 

[Laughter.] 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Precisely. 

Mr. SMITH [continuing]. For many, many years. And over the last 

25 or 30 years I think the whole conversation of this committee has 

been the inability of people that are in the Congress to support 

payment streams for things that we have to have. I mean that is 

the issue. It is not any failure to recognize we have got a problem 

here. It is an unwillingness to provide the funding to fix it. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Precisely. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yield back. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. Mr. Woodall is recognized. 

Mr. WOODALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It has to be said that, 

according to Mr. Smith’s testimony, the first packages went out in 

35 

April of 19, what, 73. So if 44 years ago business opened and you 

have been dragged in front of this committee for the last 43 of 

those years, we have some bigger problems that we need to work 

on together here, Mr. Chairman. That is just a show of respect to 

the generations of Shusters that have led this organization here. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. SMITH. Seems like I have been testifying before Shusters for 

a long time. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I believe that. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your doing this panel 

to get us started this year. This is full of American success stories, 

each and every one. I certainly count the BMW success story as an 

American success story. I was going to school in South Carolina in 

1992 when that announcement was made. And the sense of hope 

and optimism that BMW brought to that South Carolina community cannot be overstated. And the need for that hope and optimism today cannot be overstated. 

I represent the great State of Georgia. And, of course, our port 

in Brunswick is a large exporter of your product. Once upon a time, 

more product per production—more product was exported from that 

plant in South Carolina than any other automotive plant in this 

country. Is that still the case, do you know? 

Mr. WILLISCH. At least I have knowledge that it was the case in 

2015. 

Mr. WOODALL. I drive that point home because folks talk about 

infrastructure and getting goods to market and people building 

plants in America because that is where the consumers are. I want 

to talk about the fact that we have the best workers in the Nation, 

on the planet, that are teamed up with the best infrastructure in 

the world that lead to those kinds of exports. And I would love to 

have an export-driven economy, instead of a consumption-driven 

economy. And I appreciate what BMW does to help make that happen. 

Mr. Smith, I wanted to ask you about open skies. I saw it on the 

tail end of your testimony. Undoubtedly, competition is the key to 

making sure that we are all doing the very best we can. Competition is good for McDonald’s and Burger King. It is good for politicians, and it is good for aviation. But I do worry about unfair competition. And I hear from our domestic carriers, not that they want 

a special carve-out to prevent competition, but they want a level 

playing field so that they can have fair competition. 

In your testimony it seemed to suggest that you dismissed their 

concerns as wanting a special carve-out instead of a level playing 

field. Could you speak to that, just for a moment? 

Mr. SMITH. Well, no, sir. I don’t dismiss the concerns of the three 

major passenger carriers at all. I would simply point out, as I have 

over and over again, there is a specific process and a provision in 

existing law that requires them to file a complaint. The reason they 

won’t file that complaint is because they will not be able to demonstrate harm. Why won’t they be able to demonstrate harm? Because they don’t fly to the Middle East. 

And what they are trying to do through their opposition of open 

skies is to force travelers from Southeast Asia, India, and Africa to 

36 

go over their code partners, or on their systems through Western 

Europe, as opposed to going through the hubs in the Middle East. 

So, if they want to have this fight, there is a provision to do that. 

They won’t file under the existing provision to let everything see 

the light of day. So we don’t support their position, because of their 

refusal to do that. 

Mr. WOODALL. They—well, undeniably, being able to demonstrate that unlevel playing field is critical. 

I remember back in 2012 FedEx had that same concern about 

subsidies in the postal marketplaces around the globe, demonstrated that concern. I want to see those concerns demonstrated 

and eliminated. And I hope Secretary Chao is going to be able to 

give an open ear to that. FedEx is an amazing success story. You, 

as an individual, are an amazing American success story. And I am 

certain that keeping a level playing field is going to be that foundation on which we build more American success stories. 

Mr. Trumka, I wanted to comment on part of your testimony. 

Folks don’t get to see your testimony written, they just listen to it. 

It is your overarching principles there at the very end. 

Number one—you could have listed anything as number one. 

And you said, ‘‘Number one overarching principle is the program 

must include investments that are as transformative in the 21st 

century as railroads, highways, telephones, radio, and television 

electrification were in previous centuries.’’ I just couldn’t agree 

with you more. I get so tired of nibbling around the edges, and I 

don’t see a hunger back home for maintaining roads. Folks believe 

that is the lowest part of the bar. Of course we are going to do that. 

Of course we are going to keep our commitment to that. 

What are we going to do to transform ourselves going forward? 

And I say that coming from a not particularly unionized part of the 

world down there in Georgia. Of all the things we can partner on, 

all the great American success stories that are there, I just want 

you to know how much it means to me, first hearing out of the gate 

we are talking about what we can do, golly, to be as transformative 

in the 21st century as those accomplishments were you mentioned 

in the 20th. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having an opportunity for us 

to—— 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. 

Mr. WOODALL [continuing]. Celebrate what we agree on. 

Mr. SHUSTER. You brought up my father’s name, so whenever 

you brought it up I got to—impart some Shuster knowledge. So 

there has been a Shuster on this committee as long as FedEx has 

been in existence. So we are glad we have been able to work with 

you. And I hope your time in front of me was more pleasant than 

in front of my father. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. SHUSTER. Because I know how tough that can be. 

Ms. Titus is recognized. 

Ms. TITUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I greatly respect your 43 years, Mr. Smith. I have been here 

now—I am in my fourth term, and I have a similar experience. 

Nothing really has changed over those years, except my seat has 

moved back a little bit. We are having the same conversation, got 

37 

the same rhetoric. Need to fix the infrastructure. We got the score 

of D minus on the engineers’ infrastructure report card. All the options are on the table. We need to look at this. It is just a matter 

of paying for it. But there is no substantive plan. 

I commend the ranking member for trying to put out something 

on paper to say this is how we can fix it. But there is no plan, it 

is just a little dibs and dabs here and there. Everybody agrees we 

need to do something. Well, that is not going to get the job done. 

We have also heard a lot about maintenance of infrastructure, 

but I can tell you in the West, and in my State of Nevada, where 

you have had rapid growth and development, there is a tremendous 

challenge there, too. It is not so much repair and maintenance, but 

it is providing access. If you look at Nevada, we are $285 million 

shortfall every year for the next 10 years, just to build State highways, alone. So we have got to do something. 

Actually, my question goes to Mr. Trumka. I would like to ask 

him what he thinks about the suggestion that all our ills will be 

solved if we just give more corporate tax breaks to the big companies. 

And then, my second question, going back to the conversation 

about the public-private partnerships, how you would address those 

in terms of labor agreements, employment agreements. You know, 

everybody talks about those as though there are hundreds of them 

out there. There is really only a handful. And I can tell you that, 

in Nevada, where they are doing Project Neon, which is a big interstate project right downtown, they looked at doing one of these P3 

agreements and decided it made no sense financially or from a 

maintenance and management perspective, and backed away from 

it. 

So would you address those two questions for me? 

Mr. TRUMKA. I certainly will. A lot of talk has been had about 

repatriation, first of all. And that, of course, is a lump-sum revenue 

source, one time. Previous repatriation plans have disadvantaged 

U.S. companies by giving tax breaks to their offshore counterparts. 

We would oppose any kind of tax system that encouraged or rewarded outsourcing off country. 

Further, any action on repatriation should not reward those who 

game the system by granting them overly low tax rates. So we 

would end the deferrals. We would be willing to look at a lot of different things, including border adjustment taxes, things of that 

sort, that would actually encourage production here, encourage 

manufacturing here. But we don’t think that just cutting taxes is 

a solution because, in many instances, we can show you where low 

taxes have done nothing, and some of the biggest companies that 

have paid no taxes have still continued to offshore things. 

With regard to the private partnership stuff, how would we take 

care of that? First of all, they are of limited access, and limited use. 

They require a revenue source. And so repair and maintenance 

jobs, things of that sort. And even in the rural areas, where the 

revenue source would be low, are never going to get built. If you 

do them—and there are instances where we could see working with 

them—you still need to have the protections of 13(c), Davis-Bacon, 

domestic preferences, protections for rail and public-sector workers. 

38 

And we would increase the Buy America provisions of that, as 

well, so that, in fact, those tax dollars, or even the private-sector 

dollars, are used to increase jobs here at home, and increase our 

economy, rather than drive down the wages of Americans here. 

We are willing to look at and work with people on a lot of different funding sources. But blindly saying all you have to do is reduce the income tax on corporations and everything will be fine 

simply doesn’t square with reality. 

Ms. TITUS. Thank you very much. I yield back. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. LaMalfa? 

Mr. LAMALFA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for convening this. And indeed, a very good cross-section of interest on 

this fine panel today, representing a lot of what America is looking 

at for its transportation and materials transporting needs. 

So when I—you know, first time on this committee here, and I 

am excited about it. I hear a lot of conversation going on here 

about the different aspects of how we are going to accomplish 

things. And I just want to always remember that when I hear 

maybe a little is being done to get the funding, well, a lot is being 

done every day by every American family in paying the way for all 

of this, whether it is the gas taxes they fuel up, or the tax on tires, 

as well as the excise taxes that come along the way, and then on 

the products that they purchase when they—when a truck is carrying that—if you got it, a truck brought it, but a truck paid to get 

it there, as well as rail and ports. 

So there is a lot of ways people are already paying for this. And 

I think what really needs to have more attention paid to it is 

that—are we doing things as efficiently as we can with the dollars 

we have? Are the dollars being channeled into transportation infrastructure that people are paying at the pump? 

Interesting discussion on ports a little bit earlier. I don’t know 

the—all the background on that particular port fee that isn’t being 

paid completely towards using it for ports; I need to learn. But that 

is a great discussion. But people, when they are paying it, they certainly want to see those dollars get into the infrastructure and not 

go somewhere else. 

So, we have—I am from California, I am from the ag business 

myself, and surrounded by many people that are in agriculture, 

whether it is grain or fruit, nut crops, hay crops, you name it—timber industry. So they are very interested in a lot of the port aspects, as well. And being on the west coast, it is getting pretty 

tough with the port system we have there, with the load we have. 

And we—you know, we saw ag products suffer quite a bit just a 

couple years ago, when things weren’t moving very well through 

the ports. So we are glad to see that moving well. A strong bipartisan effort in this town helped to overcome some of those challenges. So we need to keep that going. But we have issues with our 

ports, you know, dredging that needs to be done to keep, like, the 

ports in northern California moving well. 

We got to overcome the obstacles. And sometimes I see a lot 

going on with getting permitting done to do anything on, you know, 

port maintenance, adding the highway infrastructure. I am in the 

rice business, OK? And so when I saw some—this is not that many 

years ago they were going to infringe on a rice field, you know, pay 

39 

the farmer for the land that was being taken in order to build up 

an overcrossing and a clover leaf. They were also concerned about 

the mitigation for the rice land, because they look at that as habitat. Now, that is someone’s private property. And—but they are 

going to—they were worried about mitigating the land that was in 

a rice field. And that just kind of blew my mind, as a rice grower, 

that, no, I am—you know, so there is a lot of hangups on just getting these projects done. 

And so, when I am looking at the—how the folks in my district, 

they are especially going to be interested in what further can be 

done to—and I would point this to Mr. MacLennan, if you don’t 

mind, on that. What do you see, as far as our rail system being 

able to get some of these products to port and trucking—but the 

main thing being the port aspects of moving sometimes very perishable products timely—through those, I mean, so we can remain 

competitive on the west coast, as well as the whole Nation? 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Yes. As you pointed out, Representative, the 

congestion—the port congestion in this country is the worst on the 

west coast. And so, when you have the congestion in the port facilities, it backs up the whole system. And, to your point, it creates 

all kinds of damages, losses relative to the value of produce. It impacts export markets. 

So, I think, you know, whether it is dredging, or increasing facilities for barges along the riverways, as I mentioned, a safety—but 

your particular district—not necessarily your district, but California in particular—is in the most need, relative to port facility 

improvement, which will improve our trade and our overall commerce, and the livelihood of the farmers. 

Mr. LAMALFA. And what do you see are roadblocks that we could 

handle in Government that don’t necessarily mean, you know, an 

additional fee or a rate hike or something? What are some of the 

road blocks we could be doing that would be using the dollars we 

have in our system? 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Well, we have got the Harbor Maintenance 

Trust Fund is the quick answer. I mean we have got billions there 

in the taxes that have been collected, you know, waiting to be 

spent. So I think I would focus on that first, is getting the funding 

into the system, and through a—whether it is public-private partnerships, or, you know, the projects that are already underway that 

has been pointed out in committee from the Army Corps of Engineers, we are ready to go. 

Mr. LAMALFA. Yes. 

Mr. MACLENNAN. With the funding. 

Mr. LAMALFA. I get concerned about permitting, as well, because 

there is—— 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Yes, yes. 

Mr. LAMALFA. You know, let’s get the work done, let’s get the 

people to work doing the work that want to, and—— 

Mr. MACLENNAN. You have got to have the efficiency. 

Mr. LAMALFA. Yes. I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Thank you. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. Ms. Wilson is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. WILSON. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Shuster and 

Ranking Member DeFazio, for holding this important meeting. I 

40 

am a new member of this committee, and I look forward to working 

with both of you and the entire committee to provide a 21st-century 

infrastructure for our 21st-century businesses and communities. 

Thanks to all the witnesses who have testified here today. I am 

the founder of the Florida Ports Caucus and the chair of the Florida Ports Caucus, and we do a lot of work with ports. 

But when my—when I first arrived to Congress I would go to the 

floor every day and my mantra for Congress would be jobs, jobs, 

jobs. And I was concerned because we were unable to pass a jobs 

bill. And I had two great jobs bills that would create jobs, because 

I believe that if we employ everyone in our country, then we would 

have a better country. We wouldn’t have people on—so many people looking to Government for help. We—everyone would be working. 

In my opinion, I think that—I want to ask a question, first of all, 

to Mr. Smith. And I want to first thank him for creating so many 

good jobs in my district for my constituents. I represent MiamiDade County, which is home to several FedEx shipping centers and 

a significant regional hub for Latin America and the Caribbean, 

which we were happy to tour. I want to also acknowledge your— 

you for the diversity of your workforce. I was able to tour your operation in Paris, thanks to my dear friend, your senior vice president, Gina Adams. It was an extraordinary experience. 

In your written testimony, you warned that FedEx would not be 

able to continue to grow the economy and create jobs without improved infrastructure. And I was happy to hear you mention education. I am a former school principal, so I know how important it 

is for children to be educated to take the next level of jobs that we 

create. Could you please elaborate on the impact of delayed infrastructure investment on your company and sector? 

And also, you said that you believe user fees would help. And are 

you interested, or would you approve higher user fees to get this 

done? Because everything is stuck. 

Mr. SMITH. Well, the answer to the last question is yes, we would 

support higher fees. And as I have mentioned several times, we 

have supported an increase in the Federal gasoline and diesel tax 

to do that. 

But let me give you one factoid which will just bring this in perspective. All of us know what it is like to buy a tire for our car. 

Over the past 20 years, our over-the-road vehicle tire utilization 

has been cut in half. So we are using almost 100 percent more tires 

to produce the same mileage of transportation. Why is that? Because the road infrastructure has so many potholes in it, it is tearing up tires faster than what was the case before. 

The congestion, Mr. DeFazio’s clock up there, is a real cost to 

business and a real cost to consumers. The cost of congestion is getting worse. It is preventing time-certain deliveries, which are important for things for hospitals and things of that nature. So there 

is a cost to the public, there is a cost to FedEx, there is a cost to 

UPS, there is a cost to Cargill by delaying these expansions and 

required upgrades and maintenance of the highway system. 

So thanks for your job as a teacher. My brother was a teacher. 

After parenting, it is the most important job in the country, in my 

opinion. 

41 

Ms. WILSON. Right. Thank you. 

Mr. Trumka, in your written testimony you mention reducing 

poverty and inequality as a guiding principle for infrastructure investment. In your opinion, what infrastructure investments and 

policy reforms would best support poverty reduction? 

Mr. TRUMKA. I think there is two facets to that answer. One is 

we talked about automation and new technology, and that has always been important for a dynamic economy. And it is important 

in transportation. But that said, we can’t use technology as an excuse to ignore the cost to workers, communities, and safety. If anything, technology should be used to combat inequality, not to ignore 

or accelerate the problem. 

And so, one point I would make is, as this committee looks forward, you ought to strike—I look forward to working with you so 

that we can strike the right balance between worker safety and 

progress. 

The system sometimes locks people out. And so we have to get 

them skills at the lower level. We have started, in our apprenticeship program, going back and doing remedial courses, offering remedial courses so that applicants have the necessary math skills— 

writing skills, reading skills, English skills—to be able to pass our 

entrance exam and get into the community, make sure everybody 

has that opportunity. 

Also, if you can’t do—if you do public-private partnerships and 

you don’t follow the protections of 13(c) and Davis-Bacon and domestic preferences and all of those things, tax dollars will be used 

to drive down wages, which will increase poverty in a lot more 

areas. And so we would guard against those, as well. 

And the projects ought to be spread through the country, so that 

there is a geographical look at it. So the rural Americans are getting a shot at some of the jobs and some of the better infrastructure, and thus—then looking more attractive to business to come 

into some of those rural areas. And we would urge the committee 

to look at that geographical spread, so that large segments of 

Americans aren’t just locked out, that we don’t just do this in populous areas, but we look at the rural areas, as well. 

Mr. SHUSTER. The gentlelady’s time has expired. Mr. Lewis from 

Minnesota is recognized. 

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for coming 

today. It is very important that we hear from the experts in the 

field and doing the tough work. I represent a district in Minnesota 

that is primarily suburban, primarily automotive-dependent. We 

have got a couple of major interstate arterials through our district, 

35 and 35E, and congestion is always a problem. Over 78 percent 

of the citizens in that district commute by car alone. If you add in 

pools, it is 87 percent. So that is very high on our agenda. 

But Mr. Trumka said something interesting not long ago, and it 

is how we invest matters. And when I look at this, and I think 

when the committee looks at this, I hope, that we are going to look 

at the investments that have the greatest return. 

We all know that productivity is the key to rewarding both labor 

and capital. It is not a zero sum game. If we are more productive, 

everybody benefits. So, let me ask you—and let’s start with my 

Minnesota friend, Mr. MacLennan. What do you think, when we 

42 

look at roads, bridges, rail, certainly air traffic control, airports, 

broadband, transit? What is the biggest bang for the buck, in general, in—certainly that affects your industry? 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Well, thanks, Representative Lewis. I am a little biased, relative to making sure we take care of the ag economy. 

And I think the ag economy in Minnesota and the rest of the 

United States really can benefit from continued investment in our 

port system and our riverways. 

And I mentioned a little while ago that the efficiency of our 

riverway system relative to volumes that you can put on a barge. 

You can put over 50,000 bushels on a barge, maybe 1,000 bushels 

on a truck, so it is environmentally friendly, but it does have limitations. So I think, relative to not forgetting the importance of the 

rural economy and the jobs, and the importance of the rural economy to the agriculture system, I think for us they are all connected. It is kind of a, you know, three-legged stool: rail, road, rivers, as well as ports. But for us I think it is riverways and barge 

transportation and ports. 

Mr. LEWIS. Mr. Smith, you had mentioned the idea of moving to 

a system that is essentially a user fee system, or getting there, getting closer to that. And you talked about congestion pricing. That 

intrigues me a little bit, and it intrigues a lot of people who haven’t 

just read Reason Magazine lately. 

But we have got a couple of interstates there that—sometimes 

during the day it is relatively free-flowing. But not at 7:30 and not 

at 4:30. Can you elaborate on that just a little bit? 

Mr. SMITH. Well, congestion pricing would presumably move 

some of that traffic into the shoulder periods, where the highways 

aren’t utilized as much. There are many people that don’t have discretion in when they travel. 

But congestion is always on the margin. In other words, it is that 

last 3, 5 percent that causes gridlock. So moving a relatively small 

number of cars and trucks into the less congested time of the day 

makes the infrastructure more productive. That is what they 

showed down in Florida when they used congestion pricing. 

Having said that, the real key is to provide more infrastructure 

and alternative routings. You can’t just solve the problem with 

some sort of technology and congestion pricing and incentives to 

use higher occupancy vehicles, and so forth. You have got to build 

the additional infrastructure that I was reading from a little earlier, that our interstate highway projects that—we could start 

building tomorrow if there were funds available to do it. 

Mr. LEWIS. I think we do have to do exactly that. In fact, I used 

to say that the trucker is a lot more productive with the truck. 

Now we can include the road, too. They have got to get the infrastructure. 

Now, there are opponents to some of this. Real quickly, anybody 

on the panel? And I hear it in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area 

quite a bit, that, ‘‘Well, this is great, but you can’t build your way 

out of congestion.’’ We hear that from the opponents of adding on 

to any infrastructure capacity. Anybody can comment on that if 

they like, but I hear that a lot. 

Mr. SMITH. Well, that—to some degree it is like saying in Memphis, Tennessee, nobody would like to use a bridge across the MisVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:16 Apr 14, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\115\FULL\2-1-20~1\23844.TXT JEAN
43 

sissippi River other than the one we have, because it is so heavily 

utilized. 

Mr. LEWIS. Yes, right. 

Mr. SMITH. So you build another bridge, and all of a sudden you 

are amazed at how many people decide they want to go over there 

to avoid the congestion, or build a new shopping center, or whatever the case may be. 

So I don’t think there is any question about the fact that the 

United States Department of Transportation, with the States, has 

a lot of wonderful projects to increase our capacity and reduce congestion. 

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you. I yield back my time. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Johnson from Georgia 

is recognized. 

Mr. JOHNSON OF GEORGIA. Thank you. Mr. Smith, I suppose it 

has been kind of frustrating over the last several years to witness 

Members of Congress strictly adhering to their promise under the 

taxpayer protection pledge to oppose any increase in Federal Government tax revenues. Has that been as frustrating for you as it 

has been for many of us? 

Mr. SMITH. Of course. 

Mr. JOHNSON OF GEORGIA. And you, of course, know what that 

taxpayer protection pledge is. 

Mr. SMITH. That is Grover Norquist’s pledge that you have to 

sign, right? 

Mr. JOHNSON OF GEORGIA. That is correct. 

Mr. SMITH. Well, I would point out to you one thing here. Our 

senior Senator from Tennessee was heavily involved in the Inland 

Waterway Act. And it is my understanding that the various interests that are opposed to taxation became supportive, once the revenue source was redesignated as a user fee. 

Mr. JOHNSON OF GEORGIA. So, do you mean that—— 

Mr. SMITH. That is the Inland Waterway Trust Fund funding. 

Mr. JOHNSON OF GEORGIA. So do you mean that there was an exception made to the Grover Norquist taxpayer protection pledge 

that resulted in new revenues—— 

Mr. SMITH. That is my understanding. 

Mr. JOHNSON OF GEORGIA [continuing]. To the Federal Government? Well, I think that is a wonderful event that has occurred. 

I wonder if we can duplicate it. Do any of you other panel members 

have anything to say about this strict adherence that we have seen 

towards this taxpayer pledge? 

While looking, of course, at the—at what was written out of our 

Constitution that our chairman put on the wall, it says the Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, impose—and 

excises. It doesn’t say Grover Norquist shall have the power. What 

do you all think about that? 

And I see you raising your hand, Mr. Trumka. 

Mr. TRUMKA. Yes. I think it has had an absolutely horrible effect 

on the competitiveness of this country. We get further and further 

behind every year, because we don’t have—we are starved for revenue to be able to do the basic infrastructure that this country 

needs, let alone the infrastructure we need to transform us into the 

21st century. 

44 

If you have a house, and the house—the roof starts to leak on 

the house, and you don’t take care of it, it gets more and more and 

more and more expensive. The more we delay with infrastructure, 

the more and more and more and more expensive it gets, and the 

less and less and less competitive we get. I think we are all pretty 

much in harmony on the fact that infrastructure needs to be done, 

done now, and done at a very, very large scale. 

Mr. JOHNSON OF GEORGIA. And it is going to take increased revenues to do it right. 

Mr. TRUMKA. Absolutely. And can I just add one other thing? I 

wanted to comment to Congressman Lewis when he said what is 

the biggest bang for your buck. The best way to get the biggest 

bang for your buck is to get the lowest cost of capital for your buck. 

The lowest cost of capital spreads those bucks a lot further. And 

I will work with this committee to do that, to make sure that the 

funding source gets us the lowest cost to capital. 

Mr. JOHNSON OF GEORGIA. Well, I think that is important. 

I also want to talk about another factor in profitability for businesses, and it is this issue of worker productivity. And I want to 

ask you all whether or not you believe that having a satisfied, wellpaid workforce contributes to productivity and profitability when it 

comes to your companies. And, if so, then why would we support 

any measures that would hurt workers’ ability to collectively bargain for issues that would create more productivity for workers? 

Mr. MACLENNAN. So I agree, that an engaged and happy workforce is critical to success. But I don’t think that you have to have 

collective bargaining exclusively to achieve that. We have got about 

70,000 workers in the United States, and some are union employees and some are not. And I think you can have engagement and 

productivity in both circumstances. So I don’t—— 

Mr. JOHNSON OF GEORGIA. Well, shouldn’t workers be able to 

choose whether or not they want to be able to collectively bargain 

or not is—— 

Mr. MACLENNAN. I think that is generally the case, is it not? 

Mr. JOHNSON OF GEORGIA. Well, you wouldn’t want to hurt that 

ability, would you? 

Mr. MACLENNAN. I think you want to give people the opportunity 

to be well informed, and to be able to make the choice that they 

feel is best for them, yes. 

Mr. SHUSTER. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. JOHNSON OF GEORGIA. Well, I think that is common ground 

that we can all agree to. And I thank you all for your—for being 

here today. And I thank the chair and the ranking member for having this hearing as our first hearing of this new session of Congress. It is so important. 

I also have a statement that I would like to introduce for the 

record. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Without objection, so ordered. 

Mr. JOHNSON OF GEORGIA. Thank you. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. 

Mr. JOHNSON OF GEORGIA. I yield back. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Smucker? 

Mr. SMUCKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As a former business 

owner, a contractor, understood the importance of highway system 

45 

that enabled us to move goods and employees to job sites. And in 

my particular area, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when we had new 

highway systems, bypasses around bottlenecks built, it opened entirely new markets for our company, because we could get to a new 

market in an hour or so, which was sort of our limit. 

So, with that background, I am really happy to not only be part 

of the committee, but to be part of this hearing as the first thing 

we are doing in this session. We are really evaluating the impact 

of Government investment in our infrastructure system. 

And I want to share just a little bit of experience. I served in the 

Pennsylvania State legislature for—the State senate for 8 years. 

And we were successful in passing an infrastructure bill, basically 

a highway funding bill, after years of not having done so. Pennsylvania highways and bridges have a bad reputation, a high number 

of bridges that were rated, you know, insufficient. And we were 

able to get a bill passed. 

And this was in an environment—to the point that was just 

raised, this was in an environment where, at the same time, we— 

and with my support—my caucus, other Members, other Republican Members, we were turning our State budget inside out, looking for ways to save dollars and ensure that we were providing for 

more efficient use of taxpayer dollars. We literally went line by line 

throughout the budget and eliminated hundreds of line items, and 

reduced overall spending. 

But at the same time, we were able to pass a transportation bill 

that increased our funding for transportation. How did we do that? 

Number one, we said that we were there to focus on the core 

functions of Government. And there were a lot of areas where we 

shouldn’t have been—it was better done in the private sector. But, 

you know, our infrastructure can only be done—can be done best, 

at least, or primarily can only be done through Government, and 

maybe public-private partnerships. We did some of that, as well. 

But it is a core function of Government critical to our environment. 

It was a lot of work there. But what it took—I think what took 

it over the finish line, and this is—maybe there will be a question 

at the end of this for whoever may want to answer. But really, 

what took it over the finish line was a well-coordinated, well-funded effort to educate the public on the importance of investment in 

our infrastructure. 

And we talk about the creation of jobs during the building of 

roads or whatever it may be. You know, there are also huge economic benefits—you have all talked about that—in terms of jobs 

created, economic growth, and so on. So I guess, you know, I saw 

it, whether it was the Transportation Association, the chambers 

throughout the State, the Pennsylvania State Chamber of Commerce, a coordinated effort to educate the public about the costs of 

congestion, of waiting in traffic, and so on and so forth, and about 

increased safety. 

So my question to you is what efforts are we making here, at the 

national level, to drive public support, to build public support for 

investment in infrastructure that we are talking about? 

Mr. MACLENNAN. I will answer quickly, which is I think it is a 

good point, because I think when it comes to transportation and infrastructure, what is most commonly thought about is I am spendVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:16 Apr 14, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00051 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\115\FULL\2-1-20~1\23844.TXT JEAN
46 

ing a lot of time in my car, getting to and from work. And it is far 

more complicated in nuance than that. We have got railroads, we 

have got ports, we have got riverways, and we have got highways, 

and they are all interconnected. 

So I think the message that we in the private sector can help deliver, in conjunction with the public sector, is there is a cost, infrastructure is not just about highways, it is an interlinked system. 

And it is costing the country a lot of money and a lot of job opportunity. 

Mr. TRUMKA. We are already doing a lot of education with our 

central labor councils, our State, Feds, and all of our strategic partners, religious groups, environmental groups, and things of that 

sort. 

One of the things is to educate them. And most people don’t 

know the figures, that the average commuter spends 42 hours a 

year—— 

Mr. SMUCKER. That is the kind of—and I am sorry, I am at the 

end of my time, I am going to cut you off. But that is the kind of 

information that, you know—what we are talking about in the 

hearing room today that the public needs to hear. 

Mr. TRUMKA. Yes. 

Mr. SMUCKER. And that is how we are going to begin to build the 

kind of support we will need—— 

Mr. TRUMKA. And we are doing that. 

Mr. SMUCKER [continuing]. To do that. So thank you. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Smucker. 

Mr. Lipinski? 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding 

this hearing. And thank the ranking member for raising the important issue of how are we going to pay for this. I know it is not directly in our jurisdiction in this committee, but it is something that 

we really need to focus on. 

I want to move very quickly through a few things. The first I just 

wanted to mention. The Recovery Act funded some things that 

were—sort of expanded what—the definition of what some people 

may think of as infrastructure. But, for example, fire stations were 

funded. And those are important facilities, certainly critical for 

public safety. So I think we need to have a serious discussion about 

what the definition of infrastructure is going to be, not—we won’t 

have that here, right now, but I just want to put that out there, 

that we may want to think more broadly, and include things such 

as fire stations. 

I want to move on to something Mr. Trumka had talked about 

earlier. In his inaugural speech, President Trump made a commitment to buy-American principles. Too often, waivers and loopholes 

allow agencies and grant recipients to avoid compliance with domestic content requirements. 

So, I am introducing a bill next week, the Buy American Improvement Act. And one of the things my bill does to improve 

transparency and accountability is to close some of these loopholes. 

The bill is going to require that any waivers be published in the 

Federal Register so that businesses would be able to better identify 

products that are in demand, and seek opportunities to work with 

the Federal Government. 

47 

I want to ask Mr. Trumka if this will be helpful, and if there is 

anything else that you would want to expand on, anything else we 

can do to better make sure that we are buying American and hiring Americans. 

Mr. TRUMKA. Closing the loopholes would be tremendously helpful because, as it stands right now, the lack of that has had a devastating effect on a lot of industry: steel industry, auto industry, 

a number of others. We recommend four things along those lines. 

One is that the percentage requirements should be increased 

until we get to 100 percent American content requirements. The 

Buy America must attach all infrastructure, including, as you 

noted, fire houses, schools, and drinking water. The loophole should 

be closed and the process standardized. I think you mentioned that 

your bill would do that. You would have to publish it in the Register, any waivers, so that people would know what the standards 

are, how you meet them, and why you don’t meet them. 

And DOT must implement, I think, a uniform and transparent 

standard for waivers, so that the law is followed as intended. I 

think those would have a very, very beneficial effect, create a lot 

of jobs in America, and make us, quite frankly, far more competitive. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you. I wanted to move on. Something Mr. 

Larsen had mentioned—I want to ask Mr. Smith and Mr. Willisch 

if there is anything that you think needs to be—the Federal Government needs to do in regard to really facilitating driverless vehicles. I know they are going to be very important and already coming on to the road. Not just cars, but also for trucks. Is there anything either of you want to add, say that we should be doing in 

order to better facilitate this at a Federal level? 

Mr. WILLISCH. Well, very simply, potholes and discontinued 

markings stand in the way of automated driving. But those basic 

requirements should be fulfilled anyway for any car, any truck that 

is using American roads, or roads in the civilized world. So I would 

say this is the basic requirement that we have to fix. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you. Mr. Smith, do you want to add anything? 

Mr. SMITH. Well, I think that the way forward is to have the 

United States Department of Transportation have a standardized, 

nationwide certification process, just like we do for aviation. So if 

you want to make an airplane in the United States, the DOT, FAA 

doesn’t tell you how to do it, but you have got to meet certain 

standards with your engineers, and then they certify. 

So, just as was mentioned, there need to be standards for the 

roads, the markings, the redundancies in all of the technology. The 

worst thing that could happen is for automated vehicles to be subject to a balkanized, regulatory system at the State level. So that 

is my suggestion to what you should do to promote autonomous vehicles. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you very much. My time is up, I yield back. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Lipinski. Mr. Perry is recognized. 

Mr. PERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for taking your time to be here today. 

Private-sector financing of infrastructure seems to be a—at least 

a discussion, if not a cornerstone of the new administration. And 

48 

I, too, am interested in that, specifically for transportation and how 

the private-sector can be used to improve the transportation system. I was privileged to sit on the P3 panel in this very committee 

that—we discussed a lot of those things. It is for some things, 

maybe not for some other things. 

But I am just wondering, anybody on the panel there, if you believe the committee should encourage and leverage the ingenuity of 

the private sector, if there is anything specifically that you would 

recommend in that regard that we should consider, look at, encourage, et cetera? 

Yes, ma’am? 

Ms. ANDRINGA. Well, I think already a lot of the public-private 

partnerships have been in certain areas. Like I think in rail, in energy, and in telecommunications. So with some of those, there are 

already probably some best practices there. And again, I think we 

have all said we are going to need more than that, though. 

But looking at what has worked well in maybe those three areas 

would be something that could be replicated in some other areas 

of infrastructure. Because we have lots of areas of infrastructure. 

Mr. PERRY. Anything particular in highway and surface? 

Ms. ANDRINGA. You know, it seems like highways are such a 

huge area. We flow people and products all the time on highways. 

So I think looking at the Highway Trust Fund and how we can 

make that solvent for the future is probably number one. 

Mr. PERRY. I will give you an example. I am sorry, Mr. Trumka, 

go ahead. 

Mr. TRUMKA. Well, I would just make two points. One, permitting reform would be helpful to get projects up and going quickly. 

And the second thing is, when you look at public-private partnerships, you still should look for the lowest source of capital, so that 

they aren’t used to siphon off capital at a higher rate, rather than 

going back into infrastructure. 

Mr. PERRY. So there is—and I would agree with you. I think 

there is a situation I know in the district I am privileged to represent along the Federal highway where there is a fair amount of 

business, but there is not a, you know, off ramp, there is not an 

interchange there. And the people that own the surrounding businesses have said, ‘‘We would be interested in building it and charging people to come off of it to recoup our investment or whatever 

at some point, and working some arrangement out with that,’’ but 

there is no vehicle for them to do that. Pardon the pun. 

You see any problem or downside to something like that at the 

Federal level? 

Mr. TRUMKA. Well, again, you are looking at the revenue source. 

And we would—if you are going to do that, you still—in the building of that thing you would still want to have section 13(c) and 

Davis-Bacon, and all of those things apply, so that it isn’t used to 

drive down the wages of people in that community. 

Mr. PERRY. But aside from those things, you don’t have any issue 

with it? 

Mr. TRUMKA. Oh, if it can work, then we would work to see that 

it worked. 

49 

Mr. PERRY. All right. And Mr. Trumka in particular, with your 

exchange with the gentlelady from Miami-Dade, you mentioned inequality. I have a question for you regarding Davis-Bacon. 

Now, according to some studies, increases transportation project 

cost by over 9 percent. And I know that there is going to be little 

agreement on what the percentage is. From my experience running 

my own business, it increased the cost. But that is my experience, 

and we can—let’s just—that is just some conjecture out there. 

But I would just ask you. The average current transportation project cost, for an average cost, is $1.5 million. And the existing 

threshold stands at 2,000 since it was moved down in 1935. That 

is a long time ago. I am just wondering if you would be amenable 

to having a discussion about raising that threshold concomitant 

with inflation since 1935. There are many people in the United 

States that see this as the last vestige of Jim Crow, as it literally 

keeps out some people that want to get into the trades, but they 

can’t because the threshold is so high that small businesses can’t 

compete, because they can’t get in. 

Mr. TRUMKA. Well, I would say no. I think, if anything, the 

threshold ought to be eliminated, because the Government should 

never, never, never, never be in a position of doing work below the 

community standard. That is all it does. 

It says—Davis-Bacon says the community standard is X. And if 

that person is paying less than X, they are paying less than the 

normal people in that community are paying. Not the Federal Government, but the people in that community. If you come in and you 

start using tax dollars to go below the community standards, you 

drive down wages for everybody. That was thought a bad thing, because it spirals us downwards. I still think it is a bad thing. 

And so, I would say eliminate the threshold all together. 

Mr. PERRY. But you would agree that was not the original genesis of Davis-Bacon. I mean that was not—— 

Mr. TRUMKA. It was the original genesis of Davis-Bacon, was to 

make sure that the Federal Government didn’t use tax dollars to 

drive down wages. 

Mr. PERRY. No, it was to keep out certain classes of workers, 

namely blacks and immigrant workers, from Federal projects. 

Mr. TRUMKA. Well, I totally—— 

Mr. PERRY. I can cite that for you. But OK—— 

Mr. TRUMKA. I would totally disagree with you about that. 

Mr. PERRY. Thank you. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentleman. Ms. Lawrence is recognized. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Chairman Shuster and Ranking Member 

DeFazio, thank you for holding this hearing. 

I was a mayor for 14 years. And during that time I had people 

come to me directly when water pipes, potholes needed to be fixed. 

And I got it done. But mayors across this country are very concerned now, because they are making financial decisions about the 

taxpayers’ dollars in their community, and they knowingly know 

that their disinvestment in the infrastructure is going to have an 

effect, sooner or later. 

Mayors across the country—and there was an article in Politico, 

‘‘Highways Aren’t Enough.’’ We are at a critical time. And I am 

50 

comforted to hear our plan for investing in the infrastructure. I am 

also encouraged by—one of the few things I am encouraged by is 

that this administration has made a commitment to invest in our 

infrastructure. 

Today we have a panel—business, labor, CEOs—talking to us, 

and we are all on the same page, Democrats and Republican. 

Maybe this is our time to really put the—put our actions and 

money behind what we all know should be happening. 

Mr. Trumka, I was very intrigued by your job training and apprenticeship programs. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I started the 

skilled trade caucus here in Congress. The average age of a skilled 

trade worker is 53 years old, and we have pretty much decimated 

the training and investment in a trained, skilled workforce. We do 

not have the number of young people entering into the skilled 

trades. We know that if we do this investment in the roads, we will 

get jobs. But they will be skilled trade jobs. 

So, Mr. Trumka, you have a—really, a birds-eye view of the challenge of the skilled trading apprenticeships. Can you talk to us 

about how we can invest, when we are doing our plan, that we are 

also training the workforce that can get the jobs? 

Mr. TRUMKA. Well, I can try. We have started partnering with 

community colleges to do remedial courses, but to do one other 

thing. We have also looked at small manufacturers that need 

maybe 10, 20, 30 people, and we have said we will provide those 

skills for you, we will train them, but you have to guarantee a job 

at the end of the mill. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Exactly. 

Mr. TRUMKA. And we have been working with them. And anything you could do to encourage that kind of commitment together, 

us getting people together and helping our apprenticeship programs—obviously, the more work you have, the more people you 

put through it, the more people you could put through the apprenticeship program, the remedial program, and put them to work. 

And the beautiful thing about the apprenticeship program is you 

are getting an education. When they come out they are two-thirds 

of the way to a bachelor of science degree. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Exactly. 

Mr. TRUMKA. They have an associate degree and they are getting 

paid the entire time that they are in the apprenticeship program. 

And it is helping our employer, because you have a mix between 

journeymen and apprentices that actually help us develop the skills 

necessary to go forward. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Yes. 

Ms. ANDRINGA. Yes, I would just like to also emphasize how important it is, I think probably for this committee, as others, to also 

work with the Department of Labor to show that these things need 

to work together, and I think across the Nation. 

And I know manufacturers have been talking about that, as well 

as infrastructure, for many years. A skilled workforce is so important. Just one example in the State of Iowa now, our Governor has 

made it a goal that at least 70 percent of high school graduates go 

on to something, either a 2-year program, which we are highly recommending, 4-year, or a good certificate program. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Yes. 

51 

Ms. ANDRINGA. And again, that includes the apprenticeships and 

the internships and the co-ops. 

And I know our community has a career academy for our high 

schools, our local high schools, so that the students get time to do 

what we call real-world work. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Yes. 

Ms. ANDRINGA. And I loved it when I had a senior in high school 

come and work with a computer programmer for a couple weeks. 

This was like a winter program. At the end he said, ‘‘I now have 

found a real-world application for algebra.’’ And he was going on 

to a 2-year institution. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. I want to—because my time is running out—— 

Ms. ANDRINGA. Yes. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Mr. Smith, you have the truck drivers, and you 

have a real need for a skilled workforce there. Is there any—as far 

as roads and getting our skilled truck drivers together, do you see 

a connection here? 

Mr. SMITH. Well, I think that the most important thing to get 

people on the roads that are qualified is to invest in the technologies that make the vehicles more safe, which we are doing to 

the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. And it makes the 

job more pleasant. As I mentioned, we should have auto-pilots in 

the vehicles to make it less boring, and so forth. 

Let me give you a real-life example. We have thousands of aircraft mechanics. And the whole job has changed because of digital 

technology. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Yes. 

Mr. SMITH. So we partnered with a community college in West 

Memphis, Arkansas. We are training these folks. They come in as 

apprentices. And those with full benefits, and so forth, are a fantastic job. Much higher paying than many college graduates. So I 

think business and the States at the community college level, working with businesses, can produce a lot of high-income, blue-collar 

jobs in the United States. They are not even blue-collar jobs any 

more, they are—— 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. They are skilled trade jobs. 

Mr. SMITH [continuing]. Computer-oriented. 

Mr. SHUSTER. The gentlelady’s time is expired. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Thank you. 

Mr. SHUSTER. And I just urge Members to stay on 5 minutes or 

less. They are going to call a vote in about 1:15. I don’t want to 

shortchange anybody, don’t want anybody to not get a chance to 

ask a question. 

With that, Mr. Graves is recognized. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to 

thank all of you for being here, I appreciate your endurance. This 

has been very helpful, though. 

Ms. Andringa, if I remember correctly, you were on the President’s export council, is that correct? The President—excuse me, 

President Obama, years ago, during the State of the Union speech, 

indicated his intention of doubling exports. And I don’t remember 

the year, I think it might have been 2015. And, as I recall, nothing 

close came about. Could you talk a little bit about, looking back, 

52 

where you see some of the course corrections that you wanted done, 

had you started over again? 

Ms. ANDRINGA. Yes. That definitely was a goal. And we were 

making progress for a few years. But, to be honest with you, for 

us as an exporter, when the dollar went so high, our high dollar 

made it much more difficult to export, because we were competing 

with less cost from a lot of our competitors overseas. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Did you see a role in investment in 

infrastructure at all—— 

Ms. ANDRINGA. I was on the workforce group, and we talked a 

lot about the skilled workforce that we need. And we also talked 

a lot about how to make sure we include small and medium-sized 

enterprises. 

Infrastructure was definitely one of the topics, and usually the 

Secretary of Transportation was at those meetings. So it was definitely connected. We talked a lot about ports, we talked a lot about 

water, but probably not as much maybe as we could have. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Thank you. Many of your companies, 

you deal with logistics. And obviously, a critical part. Part of your 

calculation, Mr. Smith and Mr. MacLennan, it specifically gets 

back to looking at efficiency. You have to get products to certain 

places in certain periods of time. You look at different routes, you 

look at different modes of transportation, and you have to determine the most efficient way of delivering something. 

Similarly, we have talked in this committee today about the need 

for additional investment to recapitalize our infrastructure. But 

there has not been a lot of conversation about whether we are 

using the right prioritization system. You have to prioritize how 

you are going to get a product from A to B. Do you have any comments about the current system that we use to prioritize the investment of infrastructure dollars in the United States? 

Here is where I am going. We all know four-lane roads that don’t 

have a single car on them. We all know four-lane roads that are 

bumper-to-bumper traffic. Do you have any thoughts about lessons 

learned, perhaps from your business, from your perspective, about 

how we could do a better job investing our existing dollars? 

I ran an infrastructure program for a number of years, and everyone’s first go-to is we need more money. And I don’t believe that 

is always the case. And I am not saying—I think we need additional capitalization here, but I also think that we probably can 

squeeze additional efficiencies out by doing a better job using the 

right metrics to prioritize investment. 

Mr. SMITH. Well, I think that is true, and I think that is going 

to be a big source of focus of Secretary Chao. She is very good at 

this area, and she will prioritize the things that have the greatest 

national impact on the national productivity and efficiency. And I 

read off a litany—— 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. You did. 

Mr. SMITH [continuing]. Of projects that would—— 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Including my home State of Louisiana, which I appreciate. 

Mr. SMITH. Well, one of them is right in Louisiana, that is right. 

So that is what we ought to prioritize, right there, and adding to 

53 

and improving and updating our Interstate Highway System in the 

main. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Mr. MacLennan, you would like to 

add—— 

Mr. MACLENNAN. I would just add to that, that I think—you 

know, in a traditional capital allocation model you are looking at 

returns on capital. And, Rich, you mentioned lowest cost of capital. 

But I think, relative to infrastructure, I think sometimes you can 

put quantitatives aside and go to qualitatives. Get some quick 

wins. Get some very visible projects. 

And the congressman previously had asked about how can we 

educate the public. But, you know, I think it is not just necessarily 

about return on capital, but I think it is about speed, getting 

money into the system. Things that can get these bottlenecks done 

and get money into the system fast and visibly, I think is a good 

model to apply, a qualitative model. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Thank you. Last question, and I want 

to ask you to be very brief so I can return some time back, but just 

very quickly, do you believe that there is an opportunity to increase 

utilization of waterways in an effort to help reduce congestion on 

highways? 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Absolutely. I have mentioned before about the 

efficiency of the waterways. And you can get more bulk, you know, 

from the agricultural economy onto our waterways. Your home 

State, I mean, we mine salt in Louisiana and ship it up the river 

and bring up fertilizer up the river, and it takes pressure off the 

highway system. 

So part of being the interconnected system, the opportunity here 

is invest across the board, rails, roads, ports, and rivers, and that 

frees up congestion on the highway system. 

Mr. GRAVES OF LOUISIANA. Thank you. 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Thank you. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Great question from the new chairman from the 

Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee. Mr. Payne is 

recognized. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the 

ranking member for holding this hearing. Such a great cross-section of industry in this country, and issues around transportation. 

Mr. Trumka, you know, I come from—I am a lifelong resident of 

Newark, New Jersey. And the city’s unemployment rate is currently around 9 or 10 percent. You know, yet, you know, my district sits at the doorstep of what could potentially be the Nation’s 

largest infrastructure project in the coming decade, the gateway 

project. 

You know, billions of dollars of public investment are needed to 

make the gateway a reality. Can you speak a bit more about how 

large-scale infrastructure investments and training people—you 

know, just as the—training you were talking about—can help put 

our Nation back to work? 

Mr. TRUMKA. Yes, I—we are talking trillions. I think the deficit for old infrastructure is approaching $4 trillion right now. And the 

Society of Civil Engineers say it will take another couple of trillion 

dollars to get us into the 21st century. If you want to ease congestion on highways, maybe we ought to look at high-speed rail and 

54 

train systems, like Europe does. They get people around a lot. All 

of those things can help with us and create jobs in the process. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you, sir. And Mr. Smith, let me also say that 

my home town is a big hub for you, and we—you know, if you want 

to continue to expand there, we welcome that. But you know, there 

are quite a few people in my district that benefit from your company and being able to work for FedEx. And just wanted to say 

thank you. I was able to tour the facility when I first got to Congress, and found a very impressive operation. 

You and Mr. Willisch both spoke on the need to modernize our 

ports, our airports and our seaports. You know, we have seen Federal investment in the Port of Newark and Elizabeth, but much, 

much more is needed to stay competitive. Newark Airport is aging, 

as well. I know both of your companies rely on these critical ports 

to ship goods. Can you speak more specifically to investing the investments that our aging airports and seaports need to keep you 

competitive? 

Mr. WILLISCH. Well, we obviously—as we expand, just from 2007 

to today, we have roughly almost doubled our volume that we sell 

in the United States, which also means, for example, our facilities 

in Port Jersey need to expand. We are really trapped there, as far 

as the size of our facilities is concerned. We have no way to grow. 

So it really is one thing that we can get the right size of ships into 

the ports. And the other thing is, of course, the size of the port. 

Both absolutely crucial to us, and we have a lot of issues, especially 

in Port Jersey. 

Mr. PAYNE. Right. Yes, they—the dredging has been finished 

there, and they are working on raising the Bayonne Bridge—will 

help facilitate, you know, the type of commerce that you are talking 

about increasing. 

Sir, would you like to—— 

Mr. SMITH. Well, when I mentioned airports, Newark is a huge 

hub for FedEx. In most cases you have to separate airport infrastructure from passenger terminals and additional runways. In the 

case of the airport infrastructure, we pay landing fees. So we are 

a huge contributor to the maintenance and operation of Newark 

Airport. We pay 80 percent in Memphis, a huge percentage at our 

big hub in Indianapolis. 

On the passenger side of the house, just as Mr. DeFazio said, 

that has to be done through some sort of user fee like PFCs or 

what have you. And the main thing is more runways and a modernized ATC system to make the air transport network more efficient and have more capacity. 

Mr. PAYNE. OK. 

Mr. SMITH. The latter are Federal responsibilities. 

Mr. SHUSTER. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you. Thank you. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Payne. 

Mr. Babin? 

Dr. BABIN. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank 

each and every one of you for being here, giving us this great information that we need. 

I am from Texas, and represent the 36th District. I have four 

ports, including the Port of Houston. And more petrochemical faciliVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:16 Apr 14, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\115\FULL\2-1-20~1\23844.TXT JEAN
55 

ties than any other district in the country. And so, infrastructure 

and transportation is a huge thing for us. 

But, with—we are talking about user fees versus normal taxation. With a $20 trillion national debt and a $600 billion deficit 

coming up, looks like, funding is the 900-pound gorilla in the room. 

So I would like to start with Mr. Trumka, if you don’t mind. 

One idea that is frequently coming up is to dedicate the revenues 

and royalties from resources that development—resource development which lie under our public lands. And—which is estimated in 

some cases to be several trillions and trillions of dollars, which 

would go towards construction of public works projects, which 

would include roads and bridges, and all the things that we have 

been talking about today. 

This would be American energy produced by American workers 

to finance and build projects with American labor that benefit 

American families. Is there any reason that you can give why such 

a concept might not be a top priority for an organization like the 

AFL–CIO, Mr. Trumka? 

Mr. TRUMKA. We would be willing to look at it. Of course, the 

devil is always in the detail. If it were a giveaway to anybody, rather than real projects like you just described, we would probably 

blow the whistle on it. But I think we would be supportive of putting Americans to work, having energy independence, and being 

able to create and repair our infrastructure in the process. 

Dr. BABIN. Right, OK. And anybody else who would like to comment on that, as well? 

Mr. SMITH. We would be fully supportive of it, obviously. As Mr. 

Trumka said, the details are important. But we are blessed with 

these energy resources here in the United States. We ought to 

produce them and use some of the revenues to develop new alternatives and fund infrastructure. It would be a great idea. 

Dr. BABIN. Yes, ma’am. Ms. Andringa? 

Ms. ANDRINGA. Yes, I mentioned earlier—manufacturers are very 

dependent on energy and are always looking at all of the above, including wind and solar, but definitely traditional as well. And natural gas has been a very important thing for manufacturers. 

So I think it really could do two things: help manufacturers with 

the most effective cost for energy that we need to run our plants, 

but also from a source that could be used to help with some of the 

other issues in this country, and certainly provide jobs. 

Dr. BABIN. Thank you. Anyone else want to add to that? 

OK, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time, and 

thank you very much. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Dr. Babin, thank you. 

Mr. Davis, final question. 

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Babin, for yielding back the balance 

of your time. 

Dr. BABIN. You bet. 

Mr. DAVIS. We appreciate it. 

Dr. BABIN. You bet. 

Mr. DAVIS. Hey, thank you to the entire panel. Let me get quickly to my question. Coming from Illinois, I represent a lot of areas 

along the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, very concerned about 

56 

water infrastructure. I am glad that that was addressed by many 

of my colleagues before me. 

But let me start with Mr. MacLennan. We have had Cargill testify before my other committee, the House Ag Committee, so it is 

great to have you here on the T&I Committee to talk about that 

nexus of infrastructure that really helps the manufacturing sector 

in States like Iowa, also helps the agriculture sector in States like 

Illinois that are, you know, slightly better agriculturally than 

States like Iowa, of course. 

Mr. MacLennan, can you articulate for the committee the importance of our Nation’s inland waterway system, more so than what 

you did with some other questions? Specifically along the Illinois 

and Mississippi Rivers, where you have many of your facilities. 

Mr. MACLENNAN. So, as you know, Congressman, in your district 

you have locks 20 through 15 along the—the Illinois and the Upper 

Mississippi, riverways, transit, port are crucial for the rural economy, for the ag economy, for farmers to be able to get their crops 

to where they need to be. 

And we talked early on in the testimony about the world—the 

country going to 400 million people, the world going to 900 million 

people—9 billion people, rather. And our States, the Midwestern 

States, are feeding the world. And if we can’t get the grain—and 

we saw it when you had the polar vortex, and things freeze up, and 

you don’t have appropriate infrastructure. It is—all creates a backlog. And so it is—the ports are the key—one of the key choke 

points for the ag and rural economy, to be able to get our exports 

to the rest of the world, to get the food where it is needed. 

Mr. DAVIS. Well, I completely agree. And I think we also agree 

for about 80 years we are—we have heard somewhat for about 80 

years, but we have heard about long delays in our 80-year-old 

locks. 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Yes. 

Mr. DAVIS. And sometimes lasting hours at a time, because the 

infrastructure is falling apart. 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Yes. 

Mr. DAVIS. Those have a tremendously negative impact on your 

business, correct? 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Significantly negative impact on our business, 

and that of our farmer customers, as well. 

Mr. DAVIS. Absolutely. In 2007, do you know Congress authorized NESP, the—planning to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure 

along the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers? 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Yes. 

Mr. DAVIS. But in 2010 the Obama administration ended the 

preconstruction engineering and design work for NESP, and actually requested zero dollars in the last Presidential budget for this 

project. I think you and I agree that this is something that is very 

crucial, and we hope the next administration will look at this and 

also look at some of the most necessary improvements. 

Can you, though, explain to the committee and explain to the administration through this committee your—from your position, why 

do we need to expand the locks from 600 to 1,200 feet? 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Because when you have chambers that are, you 

know, that small, you can’t get the tow boats through as a unit. 

57 

You got to break up the barges, you got to break up the bulk. It 

is time-consuming, it is expensive. And that means, when you have 

a higher cost and a slow—a less-efficient transportation system at 

the locks, which—as you know, it is not a sexy topic. 

I mean people think about highways and airports. But in our districts and our business, things like locks, ports, riverways are vital 

to the ag and rural economy. But when you add that cost and time, 

it flows back to the price that ultimately gets to the farmers. And 

so they are realizing that that economy is then impacted because 

they can’t get their products through in an efficient way. 

Mr. DAVIS. Well, and last question. On a scale of 1 to 10, how 

do you rank the improvements on the Mississippi and Illinois and 

our waterway systems, and the need to do that for your customers? 

Mr. MACLENNAN. Ten. 

Mr. DAVIS. I was hoping you would say, like, 11 or 12, but 10 

will do. That is OK. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. MACLENNAN. So I will ‘‘spinal tap.’’ 

Mr. DAVIS. OK. 

Mr. MACLENNAN. I will go to 11. 

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, thank you. I really appreciate you being 

here, and thank you for your questions. 

And, you know, while I have got about 40 seconds left, I just 

want to say, you know, sometimes there are folks in my own party 

who don’t believe we should invest in infrastructure. And we need 

to hear from you—and we did today—about how any investment in 

infrastructure helps to actually grow our economy, grow jobs, grow 

opportunity, and be a net benefit in a cost benefit analysis. 

And, Mr. Smith, quick question. Do you agree that we—when 

America invests in infrastructure, it is companies like yours that 

can continue to grow some of the best-paying jobs? 

Mr. SMITH. No question about it. 

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you. I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. And, with that, Mr. DeFazio for a closing statement? 

Mr. DEFAZIO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank everybody. I think this was an excellent hearing. We kept you here a 

very long time. I think we found an incredible amount of common 

ground, and I intend to continue to push for us to actually finally 

put our money where our agreement has been, and get some of 

these things done. 

I just do want to note that the cost of congestion since we began 

the hearing for American individuals and business was 

$54,750,000. So it is time to stop that clock and get America moving again. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. DeFazio. And I saw a sigh of relief 

on the witnesses when I said Mr. DeFazio for a closing statement, 

so I will be brief, also. 

First, let me say thank you very much for being here. I know 

each and every one of you has a tremendous demand on your time. 

So we can’t thank you enough for being here. I got to say this is 

one of the best panels that I have ever been involved with getting 

testimony from. Again, you are coming from different places, you 

got different products, you do different things, but there is common 

58 

ground, as Mr. DeFazio—and that point being there is common 

ground. 

Somebody asked the question about informing the public. That 

was Pennsylvania, it was Mr. Smucker. And Pennsylvania model 

was that they did inform the Pennsylvania citizens. It was really 

the private sector that went out and really made the pitch to the 

taxpayers of Pennsylvania to get them on board to do this. 

So again, as we move forward, we are going to do our part, but 

we hope you folks will be out there banding together in your associations to educate the American people to the very basic—we talk 

about—you know, Mr. DeFazio just pointed out $54 million. That 

is a lot of money. One hundred and twenty billion dollars or so is 

what we—every year in congestion. 

The average American has no—it is a lot of money, but they have 

no idea what that means to them. So talking to them about what 

it does to the cost of a package or foodstuffs or an automobile or 

your equipment, what that costs them in real dollars, you know, 

basically down to a cup of coffee—is it a nickel more or a dime 

more because of the congestion you face? I think that is really an 

important message that we all have to get out there to the public. 

But again, this was—can’t thank you enough—very informative. 

But it is all about building that 21st-century infrastructure for 

America. And I know you are all committed to it. This committee 

is committed to it, and we are going to work hard to see that we 

get this done. 

So thank you very much for being here. And I would ask unanimous consent that the record of today’s hearing remain open until 

such time as our witnesses have provided answers to any questions 

that may be submitted to them in writing, and unanimous consent 

that the record remain open for 15 days for additional comments, 

information submitted by Members or witnesses to include in the 

record of today’s hearing. 

Without objection, so ordered. 

I would like to again thank you very much for being here. And 

the committee is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 1:12 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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