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66–184 PDF 2011

STIMULUS STATUS: 

TWO YEARS AND COUNTING 

(112–28) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MAY 4, 2011 

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 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida, Chairman 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

ANDY HARRIS, Maryland 

ERIC A. ‘‘RICK’’ CRAWFORD, Arkansas 

JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington 

FRANK C. GUINTA, New Hampshire 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

LOU BARLETTA, Pennsylvania 

CHIP CRAVAACK, Minnesota 

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas 

LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana 

BILLY LONG, Missouri 

BOB GIBBS, Ohio 

PATRICK MEEHAN, Pennsylvania 

RICHARD L. HANNA, New York 

STEPHEN LEE FINCHER, Tennessee 

JEFFREY M. LANDRY, Louisiana 

STEVE SOUTHERLAND II, Florida 

JEFF DENHAM, California 

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma 

VACANCY 

NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

BOB FILNER, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

LAURA RICHARDSON, California 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

(II) 

(III) 

CONTENTS Page 

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

TESTIMONY 

Elkins, Arthur A., Jr., Inspector General, Environmental Protection Agency ... 9 

Herr, Phillip R., Director, Physical Infrastructure, Government Accountability 

Office ..................................................................................................................... 9 

Kienitz, Roy, Under Secretary for Policy, Department of Transportation .......... 9 

Scovel, Calvin L., III, Inspector General, Department of Transportation .......... 9 

Trimble, David C., Acting Director, Natural Resources and Environment, 

Government Accountability Office ...................................................................... 9 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Brown, Hon. Corrine, of Florida ............................................................................. 43 

Hirono, Hon. Mazie K., of Hawaii .......................................................................... 47 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Elkins, Arthur A., Jr. .............................................................................................. 49 

Herr, Phillip R. ........................................................................................................ 64 

Kienitz, Roy .............................................................................................................. 86 

Scovel, Calvin L., III ................................................................................................ 106 

Trimble, David C. .................................................................................................... 128 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Responses to questions: 

Elkins, Arthur A., Jr., Inspector General, Environmental Protection Agency 58 

Herr, Phillip R., Director, Physical Infrastructure, Government Accountability Office, and Trimble, David C., Acting Director, Natural Resources 

and Environment, Government Accountability Office ................................... 150 

Kienitz, Roy, Under Secretary for Policy, Department of Transportation ...... 94 

Scovel, Calvin L., III, Inspector General, Department of Transportation ....... 120 

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(1) 

STIMULUS STATUS: 

TWO YEARS AND COUNTING 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 4, 2011 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

WASHINGTON, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in Room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John L. Mica (Chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Mr. MICA. Good morning. I would like to call this hearing of the 

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to order. 

The purpose of today’s hearing is to review the status of stimulus 

legislation. The title is, ‘‘Stimulus Status: Two Years and Counting.’’ And today we will have an opportunity to hear from some of 

the officials who have performed an audit, have reviewed the work 

performed under the stimulus program. And we have had the General Accounting Office, the Department of Transportation, the inspector general of DOT, IG, the Environmental Protection—inspector of EPA, and others who have looked at the implementation of 

the American Recovery and Investment Act. And we will hear from 

them as our witnesses today. 

This hearing is a continuation of a series that began under the 

leadership of our former chair, and we have attempted to be diligent in our oversight responsibilities to review the progress of that 

legislation and efforts to improve the economy and create jobs in 

a very difficult time in our economy. 

The order of business this morning is we will start with—I will 

give an opening statement, then I will recognize our Ranking Member, Mr. Rahall. We will turn to other Members and allow them the 

opportunity for comments this morning, and then we will turn to 

our witnesses. And I appreciate, again, their participation and contribution to this important review. 

Well, let me say that I probably couldn’t be more frustrated over 

anything than the situation we find ourselves in right now with the 

economy of the United States. There are still millions of people unemployed. The unemployment level is at record levels. We are 2 

years now into the economic downturn, and we are a little over 2 

years into having in place the American Recovery Act, known as 

the Stimulus Bill. And again, I just could not be more frustrated 

by the results that I see. 

To put this in perspective, I spoke to a group just an hour or so 

ago, and we were talking about stimulus. And I reminded them 

that the total stimulus package was $787 billion. And I think that 

has been even re-evaluated to up over $800 billion. The current 

2 

debt that we find ourselves in in just the last 24 to 30 months is 

some $5.3 trillion. And still we have a stagnating economy. We 

have seen mediocre results from government attempts to improve 

the economy. And unfortunately, the stimulus has not been that effective, particularly in the small realm in which we were provided 

funds and authorization. 

Again, to put this into perspective, $787 billion in stimulus 

money—Mr. Oberstar and I were asked to come back in December 

before we drafted—in the January timeframe—stimulus legislation, 

and put together a package for infrastructure. At that time we 

were told the total stimulus package would be some $250 billion to 

$300 billion. That would be for the entire stimulus package that 

Congress was to consider. We worked under the assumption that 

50 percent of that $250 billion to $300 billion total package—50 

percent—would be infrastructure. What happened is now history. And you know that only $63 billion ended up in the account that we are responsible for, infrastructure—not even all of it—in our realm of responsibility. About $48 

billion of the $63 billion went to the Department of Transportation. 

And we have monitored the progress, periodically, of those funds. What an incredible disaster, to spend $787 billion, have $63 billion for infrastructure, of which today we will hear reports that still 

a good deal of that money is still not out. Much of it is in the 

Treasury. Many of the jobs that were created were very temporary 

jobs, and very few people had long-term employment as a result of 

that effort. I can’t think of anything that is more frustrating. 

When you stop and think of the enormity of the dollars that were spent, $787 billion, I just saw an account to rebuild the entire 

northeast corridor that was hit by unprecedented tsunami and natural disaster in Japan. The entire amount to rebuild that is $230 

billion. Put this in perspective. 

So, we spent the money to underwrite unemployment. We spent 

the money to underwrite some States. We spent the money on a 

whole array of social programs, and we spent very little money on 

infrastructure—which actually, for every billion dollars, we are 

told, in appropriate infrastructure spending you get 25,000 to 

35,000 jobs. $787 billion. And then we get back down to our $63 

billion, and how little of that actually got out in a hurry. 

So, I cannot tell you how frustrated I am, and particularly in the 

construction area. We are running 20 percent, nationally, in unemployment and construction. And almost every one of these jobs, if 

the money had been properly expended, and an appropriate 

amount for infrastructure, would be putting people to work in the 

most hard-hit area. 

This will go down in history as one of the greatest failures of a 

government program to stimulate the economy that mankind has 

ever created. So I cannot tell you how frustrated I am. I know Mr. 

Oberstar was frustrated when we got whacked to $63 billion. It 

was a very sad day for the American people. 

Lesson learned, in closing. Even if you have the money, you have 

got to make certain that you have an expedited means of getting 

that money out. And it is my hope in the successor to TEA–LU that 

we can expedite the process. I stood on the floor of the House of 

Representatives and begged them to double the money for infraVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:08 Nov 03, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\112\FULL\5-4-11~1\66184.TXT JEAN
3 

structure, and then condense the amount of time to get the projects 

out. I think I had 23 or 24 votes from the Democrat side of the 

aisle, but we failed then. We cannot fail again. 

This is a very expensive—almost $1 trillion—lesson that we 

should learn from the failure of what has taken place here. 

Now, I know there are many temporary jobs. So we had two failures. We had, first, the Stimulus Bill for infrastructure and we 

couldn’t get the money out in a timely fashion; and secondly, not 

passing a long-term transportation bill. I know Mr. Rahall, the 

Ranking Member, and both sides of the aisle are committed to a 

6-year bill. If we had done a 6-year bill, fully funded at the level 

Mr. Oberstar and I had committed to, we would have millions and 

millions of people working. If we had stimulus money to properly 

direct it and then expedite it to get out for good infrastructure 

projects, we would have millions more working. We wouldn’t find 

ourselves in the situation that we are in today. 

So, I cannot be more disappointed. You stop and think about 

this. I go back to the district—I know you have, too—and you cannot help but meet people who have lost their homes, their jobs, 

their savings. And I think so much of that could have been avoided 

if Congress had done the right thing. 

But again, historically, people will look back on the incredible 

amount of money that was spent, thinking that much of this was 

supposed to be directed towards infrastructure, and it was only a 

very minuscule amount. And now we see the results of that. 

And then, finally, I do want to look at some of the specific transportation money on rail, and how that was expended, and the failure we had in that area, because I am a strong advocate of mass 

and fixed transportation and high-speed rail, and we had a very 

dismal start to that program, which is also a substantial part of 

that stimulus transportation dollars, even though they were small 

dollars. That did not move forward in a successful manner, and has 

set us back in that regard. 

So, not here to pick on anybody today. We want to get an honest 

assessment. But I couldn’t be more frustrated in not having a better success, both in the amount of money, getting the money out, 

and better infrastructure projects to build this country’s crumbling 

infrastructure. 

So, with that opening statement, pleased to yield to the very capable, honorable, distinguished gentleman who had—what did you 

have, the Vice President in your district Monday? 

Mr. RAHALL. Just the Secretary of Transportation. 

Mr. MICA. Oh, Secretary of Transportation. 

Mr. RAHALL. Yes. 

Mr. MICA. That’s right. 

Mr. RAHALL. More important. 

Mr. MICA. That’s right, more important. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. MICA. And we had a great discussion with the Secretary of 

Transportation—and hosted very generously by the President—on 

Monday night, a very productive session with some of the Senate 

leadership and—— 

Mr. RAHALL. Bipartisan. 

4 

Mr. MICA. Mr. Rahall continues to do an outstanding job in trying to move us forward in a positive direction on infrastructure. So, 

pleased to yield to him. 

Mr. RAHALL. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate 

those kind words. And, believe you me, it is mutual. And I salute 

your leadership of this committee, as well. 

Listening to your opening statement, there is a lot of which I totally agree with you. There are other points that I disagree that 

will come out during today’s hearing, I am sure. But I know that 

this is a very important hearing to discuss the millions of American 

jobs that have either been created or saved—or saved—as a result 

of the Recovery Act. 

This hearing is billed as an opportunity to examine oversight 

lapses of the Recovery Act. And I certainly want to remind my good 

friends on the other side of the aisle, especially those 19 new members of this committee, that this is not the first such oversight 

hearing, that we did have about 18—no, 19—oversight hearings in 

the last Congress by this committee on the Recovery Act alone. So 

we have been very studious in our responsibilities to conduct oversight, and you are continuing that today, Mr. Chairman, and I salute you for it. 

Mr. MICA. I won’t do 18, though. 

Mr. RAHALL. Oh, you won’t do 18? Oh, Chairman Oberstar would 

hate to hear that. 

On the other hand, probably the other things that we have spent 

more time on this Congress—not this committee, and I stress, and 

not this chairman, I stress—but the other things, as a body, that 

we spent more time on in this Congress is whether or not we are 

going to end Medicare as we know it, whether we are going to continue the ill-conceived witch hunt for President Obama’s birth certificate, or whether we are going to talk about the need for creating 

jobs while bringing a budget to the floor that destroys hundreds of 

thousands of transportation jobs in America, jobs lost in every single State of the Union. 

So, I am proud of this committee, of its chairman, and of the 

oversight work that we have conducted. And I commend the chairman for his extensive Recovery Act oversight work, initiated, as I 

have said, in the previous Congress under our distinguished Chairman, Mr. Oberstar. And we will have to go quite a bit to keep pace 

with him, but I understand you won’t do that. 

Whether measured by the millions of American jobs created or 

saved, the half-billion dollars in unemployment benefits that have 

been avoided, or the tremendous progress that has been made to 

repair and rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, the transportation 

and infrastructure investments provided by the Recovery Act have 

been a success. It has helped stem the tide of job losses from the 

worst economic crisis facing our Nation since the Great Depression. 

These are investments in America’s future. They are creating economic opportunities for us today. 

The Recovery Act did provide some $64 billion for transportation 

and infrastructure needs coming within this committee’s jurisdiction. Federal agencies, States, and their local partners have obligated $60.7 billion for 19,784 transportation and other infrastructure projects, representing about 95 percent of the funds available. 

5 

Across the Nation, work has begun on nearly all of these 

projects, producing badly needed family-wage jobs today. Direct job 

creation from these projects has resulted in paychecks for thousands of Americans, which in turn prevents the need for those 

Americans to collect unemployment checks and instead allows 

them to pay taxes. 

For example, direct job creation from highway projects alone has 

resulted in payroll expenditures of $2.8 billion. And using this data 

we can calculate that $543 million in unemployment checks have 

been avoided as a result of this direct job creation. And, furthermore, these direct jobs have caused nearly $571 million to be paid 

in Federal taxes. 

Is the unemployment rate still too high? Absolutely. Do we have 

more work to do to create more American jobs? Absolutely. But 

would we be worse off today without the Recovery Act? Absolutely. 

I will close by thanking today’s witnesses. I look forward to hearing their testimony and learning more about how we can build 

upon the success of the Recovery Act and continue to put our 

Americans back to work. We must grow past ideological differences 

and work together to keep America’s economy on the road to recovery. The price of not investing in America’s future is simply too 

high. 

I thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. MICA. I thank you. Other Members seek recognition? Ms. 

Norton? 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for continuing 

these hearings. I don’t know, you might even agree that we ought 

to, in memory of a man who spent so much of his life here, call 

these—dedicate these hearings to Jim Oberstar. But you were his 

good partner for many years, and it is very important that we continue to do the kind of oversight you are doing today. 

I do want to say that everyone shares your frustration with the 

fact that the stimulus package didn’t cure all of the recession. I am 

not sure many of us thought it would. The majority, of course, took 

power here in the House on the theme of jobs. So I just want to 

remind us that whatever the Stimulus Bill did or did not do, cutting Federal programs that mostly go to the States does not stimulate jobs. And I do believe that it has something to do, to say the 

very least, with why States are in the midst of collapsing now. 

I agree with the chairman that we wanted more of the money to 

go to infrastructure. We were competing with our own States. And 

I am not sure there is a single Member of this committee or of the 

Congress who would have cut off his own State from some of the 

funds that came there. And what we see now is the collapse of the 

States. 

The chairman said that many of these jobs were temporary. I believe the record should be corrected in that regard, because, according to the CBO, which is the only objective source we have, the Recovery Act increased the number of Americans employed by between 1.3 million and 3.5 million, compared with what would have 

occurred, had Congress—and increased the number of full-time 

equivalent jobs by 1.8 million to 5 million, compared with what 

would have occurred had Congress not passed the Recovery Act. So, 

6 

whatever you think of the Recovery Act, there is no case to be 

made that we would have been better off without out. 

Finally, I would like to say that I think that the chairman’s announcement before we left, that he intends to bring a surface transportation bill to the floor, is the best hope for new infrastructure 

money, and it does provide an opportunity for both sides to work 

together as we have always done so amicably in this committee. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. Other Members that seek recognition? Ms. 

Brown? 

Ms. BROWN. Yes, Mr. Mica. And Ranking Member, thank you. 

You know what? I am going to be very brief, I am going to put 

my statement in the record. But I just want to be clear that you 

can put lipstick on a pig, it is still a pig. And the fact is in December we spent $700 billion in tax cuts for the millionaires and billionaires. So, I have a problem—and to me it was reverse Robin 

Hood, robbing from the poor and working people to give tax breaks 

to the rich. 

So, I wanted 100 percent of the tax cuts to go into infrastructure 

and transportation. But you know we live in a climate that you 

have to get 218 votes in the House and 60 votes in the Senate, and 

that was the problem in trying to make sure that we got as much 

as we can into transportation. And we know for every billion dollars we spend it generates 44,000 permanent jobs. 

And to say that they are temporary jobs, let me tell you something. People who cannot pay their foreclosure, cannot pay their 

mortgage, they would welcome temporary jobs or any other kind of 

jobs. And in Florida we could have gotten close to $3 billion for 

high-speed rail, and that would have generated over 60,000 jobs. 

All of them would not have been permanent jobs, but they were 

good-paying jobs. 

And you mentioned earlier about the Federal Railroad Administration, and how they issued the dollars. Let’s be clear that no 

State received a dime that they did not request, and the FRA set 

up a committee that reviewed all of the applications. And I was 

very grateful—and you also—that Florida received such a large 

percentage of it. But clearly there is a great interest in rail. I understand that we received over 90 applications for a total of $10 

billion from 24 States and Amtrak for the money that Florida has 

turned back. 

So, you know, we have some differences of opinions on how we 

should spend taxpayers’ dollars to generate the economy. We, of 

course, are in a tank, and we need to do all we can. And we both 

agree that infrastructure investment is the best way to go about it. 

So, I am looking forward to the future dialogue, as we move forward. 

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentlelady. As an addendum to my opening statement, I just—I should have said this, but I feel too that 

the thing that has actually motivated any slight increase in economic activity is some definition of tax policy which the Congress 

did do, and which is now taking effect and has given some stability 

and ability for people who have the funds to employ to move forward on some sort of defined—— 

Ms. BROWN. Mr. Chairman? 

7 

Mr. MICA. Yes, just quickly. 

Ms. BROWN. Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. MICA. Yes. 

Ms. BROWN. And that is where we disagree. 

Mr. MICA. Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. OK, thank you. Ms. Richardson, you are recognized. 

Ms. RICHARDSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Rahall, and our witnesses who are here to testify with us 

today. 

As I watched the rollout of the stimulus program, I was encouraged when I would watch the Sunday morning programs. And often 

times, when people would reference how the stimulus dollars were 

used, they would very often times refer to the transportation section. So, although we would have all liked to have seen it been 

done better—and maybe never having had to have done it at all— 

I would say, though, of everything that was done, I think this was 

the most successful part of the program. 

In particular, though, I would like to point out a couple things. 

During this recession, the construction section in particular was 

hard hit, with nearly losing 2 million jobs. Unemployment rates in 

this sector were higher than in any other sector, even with all the 

funds we have subsequently invested. The unemployment rate in 

this sector still remains at 20 percent. And so, what I would urge 

is not only as we continue to fund the projects and get the projects 

completed, but we work together on this committee to figure out 

how to get more funds there, so we can continue this progress. 

The transportation sector has been particularly effective in getting money out of the door, and getting people back to work. Federal agencies, State and local partners, have obligated $60.7 billion 

for nearly 20,000 projects. That is amazing. Representing 95 percent of the total transportation funds. Almost 20 percent of these 

funds have gone to projects that have already been completed. 

I can submit for the record that in every single city that I represent, we currently have a project. In Compton, at 205 South Willow Brook, also in Signal Hill, at 2175 Cherry Avenue, at 1963 

East Anaheim in Long Beach, and 701 East Carson Street in Carson. 

So, when we consider the success of this program, certainly we 

would like to do better. But I can tell you for the people in my district who are finally seeing projects come to fruition, this has been 

a benefit. 

I would like to stress the importance, though, as we move forward, for the witnesses here, the importance of unbundling contracts, and to expand the reach of our funds beyond the standard 

companies that traditionally receive the funds. I remember when 

we took those tough votes. And one of the reasons why we took it 

was for the people who were currently not working, that they were 

going to have an opportunity. And, unfortunately, I think we did 

fall short in that area. Companies, businesses that were already in 

the queue, already working with State and local governments, they 

were able to save their jobs. But what new jobs did we create? I 

think that debate is still open. 

8 

I would also urge that we would continue, as we move forward, 

to use project or labor agreements that would facilitate local hiring 

and fair wage practices. 

Finally, I want to talk a little bit about the information, the data 

that we have. And I want to join with Mr. Rahall that in the subsequent hearings that we had over the last 2 years, my only issue 

with this document is that it does not differentiate—and it is my 

understanding when the rules were sent out for the money it did 

not differentiate—between save jobs and new jobs. And I think, for 

that, we are unable to communicate to the American public how 

well we really did fulfill the objective. And that is a very critical 

point for me. 

But I thank all the witnesses for being here. I thank you for your 

work. And we look forward to your testimony. I yield back. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. Pleased to recognize the gentleman from 

New Jersey, Mr. Sires. 

Mr. SIRES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for being 

here today, and thank you for having this meeting. 

I certainly agree with you that we needed a lot more money for 

infrastructure. I would like to have seen a greater amount, because 

I certainly see in my district—I come from a district that has a 

very old infrastructure—I see what this money has done in some 

of this, whether it was paving a road, whether it was building a 

bridge. 

But when you look at the situation the way it was, we were losing millions of jobs a month. The financial sector was ready to 

crumble. Everything around us was crumbling. So we moved on a 

stimulus. And I agree with my colleague, Laura Richardson. The 

most successful part of this stimulus has been the infrastructure 

money. And, unfortunately, we just didn’t put enough money in 

there. 

So, we have created a ton of jobs at a time where we were losing 

millions of jobs a month. And I wish that we are able to do the 

same thing in the upcoming ratification of the transportation bill. 

Hopefully we can put a lot of money—put people to work. 

So, I thank the chairman for holding this meeting, and I yield 

back. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. Any other Members seek recognition? Yes, 

Ms. Hirono? 

Ms. HIRONO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member 

Rahall and our witnesses today. 

There is no question that the Stimulus Act has been good for Hawaii. The members of this committee in particular know the importance of infrastructure spending. It’s job creation, long-term benefits. And the chairman’s leadership and Ranking Member Rahall’s 

leadership, as we move forward with the surface transportation 

bill, will be very critical. And I thank them for that leadership. 

I just want to focus a little bit on Hawaii, and what the Stimulus 

Act did for Hawaii. The Council of Economic Advisors said that 

13,000 jobs were retained or created in Hawaii, and over $125 million went to highway infrastructure funding, and some $40 million 

has been obligated, $70 million went directly to paychecks for Hawaii workers and their families. 

9 

And in Hawaii they created a very transparent way of tracking 

this money, the recovery money. They created a recovery website. 

There is an office of economic reinvestment and recovery. And they 

established a legislative oversight committee. And, of course, the 

work o this committee, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is a model of congressional oversight over the Recovery Act 

funding. I also want to mention that the State of Hawaii received $24.5 

million in TIGER transportation investment, generating economic 

recovery money. And this went to the rehabilitation and construction of Pier 29 in Honolulu Harbor, which is the 15th busiest port 

in the country. So when Secretary LaHood was visiting Hawaii a 

little while ago, he was particularly interested in seeing Recovery 

Act projects, and he—we took him to see the pier, and what was 

happening there. 

So, once again, it is of critical importance that we continue to 

support infrastructure investment. All of us on this committee 

know that. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. And thank all the Members who have provided opening statements. And there being no further opening 

statements, let us turn now to our witnesses. And we have a number of witnesses. I will introduce them briefly: Calvin Scovel, inspector general of the Department of Transportation; Arthur Elkins, inspector general of EPA; Phillip Herr and David Trimble, who 

is accompanied by Susan Flemming of the General Accounting Office; and Roy Kienitz, who is with the Department of Transportation as under secretary for policy. 

So, we welcome our witnesses. And, as is normal, we—if you 

have a lengthy statement, it can be submitted to the record. And 

we hope you can summarize in approximately 5 minutes. 

We will go through all the witnesses, and then we will turn to 

questions. So let me first welcome the inspector general back, Calvin Scovel, with the Department of Transportation. Welcome, sir, 

and you are recognized. 

TESTIMONY OF CALVIN L. SCOVEL III, INSPECTOR GENERAL, 

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; ARTHUR A. ELKINS, 

JR., INSPECTOR GENERAL, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION 

AGENCY; PHILLIP R. HERR, DIRECTOR, PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE; 

DAVID C. TRIMBLE, ACTING DIRECTOR, NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE; ROY KIENITZ, UNDER SECRETARY FOR 

POLICY, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION 

Mr. SCOVEL. Chairman Mica, Ranking Member Rahall, members 

of the committee, thank you for inviting me here today to discuss 

DOT’s ARRA spending. 

As you know, ARRA designated $48 billion for new and existing 

DOT programs to create and save jobs, invest in long-term growth, 

and improve the Nation’s Transportation system. DOT has been 

working hard to administer the large infusion of funds and comply 

with ARRA requirements. However, more difficult work lies ahead, 

as a significant portion of ARRA funds remains to be spent. 

10 

Our completed and ongoing ARRA audits point to challenges 

DOT must address as it moves forward, ensuring transparency on 

job reporting, strengthening project and financial oversight, maintaining measures to combat fraud, waste, and abuse, and finally, 

effectively implementing its new TIGER and high-speed rail programs. Failure to address these challenges could have significant 

cost and schedule implications in the future. 

Our ongoing audit of FAA’s jobs reporting found problems in the 

accuracy of the data, such as one airport that received funds 

through FAA’s $1.1 billion airport improvement program, reporting 

over 100,000 more job hours than actually occurred. This work also 

identified weaknesses that relate to DOT’s process for estimating 

and reporting jobs information to Congress under section 1201. 

DOT did not report an estimate of indirect jobs or how it calculated 

the total number of jobs funded. Providing this information would 

enhance transparency, and more fully satisfy congressional requirements. 

Strengthening DOT’s project and financial oversight is also important. The Federal Highway Administration, which accounts for 

more than half of DOT’s recovery budget, is taking action to address weaknesses we identified in its national review teams, actions that should help FHWA remove known vulnerabilities, identify emerging risks, and assess States’ corrective measures. 

FHWA is also updating its regulations to help ensure States conduct value engineering studies to objectively review design alternatives on highway and bridge projects. 

FHWA has other opportunities to improve project performance. It 

has acknowledged the risks associated with local public agencies, 

and our ongoing work indicates that some LPA projects continue to 

fall short in complying with Federal requirements for quality assurance and processing of contract changes. 

Promoting fuller competition could also help achieve cost savings 

in FHWA’s ARRA-funded contracts, as well as its other Federal aid 

contracts. 

Ensuring rigorous financial oversight of grantees has also been 

a challenge for the Department. In a review of AIP payments commissioned by FAA, consultants determined that 14 of 24 airports 

did not have adequate support to justify their ARRA payment requests, consistent with findings we reported on FAA’s oversight of 

non-ARRA-funded AIP grants. 

Across the Department, full compliance with OMB’s single audit 

requirements for ensuring grantees implement corrective action 

plans would help prevent improper payments and provide timely 

action on questioned costs. Over the past year, we have issued 66 

single-audit action memos on deficiencies in grantees’ oversight of 

ARRA funds. Our ongoing work identified 16 questioned cost findings, totaling $3.7 million, with final decisions or repayments pending for an average of 20 months. 

The surge in ARRA funding and construction activity also demands continued aggressive pursuit of counterfraud efforts. As of 

March 2011 we have 51 open ARRA investigations, 45 of which the 

Department of Justice is reviewing for potential prosecution. One 

of the strongest deterrents against contract fraud is DOT’s ability 

to make timely suspension and debarment decisions. However, last 

11 

year we reported that many of the Department’s S&D decisions 

had been pending for a year or longer. DOT has issued a revised 

S&D policy, but sustained focus is needed to ensure S&D decisions 

are timely, and prevent unethical parties from bidding for and receiving contracts. 

Tackling all the challenges I have outlined will be critical for 

DOT to effectively implement its TIGER and high-speed rail programs. Standing up these programs requires direct oversight of 

large infrastructure projects, a role OST and FRA have not previously performed. Based on our work to date, OST is on track to 

meet its ARRA-required deadline to fully obligate funds for all 

TIGER contracts. However, effective oversight and management of 

the TIGER program will be highly dependent on OST’s coordination with the operating administration administering those TIGER 

grants. 

Our high-speed rail work indicates that FRA has not issued sufficient guidance for forecasting benefits, and establishing access 

agreements between States and the freight railroads. 

In addition, FRA has yet to finalize policies and procedures that 

would ensure a core set of grant management responsibilities are 

carried out. With the majority of program implementation and construction ahead, FRA has an opportunity and an obligation to build 

in oversight controls before a significant amount of ARRA funding 

is spent. We will continue to assist the Department in its efforts 

to ensure all ARRA funds are spent wisely, and we remain committed to promptly notifying Congress and DOT of actions needed 

to achieve ARRA goals. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be 

happy to answer any questions you or other members of the committee may have. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you, and we will hold those questions until we 

have heard from the other panelists. And next I recognize Arthur 

Elkins, inspector general of EPA. 

Welcome. You are recognized, sir. 

Mr. ELKINS. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Mica, Ranking 

Member Rahall, and members of the committee. I am Arthur Elkins, Jr., EPA Inspector General. I am pleased to appear before you 

today for the first time since becoming IG in June 2010 to discuss 

our Recovery Act activities. 

The Act was intended to create jobs, stimulate economic recovery 

as quickly as possible, and invest in infrastructure. The Act’s purpose, as it applies to EPA, is to promote economic recovery by creating jobs, while also promoting a healthier environment. Toward 

that end, EPA received over $7 billion for 6 EPA programs, $6 billion of which went to the Clean Water and Drinking Water State 

Revolving Funds. 

EPA has some noteworthy accomplishments. For example, EPA 

has obligated over 99 percent of its Recovery Act funds. All of its 

State Revolving Funds awarded to States were under contract or 

construction by the statutory deadline. We expressed concerns 

about EPA being able to meet this deadline. And, to their credit, 

they accomplished this task. 

Also, the OIG has detected limited fraud of EPA funds so far. Recipient reporting requirements and greater transparency seem to 

12 

have made a positive impact. However, experience shows that complex fraud schemes take time to surface, so sustained vigilance is 

necessary. 

While EPA quickly obligated its Recovery Act money, we have 

seen some implementation issues. I would like to highlight three 

issues this morning. 

First, EPA is unable to assess the overall impact of its Recovery 

Act funds on disadvantaged or environmental justice communities. 

The goals of the Recovery Act, which, as you know, is to create and 

retain jobs, promote economic recovery, and assist those most impacted by the recession, are outside of EPA’s mission to protect 

human health and the environment. The Act’s intended results are 

not traditionally tracked by EPA. 

As a result, our work shows that EPA has had difficulty in identifying and targeting economically disadvantaged communities. 

Their effort was hindered by the absence of definitions, data, and 

measures. Multiple constraints limited EPA’s ability to target 

funds to preserve and create jobs, as well as reach those most impacted by the recession. 

Of note was the ‘‘shovel-ready’’ requirement and the short timeframes to allocate funds. EPA programs require all applicants to 

meet program criteria. For water and wastewater projects, applicants had to demonstrate some preparedness, including completion 

of design plans and permitting processes. However, communities 

most in need often lacked the financial resources to develop the 

necessary design plans or to prepare applications. Those communities who did not have the necessary materials prepared in advance were unable to compete for funds. 

In addition, among the Recovery Act-funded programs at EPA, 

States made the funding decisions for 86 percent of the funds. 

Whether and how socioeconomic conditions influence project selection was at their discretion. The result was that EPA’s ability to 

target economically disadvantaged areas that have environmental 

needs was adversely impacted. 

Second, EPA did not always develop clear, comprehensive, and 

timely guidance for recipients. One example was how to determine 

the eligibility of green reserve projects. Specifically, EPA did not 

provide guidance on how to solicit and select green projects until 

after many States had finished doing so. Moreover, EPA’s guidance 

and subsequent updates have not addressed important aspects of 

project selection. As a result, EPA could not provide a reasonable 

assurance that its green reserve projects will meet Congress’ objectives. 

Finally, EPA should ensure that it has sufficient contracts and 

grants staff to perform both Recovery Act and non-Recovery Act activities. While EPA made the Recovery Act a top priority by shifting its existing contract and grant administration staff to those activities, the process was not always based on workforce analyses of 

the actual resources needed. As a result, this left less time for staff 

to focus on non-Recovery Act administration, monitoring, and oversight. This leaves EPA contracts and grants susceptible to undetected errors. 

In closing, while we have noted implementation issues, we have 

not seen significant problems with Recovery Act funds at EPA so 

13 

far. However, I must stress that the story is still unfolding. As I 

mentioned earlier, complex fraud schemes often take time to surface so EPA must not take its eye off the ball. Also, we have concerns that there may be insufficient EPA oversight to ensure that 

projects are completed on time, and environmental objectives 

achieved. EPA’s oversight funds must be obligated by the end of 

fiscal year 2011, yet many Recovery Act projects will not be completed by that date. 

The OIG will continue to monitor and assess EPA’s Recovery Act 

activities in these and other areas. I want to thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. I would be pleased to answer 

any questions the committee may have. Thank you. 

Mr. MICA. Again, we will defer for questions. 

And I will recognize first Phillip Herr, and then we will go to 

David Trimble. 

Mr. HERR. Thank you. Chairman Mica, Ranking Member Rahall, 

and members of the committee, I am pleased to be here today to 

discuss GAO’s work on Recovery Act transportation programs. 

Drawing on prior and ongoing work, I will discuss the status, use, 

outcomes, and lessons learned across several programs, including 

the TIGER and high-speed rail efforts. 

In terms of funding status, of the $48 billion available for transportation programs, about 95 percent has been obligated for over 

15,000 projects. Expenditures total about $26 billion, about 59 percent of available funds. 

Highway funds have been primarily used for pavement improvement, and transit funds have been used to upgrade facilities and 

purchase new vehicles. Recovery Act transportation projects are reported to have supported about 50,000 full-time equivalent jobs 

from October through December of 2010. Highway projects accounted for approximately two-thirds of these jobs, with transit and 

other projects making up the rest. 

We recommended that DOT determine the data needed to assess 

Recovery Act transportation impacts, but it has not committed to 

doing so. We continue to believe that effort is important. 

Several lessons learned from Recovery Act programs may be relevant to reauthorization decisions. States were required to certify 

they would maintain planned transportation spending from February 2009 through September 2010, referred to as ‘‘maintenance 

of effort’’ in the law. Available data indicate that 21 States did not 

meet planned spending levels during this period. This provision 

was also administratively challenging, with seven iterations of 

DOT guidance being issued to States. 

Federal and State officials stated that more flexibility is needed 

to implement this provision, in light of unexpected changes in economic conditions. Going forward, we believe DOT is well-positioned 

to understand how this provision could be improved and implemented. 

Another unique feature of the Recovery Act was targeting economically distressed areas. This also proved challenging due to variation in how some States prioritize projects. DOT also had ongoing 

challenges maintaining data on this aspect of the Recovery Act, 

and we are continuing to monitor that. 

14 

The high-speed rail and TIGER programs represented important 

steps toward investing in projects of regional and national significance through merit-based competitive processes, and using cost 

benefit analysis to inform decisions. While generally following recommended grantmaking practices, both could have better documented award decisions. In our view, the absence of documentation 

can give rise to challenges to the decisions, making DOT vulnerable 

to criticism that projects were selected for reasons other than 

merit. 

Chairman Mica, Ranking Member Rahall, and members of the 

committee, this concludes my statement, and I am pleased to answer questions. And my colleague, Susan Flemming, is here to answer questions on GAO’s high-speed rail work as well, should those 

arise. 

Mr. MICA. We will hear from Mr. Trimble next. 

Mr. TRIMBLE. I am pleased to be here today to discuss our work 

examining States’ use of Recovery Act funds for clean water 

projects. My statement is based on GAO’s ongoing work examining 

the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Fund programs. 

As part of this review, we examined the national data, as well 

as specific implementation issues in nine States. Nationally, all of 

the Recovery Act SRF funding has been awarded and obligated, 

and almost 80 percent has been drawn down by the States. This 

money was used to address water quality problems, and help fund 

nearly 1,900 clean water projects, with roughly one-quarter of these 

classified as green. 

Clean water projects included secondary and advance treatment 

facilities, storm and sanitary sewers, and projects intended to address nonpoint source pollution. About three-quarters of clean 

water Recovery Act funds were provided as grants or other subsidies. As projects are completed and funds spent, the number of 

full-time equivalent jobs has begun to decline from their peak last 

summer of over 9,000 to just over 4,000 for the quarter closing in 

March. 

For the nine States in our current review, the States told us that 

about 20 percent of their clean water SRF funds went to projects 

that served disadvantaged communities, and over 80 percent of this 

money was provided in the forms of grants or other subsidies. 

State officials did face some challenges in meeting Recovery Act 

requirements. Some officials noted that the requirement to have 

projects under contract within 1 year, as well as the requirement 

for green projects, changed which projects they funded. While the 

Buy American and Davis-Bacon provisions generally did not affect 

project selection, some potential sub-recipients declined funding, as 

they did not want to meet the requirements, or were concerned the 

requirements would increase the project’s cost. 

Our current work is showing that EPA, EPA IG, and State program and oversight and audit staffs continue to conduct oversight, 

and the EPA has taken action on our recommendation from last 

year to improve oversight over Recovery Act funds. 

States’ experiences implementing the Recovery Act requirements 

highlight potential future challenges for the SRF program, where 

the green and the additional subsidization requirement have been 

15 

continued. Officials in four of the nine States we examined noted 

that the 20 percent green target was difficult to achieve, with one 

suggesting such goals should be encouraged, but without a fixed 

target. 

Officials in other States noted that requirements to provide 

grants or other subsidies preclude the re-use of this money in the 

revolving loan fund, which means that less money will be available 

to fund future water infrastructure projects. The policy tradeoff is 

that additional subsidization funds enable but do not require 

States to give money to disadvantaged communities, if they choose 

to do so. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. 

And now we will turn to Under Secretary Kienitz, and I recognize him. 

Thank you. 

Mr. KIENITZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Rahall, and members of the committee. Obviously, the staff at DOT from top to bottom and in every State have spent hundreds of thousands of hours 

working on implementation of Recovery Act projects. And so we are 

glad to have an opportunity to come talk to you about what we 

have been doing. It has been a very big project for us, and we hope 

the results have been good. 

More than 15,000 transportation projects in all 50 States have 

received Recovery Act funding from our agency. And 9,000 of these 

projects have already been completed. And that ends up being 

thousands of new bridges and buses, new runways and railways 

serving the traveling public in communities all over the country. 

As of the end of April, DOT has obligated almost 100 percent of 

funding in most funding categories. Among the projects funded: for 

highways we were given $27.6 billion, that’s 13,300 individual 

projects, including 41,800 miles of highway receiving improvements 

and 2,700 individual bridges; for transit we got $8.8 billion, that’s 

11,400 buses and vans that were purchased, and 637 rail vehicles, 

and more than 10,000 individual other projects for transit; on highspeed rail we have dedicated funding to 738 miles of new routes. 

The TIGER discretionary program mentioned here funded 51 regionally or nationally significant projects for roads, rail, ports, transit, multimodal and other things. Amtrak, which has not been mentioned here yet, did get $1.3 billion. They have worked on 190 

miles of track, 10 individual bridges, 79 rail stations, as well as 

passenger cars and locomotives. 

On the airport side, we did 157 individual runway projects, 25 

air traffic control facilities, and many other smaller projects. And 

there was even a small shipyards program, where we purchased 

cranes, equipment, and machinery for 53 shipyards. 

As of the end of January, these projects have provided more than 

280,000 job years of work in the overall economy, creating both direct transportation jobs, as well as jobs in manufacturing and supplier industries. For example, hundreds of workers are expanding 

Highway 24 in California from six lanes to eight, to alleviate congestion for the 160,000 commuters from Contra Costa who come 

into the Oakland area. 

16 

We are expanding Interstate 94 in Wisconsin from six to eight 

lanes, from Milwaukee down to the Illinois border. In Tampa we 

are linking Interstate 4 with the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway to provide trucks with direct access to the Port of Tampa 

without going through downtown, just the kind of last-mile investment in intermodal transportation that both transportation experts 

and the members of this committee have repeatedly told us need 

to be a priority. 

We have added enough new buses to the Nation’s transit fleet 

that, if we line them all up, the line would be 40 miles long. We 

are restoring the 136-year-old Eads Bridge across the Mississippi 

River in St. Louis, 80-year-old subway stations in Philadelphia, and 

even the Brooklyn Bridge. Recovery Act funding has made it possible to repair, restore, and expand our transportation capacity all 

across the Nation, and we are better off, as a result. 

While most of the DOT recovery money was distributed to State 

and local authorities using existing formulas and programs in 

which decisionmaking is devolved to the State and local level, Congress took some bold steps in the Recovery Act to go outside of that 

pattern. 

First, Congress enacted a competitive surface transportation 

grant program that we have called the TIGER program to fund innovative projects from across all of DOT’s modes. And Congress 

chose to add a considerable amount of funding to the previously authorized high-speed rail and intercity passenger rail programs. 

We are very proud of the partnerships we have created with 

State and local communities as we have implemented those two 

popular programs, and we are pleased that we were able to use 

these programs to introduce the kind of competitive and meritbased approach to project selection that the President and the administration have long advocated and that the GAO has advocated 

for a long time, as well. 

GAO recently published two reports on our Recovery Act work: 

one on TIGER and one on high-speed rail. And we are pleased that 

they generally found we did a good job in carrying out the congressional mandate and in running those programs according to good 

grantmaking practices. And, in fact, we did some checking. Since 

1970, GAO has issued almost 169,000 individual reports and opinions. And does anyone here know how many of them use the word 

‘‘good’’ in the title? Fourteen out of one hundred sixty-nine thousand, which is less than one in ten thousand. So we are proud that 

they were able to say that we used good grantmaking practices in 

one of the titles. Though I suspect, now that I have said this, it will 

be the last time that they ever do that. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. KIENITZ. But in addition, we have respected particularly the 

GAO’s work in which they have been saying for a long time that 

the outcomes achieved from Federal funding for transportation 

could be improved by having the kind of competitive programs that 

are embodied in TIGER and high-speed rail, and that is something 

that we are very much believers in, and we have worked very hard 

to stand those programs up from nothing. 

So, thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and I am 

happy to answer questions. 

17 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. I think we have heard from all the witnesses now, and we will turn to questions. And I have a couple of 

questions. 

First of all, one of my concerns—well, the stimulus was intended 

to provide jobs in economically depressed areas. And I think that 

was one of the directives included in the legislation. And, unfortunately, I have got two charts of some of the outlays for funds, particularly, I guess, in the TIGER grants, which was the discretionary funds that DOT gave out. And we had total, I think, of $2.3 

billion given to States. 

For example, $171 million went to North Dakota, with an unemployment rate of 3.6; $225 million went to Nebraska, with 4.2 percent unemployment; $211 million went to South Dakota, with a 4.9 

percent unemployment. And then States like Florida, we had very 

high unemployment, and we got zero, I think, on the first round 

of TIGER grants. 

Did you look at any of this, Mr. Scovel, about the intent of Congress, and then applying the money to States that had the greatest 

unemployment need? 

Mr. SCOVEL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I must say that we did 

not. In coordinating our work with that of GAO, we split the workload so that GAO would function, essentially, on the first part of 

implementing the TIGER program, up through the grant selection 

decisions. 

Mr. MICA. And—— 

Mr. SCOVEL. We are looking, in my office, at the management 

and oversight implications. 

Mr. MICA. Mr. Herr or Mr. Trimble, did you look at the intent 

of Congress, and also the expenditure of money in regard to providing assistance to hard-hit economically depressed areas? 

Mr. HERR. Chairman Mica, in the transportation work we did 

look at the focus on projects in economically distressed areas. As 

part of the larger body of work we did on transportation, one of the 

concerns that we saw was that the tracking system DOT established had some inaccuracies in it. 

Mr. MICA. Had some what? 

Mr. HERR. Had some inaccuracies, in terms of how the projects 

and EDAs were being identified by the States. But we were doing 

that on the broader effort. 

Mr. MICA. But nobody really has an analysis of the program 

meeting Congress’ intent? 

Mr. HERR. Well, in terms of the TIGER program specifically, 

those grants had been made a little later in the process. 

Mr. MICA. But you did not—— 

Mr. HERR. We did not look specifically at that piece. 

Mr. MICA. OK. One of the things you did say was a significant 

amount of the DOT money went to paving. I was told it was about 

50 percent or more. Is that correct? 

Mr. HERR. It’s a little higher than that. Pavement-related spending is about 70 percent, sir. 

Mr. MICA. Oh, it’s 70 percent. So—and most of those jobs would 

not be permanent jobs, would they? 

18 

Mr. HERR. Well, that would be usually a shorter term process, 

or projects that could be gotten underway quickly. That would be 

correct. 

Mr. MICA. Does anyone know—we have different categories of 

funds, some expended out of the Treasury. Of the $63 billion—well, 

maybe you could take DOT, $48 billion DOT. What percentage of 

that has actually been spent out of the Treasury? 

Mr. HERR. The data that we have is provided today in my statement, where you can see the total—— 

Mr. MICA. Give it to me again. 

Mr. HERR. Fifty-nine percent. 

Mr. MICA. Fifty-nine percent. So, 40 percent is still in the Treasury. You said allocation is a higher number. What’s the allocation 

to date? 

Mr. HERR. At this point the total obligated is $45 billion, or just 

about 96 percent. 

Mr. MICA. Ninety-six percent. Now, one of the things that I have 

noticed is there has been—since the program takes so long, and 

there are delays in approvals and States run out of money, there 

has been a fair amount of reallocation. Do you have a figure on reallocation? 

Mr. HERR. We had data as of last year. 

Mr. MICA. I am sorry? 

Mr. HERR. We had information that was current as of last 

year—— 

Mr. MICA. I cannot hear two people speaking here, I am sorry. 

Mr. HERR. I can get updated information. We have a report on 

the Recovery Act that we are going to be issuing next month, that 

could discuss how funds have been reallocated. 

Are you specifically asking about money that was moved from 

highways to transit? 

Mr. MICA. No, just reallocation. Projects went south. Well, and 

any money that was moved from accounts. But I am told a very 

significant amount of money had to be reallocated. And you don’t 

have that figure? 

Mr. HERR. We had information earlier in our work. There were 

a lot of bid savings in contracts. And so, in some cases there were 

actually more contracts awarded because of bid savings. 

Mr. MICA. Right, projects came in at lower cost. 

Mr. HERR. At lower cost. 

Mr. MICA. But that is not what I am talking about. I am talking 

about projects going south, or not moving forward, and then reallocation. You don’t have a—— 

Mr. HERR. My understanding from prior work was it was a relatively low percentage. 

Mr. MICA. That was what? 

Mr. HERR. A relatively low percentage. 

Mr. MICA. But you do not have an amount—— 

Mr. HERR. Not today, sir. 

Mr. MICA. OK. High-speed rail. Unfortunately—well, I believe I 

am the most prominent advocate of high-speed rail in the Congress. 

I wrote some of the PRIIA Act provisions for high-speed rail, some 

of which were ignored in the stimulus program. 

19 

But I couldn’t think of a worse start of any program—you mentioned high-speed rail—we had sort of a bait and switch operation 

that people thought they were getting high-speed rail. The governor of, what is it, Ohio—that project was 39 miles an hour, huge 

expenditure of funds. You could have taken a bus and gotten there 

faster, even after spending the money that Governor Kasich sent 

back. The system, that 39 miles an hour is not high speed. Or even 

if it had gotten up to 50 miles an hour is not high speed. That is 

correct. Isn’t it, Mr. Herr? 

Mr. HERR. That would be my understanding. 

Mr. MICA. Yes. And then the route from Chicago to Wisconsin, 

that was a 78 or 80 miles an hour. That was not high-speed rail, 

either, was it, that came back? 

Mr. HERR. That would be my understanding. 

Mr. MICA. Yes. And the Florida project was 84 miles in length, 

and it took 1 hour to go the 84 miles. How fast would that be going, 

average miles per hour, Mr. Herr? 

Mr. HERR. Doing the math in my head, somewhere under 60. 

Mr. MICA. That would be 84 miles an hour, sir. 

Mr. HERR. Oh, I—— 

Mr. MICA. Got to work with—we have definitely got to work with 

you, sir. 

Mr. HERR. Well, I misunderstood your question. 

Mr. MICA. In fact, we may have to recalculate all the information 

he gave us, on that basis. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. MICA. But that was not a high-speed rail project, either. And 

being a strong advocate, again, it was $8 billion of stimulus money, 

plus another $2.5 billion through a regular appropriation we 

worked on with Mr. Oberstar. 

And the only potential now we have of high speed—and, unfortunately, the California project is between Fresno and Bakersfield, 

there is mostly farmland in between, and very little population to 

support a high-speed rail system. We will not see high-speed rail 

in any of our corridors. Is that correct, Mr. Herr? Do you know? Or 

Mr. Kienitz, do you want to—— 

Mr. KIENITZ. I would be happy to respond to that line of argument. I would say that the congressional definition of high-speed 

rail—— 

Mr. MICA. Is 110 miles an hour. 

Mr. KIENITZ. Is achieving peak speed—— 

Mr. MICA. That was watered down for Amtrak, because the international one is 120. But most high-speed rail systems are operating 

at 150, and some are operating at 180 miles an hour. 

Mr. KIENITZ. And I have ridden them, and they are impressive. 

The Wisconsin—— 

Mr. MICA. But we won’t be riding one in the United States. 

Mr. KIENITZ. I have—I am confident—— 

Mr. MICA. Between any metropolitan areas. 

Mr. KIENITZ. I am confident—— 

Mr. MICA. With any significant population. 

Mr. KIENITZ. I am confident. I have more confidence than you, 

perhaps. 

20 

The Wisconsin segment you mentioned does peak at 110 miles an 

hour. And so, as a legal matter, it is called high-speed rail. I think 

we all wish it were faster. 

Mr. MICA. Well, Florida would have gotten up to 150 miles an 

hour. 

Mr. KIENITZ. Right. 

Mr. MICA. In a peak. But so does Acela, it gets to 150 miles an 

hour on the Northeast Corridor. But its average speed is around 

80 miles an hour in the southern half, and 65 miles an hour from 

New York to Boston. 

And I am not trying to bust your chops. I spent time with the 

Secretary, Mr. Rahall and myself, I spent a lot of time this past 

weekend with the Vice President, and will continue. I want to see 

a success. I compliment the administration for finally—what, a 

month ago—designating—didn’t you designate the Northeast Corridor finally as a high-speed corridor eligible for some Federal assistance? 

Mr. KIENITZ. And we are hoping that bears fruit soon. 

Mr. MICA. Well, when we have that announcement—when is the 

fruit announcement coming? 

Mr. KIENITZ. Soon. 

Mr. MICA. Anything you can tell the committee? 

Mr. KIENITZ. Sadly, I would get in big trouble if I said—— 

Mr. MICA. But is it a week, 2 weeks, a month, a year? I mean 

my term ends next November, and—— 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. KIENITZ. It is not a year. I will give you that. No, we have 

placed a high priority on getting this money out quickly. So the 

process by which we solicited applications and are making decisions for this will be faster than any other process that we have 

done. 

Mr. MICA. So within the next 30 days you would anticipate that 

you would have some announcements? 

Mr. KIENITZ. You said it, not me. 

Mr. MICA. Let me yield. Maybe you could get more out of him, 

Mr. Rahall. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. RAHALL. Let me ask Mr. Kienitz of DOT and Mr. Herr of the 

GAO, putting in context that this is the first time DOT ever had 

a plan to award and oversee two discretionary grant programs of 

this size, the TIGER and the high-speed rail, are you pleased with 

the results of GAO’s audits? 

Mr. HERR. Mr. Rahall, our work showed that DOT did a good job 

of setting up criteria. And on the technical review side they established panels that did their due diligence. 

One of the concerns that we had about how TIGER came out was 

it was difficult for us to understand the basis for the final decisions, and the documentation for those. Our recommendation to 

DOT is to improve the documentation of major decisions throughout the process. And I was very pleased to see in Mr. Kienitz’s 

statement today that DOT has agreed to move forward with that 

recommendation. 

Mr. KIENITZ. Yes, the nature of the GAO process is very long and 

involved. We received in draft form a recommendation that we 

21 

could have done a better job documenting the review team level 

work on TIGER. So in the TIGER II process, which we completed 

6 months ago, we implemented that recommendation and plan to 

improve it further for the TIGER III that is now upcoming. So, we 

took that as a responsible critique, and have attempted to do it. 

Mr. RAHALL. Continuing with you, Mr. Kienitz, approximately 

15,000 Recovery Act highway, transit and aviation projects, as you 

have referenced, have broken ground all across the country. Can 

you give us a little more on the economic impacts of these projects? 

And when these projects are completed, what will the taxpayers get 

in return for their money? 

Mr. KIENITZ. Yes, it is a quite long and quite impressive list of 

tens of thousands of miles of road that have been improved. Almost 

12,000 new transit buses, 157 runways, ports, airports, and 2,700 

bridges have been improved. It is an impressive list. 

I think the issue that we are running into now is the good news 

in that 9,000 of the projects are done, and many of the rest of them 

are close to being done. Eventually the last dollars will be paid out, 

as the last invoice is submitted, once the project is done. The difficulty we have there is it is true for construction projects generally 

that every construction job is, to some degree, a temporary job. You 

identify a project, you design it, you build it, and then it is built. 

Hopefully, these projects are of a kind that are generating generalized improved economic performance that helps support the economy in the future. But the direct construction employment, as we 

complete projects, is inevitably going to wind down. 

And, in fact, the numbers we have been looking at for reporting 

the total job numbers employed during that quarter for transportation recovery projects are less than in the quarter before. And we 

fear that that is part of a downward trend, where it peaked during 

the first and second summers of—in the construction season, and 

now that we are 2 years gone it is going to inevitably go down. 

So, I think this is why your interest and the chairman’s interest 

in getting a long-term reauthorization has been right on point, and 

we agree with that. 

Mr. RAHALL. Would you not agree that Vice President Biden’s 

leadership—that these projects and the money spent under are perhaps the most scrutinized, sanitized, and transparent spending of 

government—of taxpayers’ money in your history? 

Mr. KIENITZ. I would certainly say it is the most scrutinized 

thing that DOT has ever done. A lot of the reporting that we do, 

and the transparency that we do, is pretty routine. We normally do 

it. It is just that, to be quite honest, no one ever looks at it. What 

is happening this time is, because it was such a high-profile activity, all of the things that folks do as a matter of course are getting 

intense scrutiny. But we also had additional levels of reporting. 

Generally, every agency receiving Recovery Act funds had a 

whole set of reporting that you had to do. DOT, because of the 

work of this committee, we have our own separate, additional layer 

of reporting, where we report to you on what we are doing. 

So, the amount of work that has gone into documenting this stuff 

is massive. What we have basically found from that, though, 

whether it is economically distressed areas or total jobs created, 

the fundamental requirements of the Recovery Act were not, ‘‘DOT, 

22 

go out and count the jobs; DOT, go out and determine the Recovery 

Act.’’ It was, ‘‘DOT, make sure your grantee goes out and counts 

the jobs and tells you; make sure your grantee tells you whether 

it is in a distressed area or not.’’ 

And so, we are fundamentally dependent—when you are doing 

15,000 projects, we are not going to send DOT agents out to stand 

at the job site of all these projects. We are dependent on the reporting that we get back. And what we find is a lot of the reporting 

is really good, particularly from the more sophisticated—California 

Department of Transportation has got 100,000 employees, it is a 

huge, professional organization. But we also have some tiny, little 

shipyard somewhere that got a new crane, it has got six employees, 

they have never been involved in this any more, they do not know 

how to do it. 

So, I think, as a whole, the numbers we got were valid in their 

totals, but there are some people who are not very experienced in 

this work that were involved for the first time. 

Mr. RAHALL. Would any other member of the panel wish to comment on that point? 

Mr. SCOVEL. Thank you, Mr. Rahall. Our work shows that the 

Department can increase its transparency, and ultimately the utility of the data that it provides to Congress and to the taxpayer by 

paying more attention to the job data. 

Mr. Kienitz referred to the Department’s requirement under section 1201 to report direct jobs, indirect jobs, and total jobs. Our 

work has shown that, with greater attention, the Department 

could, especially with respect to indirect jobs and total jobs, provide 

data of greater utility to the committee and to the taxpayer. 

Mr. RAHALL. Thank you. 

Mr. KIENITZ. And I might just respond on that point. Theoretically, you can count direct jobs. It is up to our grantees to do that. 

But you cannot count indirect jobs. An indirect job is, if the workers are going and buying sandwiches, and there is a guy making 

sandwiches at the shop around the corner, then he has a job. There 

is no way to count those. 

So, the only question of indirect jobs is which Ph.D. do you listen 

to who says he knows the answer. And we have got a lot of Ph.D.’s 

and they all—you know, what do they say? When you get five 

economists and you ask them a question you get six opinions. 

Mr. RAHALL. Right. 

Mr. KIENITZ. And we had a lot of those meetings. So I am sympathetic with the point the gentleman made, but I am not sure it is 

a perfectible science. 

Mr. RAHALL. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. Mr. Duncan. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 

calling this hearing. 

The main concern that people on our side had about this stimulus package, first of all, was the tremendous cost. Most of us 

thought we just could not afford it. Today there is tremendous concern over this—reaching this $14.3 trillion debt limit. I suppose at 

the time we passed this Stimulus Bill, the debt was probably 

around $12 trillion. And I have always been convinced the reason 

that more people do not get upset about that is that those are figVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:08 Nov 03, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\112\FULL\5-4-11~1\66184.TXT JEAN
23 

ures that nobody can humanly comprehend, not me or anybody 

else. 

But there also was some concern because most of us on this side 

of the aisle felt that the bill was sold to the country on the—as 

being almost completely or totally an infrastructure package, when 

only 7 percent, roughly, went to infrastructure. 

But the biggest question I have is one that probably none of you 

can answer. But maybe somebody can enlighten me some. I spend 

many hours each day reading everything I can about these bills, 

and the legislation before us. And when the stimulus package was 

acted on it was referred to in article after article as a $787 billion 

bill. Well, within probably less than a year—but I have seen many, 

many articles since that time that have referred to the bill as an 

$862 billion bill. Now, that is a lot of difference, that is $75 billion 

difference. 

The Congressional Budget Office apparently issued a revised es- timate of $812 billion in January, but said it is likely to go up from 

that figure. Can somebody give me an explanation as to how a $787 billion 

bill, which is what we were told at the time we voted on it, turned 

into an $862 billion bill, or some figure in between there? 

Mr. KIENITZ. I am obviously not an expert in this area. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Yes. 

Mr. KIENITZ. But I think I know the answer, which is it is on 

the tax provisions, not any of the spending or infrastructure 

money. We get a very exact amount of money, and we spend that 

exact amount. 

On the tax side, if you are giving tax cuts, you have to make an 

estimate of how much taxes people will pay in the coming years, 

and then how much less they will pay if you give them a rate cut. 

But the actual amount that people end up paying and the amount 

they would have paid depends on what employment is in the economy, economic growth, and income tax, and they never get the 

number right. 

I think the answer is they underestimated the amount of income 

that would have been earned, that was going to be earned. And so, 

the tax cuts actually ended up being of greater value, because people got more tax cuts than they would have, which means the cost 

of the bill is higher. I think that is the answer. 

Mr. DUNCAN. So—— 

Mr. HERR. Mr. Duncan, there were also some credits for energy 

efficiency, and things of that nature. So if somebody opted to, say, 

upgrade a particular kind of system for their home, they could get 

a tax credit for that, as well. That would be along the lines of what 

Mr. Kienitz was just describing. 

Mr. DUNCAN. I don’t think that was made clear to us. I thought 

that, at the time, it was sold to us as being at least a maximum 

of $787 billion, because I have read many, many articles about it. 

But at least that is somewhat of an explanation, I suppose. 

What—there are several other things that questions have been 

raised about. For instance, it says the—in one of the memos it says 

the FAA emphasized in public testimony its goal to select the highest priority projects defined by the FAA as having a score of 62, 

yet the FAA awarded over 80 grants to lower scoring projects. 

24 

Does anyone know why the FAA awarded those grants to 

projects that did not meet their own qualifications? 

Mr. SCOVEL. Mr. Duncan, we have some information on that particular point. FAA was funneling its ARRA money through its airport improvement program, and set initially a score of 62 in the national priority rating as the cut-off point for projects that would be 

considered for ARRA funding. 

In addition to the criteria that were established by the Act and 

by the President for ARRA funding, FAA also established geographic distribution requirements and also put limits on the sizes 

of individual awards. By the time all of those factors were considered and folded in together, some lower priority projects ended up 

being funded with ARRA dollars. 

In February, we issued a report that indicates, for instance, five 

very small village air fields in Alaska received a total of $59 million, equivalent to what the entire State of Texas received, and 

more than Florida, Illinois, or New York. 

We concluded that FAA ultimately did not pay sufficient attention to the required guidance, the criterion to optimize economic activity with regard to the Federal expenditure of these ARRA dollars. In fact, they considered that that would be accomplished 

through their normal AIP program. But when they layered on 

these additional geographic requirements and size limits, it ended 

up creating anomalies like those of the small Alaska air fields that 

I just described. 

My office does not wish to take issue with the fact that improvements were needed to those individual air fields, or that they did 

not belong on the priority listing for the airport improvement program in general. However, it does raise the reasonable question, we 

think, that with regard to ARRA dollars specifically, the creation 

of these anomalies showed that there were unintended consequences by FAA’s decision to layer on additional requirements to 

those of ARRA. 

Mr. KIENITZ. And if I might comment on that? 

Mr. DUNCAN. Yes, sir. 

Mr. KIENITZ. The only thing that I would say is that, as I have 

spent the last several years working at the Department, we have 

a myriad of programs which have geographic diversity requirements layered on to them. And most of those are congressionally 

mandated. And that has everything to do with people who represent small communities that think the Federal Government is 

never going to see them, or care about their projects, and so Congress writes it as a rural minimum, or it is a requirement for geographic diversity, and so we have lots and lots of programs. 

And we end up, often, with this type of criticism that says if you 

had provided a rigorous cost benefit analysis, you would not have 

funded the project in rural Idaho or Oklahoma or somewhere. And 

I think our view of reasonable geographic diversity is actually a 

policy goal that the country has adopted for a long time. And as 

long as Congress tells us to keep doing that, I think it is our job 

to do it. 

Mr. SCOVEL. Mr. Duncan, if I may? 

Mr. DUNCAN. Yes. 

25 

Mr. SCOVEL. One of the points we also made in regard to your 

question has to do with this. FAA funded 360 projects with ARRA 

dollars under the airport improvement program. It published data 

on those projects, and the rationales for their selection in the cases 

of 280; 80 projects were left to the speculation of those who were 

viewing the results of FAA’s AIP/ARRA-funded selection process. 

When transparency is stated as one of the goals of this program, 

and when, as the under secretary correctly points out, the geographic distribution is a key goal of congressional programs like 

this, certainly the agency—in this case, FAA—ought to undertake 

greater transparency with regard to explaining its decisions. 

We were notified last week, as we prepared for the hearing, that, 

in fact, FAA, by the end of this month, will publish data now on 

those 80 low-priority airports that it selected for ARRA funding. 

Mr. DUNCAN. All right. Thank you very much. 

Mr. MICA. Other Members seek recognition? Ms. Norton? 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Part of what 

occurred in this quite extraordinary process could form the basis 

for best practices, and part of it probably could not. The transparency, unprecedented in such projects, the way in which we kept 

track of such projects online and in the Congress. 

But in a real sense I have a question about the competing criteria. When you are in the middle of a recession, and you have got 

to get the money out on the streets—or at least that is what you 

want to do quickly to make jobs—if you compare the agency that 

came under my jurisdiction when I chaired the Economic Development Subcommittee, the GSA, you were dealing with one of the few 

Federal agencies that could, in fact, make the contract themselves—compete, put out the contracts themselves. So there was no 

pass-through. And thus, GSA was able to get its money out quicker 

than the States. 

And, of course, they found, as the States did, that bids were coming in lower, because we were in a recession. And they were able 

to do 17 additional projects beyond those that were authorized. So 

we haven’t had any trouble with them. But it was interesting to 

see the difference. 

Now, flip to the States, where they too have to compete. And we 

have got to get to a pass-through to get to them, and through our 

processes to get to them. Then we say, ‘‘Be shovel-ready, no fraud 

and abuse, and high quality’’ at the same time. 

So, I want to know two things: one, whether you found any more 

fraud, waste, and abuse in the Recovery Act projects than would 

typically be found in such projects; and I would like your views on, 

given the competing criteria, whether you thought the States, for 

the most part, were able to handle this mixed message of what was 

required of them. 

So, first, was there any more fraud, waste, and abuse than you 

normally find in such projects? 

Mr. SCOVEL. Ms. Norton, I can speak from the basis of our investigative work in the Department of Transportation’s office of inspector general. 

In fact, we have been very pleasantly surprised that we have not 

found more fraud than we have. And we have also been pleasantly 

surprised that we haven’t found any remarkable variations on the 

26 

types of fraud that we have found in the past. Bottom line, fraud 

is fraud. It depends on what pot of money the fraudster is trying 

to reap his benefits from. 

We have—I think I mentioned earlier we currently have open 51 

investigative cases. Frankly, that number is a little bit high, and 

it is because we have lowered our investigative threshold in order 

for us to pay more attention to ARRA cases that may come to our 

attention, as well as meet the requests of the Department of Justice, who have indicated that they want to pay more attention in 

their prosecutive efforts, too, to ARRA cases. 

But I think, speaking from my vantage point as a member of the 

recovery, accountability, and transparency board, many of us in the 

inspector general community have been pleasantly surprised that 

the level of fraud has not been higher. Much of that is due to the 

remarkable oversight, the attention that is being paid by the Congress, by our respective agency heads, by offices such as mine. We 

do worry that the fraudsters may be looking to other pots of money, 

so that is why they are not dipping into stimulus funds right now, 

but we are keeping a very, very close eye on it. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Elkins? 

Mr. ELKINS. Yes. Ms. Norton, I would concur with Mr. Scovel. 

Our findings at the EPA, with our work, is that we have also seen 

very little fraud activity, as well. 

However, I want to caution you. We have only been in this for 

2 years now, and—the amount of money that has been invested at 

EPA, for instance—we are looking at $7 billion. I mean that is the 

amount of money that pretty much mirrors what the EPA’s budget 

was back in 2006, 2007 or so. So we are talking a very large 

amount of money. 

Ms. NORTON. Yes, I am aware of that. I am just trying to track 

where we are now, because we are going to be having these hearings, and it is important to note because, frankly, the press did the 

right thing in going around the country and looking to see whether, 

with all this haste, you would see fraud. And there were not a lot 

of big stories. So I wondered what those of you who look more 

closely have found. 

The chairman talks about temporary jobs. Now, I just want to 

say on behalf of the million construction workers who were out of 

work since construction work is always temporary until you can get 

the next job, these are precisely the kind of jobs that infrastructure 

seeks to fill. These are jobs that have the best effect on reverberating throughout the economy, because they stimulate other 

parts of the economy, as well. 

Now, the criticism that there had been a lot of paving and the 

rest, here we get into my original question about competing criteria. We had hearings in this committee: ‘‘Have you gotten the 

money out’’; ‘‘How much of it is obligated’’; ‘‘How much of it is on 

the street?’’ If you are in the States with that kind of pressure on 

you, is the Congress not in effect saying, ‘‘Do not target this money, 

get this money on the streets the old-fashioned way, we are making 

jobs, we are stimulating the economy, and yes, we are fixing your 

infrastructure, but you have got to do all of these things at the 

same time’’? 

27 

So, was the paving of the streets or similar work that the States 

might not have done almost inevitable to do, in light of the mandate of the Congress? 

Mr. KIENITZ. I might respond to that, if you don’t mind, ma’am. 

I will respond from our work at USDOT, which is we have seen a 

lot of small and medium-sized projects, and it is paving, it is guard 

rail, it is buying transit buses, which you can just easily order, it 

is simply runway projects. What we have not seen a lot of is the 

big, complicated bridge project, the big, complicated transit project, 

the big, complicated road reconstruction. They just take too long. 

They have to sit in the pipeline. Even the construction, once you 

are go, the construction could take 3 or 4 years. 

I was in State government in Pennsylvania up until March. We 

started preparing 2 months before the bill passed, because we saw 

that it was going to pass, started putting our list together so we 

would be ready the moment the money showed up. And once we 

started looking, what can we actually get done, it was all about 

small and medium-sized stuff. It really needed to be done. 

But what that means—well, for example, in transit right now the 

average age of the bus fleet in the United States is getting better. 

Buses are in much better condition than they were. The average 

condition of old track infrastructure and transit systems, where the 

projects are much, much harder to do and more expensive, is still 

not nearly as good. And not a lot of recovery money went into that, 

because the projects take too long. 

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman. Time has expired. Mr. Shuster? 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. And thank all of you for 

being here today. My question is to Mr. Kienitz. And I understand 

that USDOT has issued guidance to States regarding obligations to 

the—to comply with the certification reporting requirements contained in the maintenance of effort, or the MOE, in section 201 of 

the Recovery Act. 

It is my understanding, under current guidance, that even if a 

State met its cumulative State-certified level effort expenditures, 

that they would still be subject to being penalized by a prohibition 

on participating in this August highway redistribution if they failed 

to meet the requirements on a program-by-program basis. Is that 

correct? 

Mr. KIENITZ. That is how the current guidance reads, correct. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I further understand that, under that guidance, 14 

States would be subject to a penalty. 

Mr. KIENITZ. What I would say is we got an initial set of data 

in the fall, indicating a somewhat larger number of States would 

be subject to penalty. We have just recently gotten in the new final 

data, and we are still in the process of compiling that. That is a 

number that I have heard, as well, but I would not take it as the 

final answer. I think we are still in the process of making those assessments and decisions. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Well, are there any actions currently under review 

on this guidance? I understand that you have had some conversations and you may be looking differently—looking at the cumulative totals, because when you do that you reduce it from the 14 

States down to just several States under current—currently, if you 

28 

look at program by program, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, 

Missouri, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island have all 

met the cumulative expenditures. 

So, are you in discussions right now trying to review that and 

look at cumulative, instead of program by program? 

Mr. KIENITZ. Yes. I think as you point out, there are a number 

of States that, no matter how any of this works, clearly did not 

meet the maintenance of effort requirement. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Correct. 

Mr. KIENITZ. But there is somewhere—depending on how it is interpreted—the issue we are facing is that the language of the statute can be easily read to have two different meanings. 

And so, that is something we are looking at. Our goal is not to 

withhold funds from States, but we do have a congressional mandate to do that. And that was something that this committee wanted to make sure that when the recovery money went out to States, 

States did not just pull back their own dollars. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Right. 

Mr. KIENITZ. And in some cases, I think States are suffering 

from the fact that they have a dedicated tax that pays for transportation. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Right. 

Mr. KIENITZ. Economy goes down, tax revenues goes down, their 

spending goes down. There was no affirmative step they took to reduce spending. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Right. 

Mr. KIENITZ. It just was reduced. In other cases, there are States 

that—— 

Mr. SHUSTER. Currently didn’t—sure. 

Mr. KIENITZ [continuing]. Made affirmative decisions to take 

money out of transportation, spend it on things—— 

Mr. SHUSTER. Right. 

Mr. KIENITZ [continuing]. And I think that was the intention of 

Congress, to—— 

Mr. SHUSTER. So my understanding, from what you said, is you 

are going to look at the rule and—— 

Mr. KIENITZ. We—— 

Mr. SHUSTER [continuing]. Maybe look at cumulative? Because 

that is—again, I—when I read the legislative language, it looks like 

there is some flexibility in there, and I think that is the key to this, 

is flexibility. One size fits all—I mean Pennsylvania, for instance, 

missed its—in aviation missed its number, but overall it exceeded. 

Mr. KIENITZ. Right. 

Mr. SHUSTER. So, again, they made the effort. And I think that 

that one size fits all, I mean, that is the problem with the Federal 

Government. Too many times we do one size fits all, instead of 

leaving these States some flexibility to decide, OK, it is better for 

Pennsylvania to spend more money on road projects than maybe 

aviation. 

So, is that something—again, I want to make sure I am clear— 

you are going to consider that? You are going to look at that and 

maybe make some changes to the rule? 

Mr. KIENITZ. There is certainly discussion going on with this 

question, and I will take your concern back. I know there are a couVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:08 Nov 03, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00050 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\112\FULL\5-4-11~1\66184.TXT JEAN
29 

ple of other States, for example, where just the aviation number 

was—— 

Mr. SHUSTER. Right. 

Mr. KIENITZ [continuing]. The number that is not working. So we 

are—I will take that back, and—as we have these discussions. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Oh, I appreciate that greatly. 

Next question to Mr. Herr. Why do you believe that DOT did not 

comply with the President’s directive to be completely transparent 

when they provided the grants for high-speed rail and TIGER 

grants? 

Mr. HERR. In terms of why they did not do that, I am not sure 

I could get behind and understand the reason why. Some of it, I 

think, would be protecting the deliberative process that went on in 

the Department, in terms of the folks that were doing the technical 

reviews. 

We had some questions, which we outlined in our report. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Right. But your report was—I think was pretty 

clear that you were—you had great concerns of why they were not 

more transparent. And, according to the report, ‘‘Decision rationales provided little insight into selections.’’ You found several instances in which, without documentation, it was difficult to determine the reason why some projects were selected and others were 

not. 

Mr. HERR. That is correct. 

Mr. SHUSTER. That is something that we have been talking about 

here in Congress—— 

Mr. HERR. Right. 

Mr. SHUSTER [continuing]. Asking for that transparency. 

Mr. HERR. Right. We certainly agree that transparency is important, sir. 

Mr. SHUSTER. So, Mr. Kienitz, why haven’t we received that— 

those documents? And the transparency—here in Congress, most of 

our—almost all of what we do is online. The President is—ran 

for—came into office and said he was going to be transparent, and 

yet the Department of Transportation has stumbled badly on these 

things. These are billions of dollars. 

So, can you give me an answer why we have not received those 

documents and the criteria and the reasoning why you delivered 

money to various projects? 

Mr. KIENITZ. Well, I will answer that question in several parts. 

The first thing that I will say is that, also in the GAO’s testimony, 

they found that out of these six grantmaking practices that they 

track—generally for Federal agencies—we scored doing a good job 

on five of them, and on half of the sixth. So five-and-a-half out of 

six is pretty good to begin with. 

Second thing I will say is their particular criticism was mostly 

that the documentation of what went on in those final discussions 

was not what it could have been. And as I said earlier, we have 

accepted that as a reasonable criticism, and the documentation 

that we have been providing on subsequent rounds of both TIGER 

and high-speed rail is much more robust. 

As to the third matter of providing documentation, we have 

turned over basically every single document that exists that we 

have on the high-speed rail program to GAO. GAO is the investigaVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:08 Nov 03, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00051 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\HEARINGS\112\FULL\5-4-11~1\66184.TXT JEAN
30 

tive arm of Congress. It was set up for exactly that purpose. They 

are professionals, and that is their job, and we are following the 

longstanding practice of giving our material to them, let the professionals look at it, and decide what they think. 

Mr. SHUSTER. But according to GAO it is incomplete. Is that correct, Mr. Herr? 

Mr. HERR. The information that we have received for TIGER was 

incomplete, yes, in terms of one of the last meetings that they had, 

where some final decisions were made. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I am sorry, it was incomplete? 

Mr. HERR. Yes, for the final decisions that were made on the 

TIGER grants. 

Mr. SHUSTER. And that is, again—— 

Mr. KIENITZ. I believe we provided the information. I think that 

they found that the documentation of what actually happened in 

those final meetings was not what it should have been. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Right. Well, that is the point. 

Mr. KIENITZ. We provided them everything that we have. 

Mr. SHUSTER. That is the point. We want to know why you made 

the decisions, why the money went where it went. And was it fairness? And again, they are skeptical if the process, overall, was fair 

or not. And that is what we want to get to the bottom of—— 

Mr. KIENITZ. That is a misstatement. They are not skeptical that 

the process was fair. They said that the documentation could have 

been better. You may be skeptical that the process was not fair, but 

that is not what they said. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Well, according to some of their conclusions, ‘‘by 

not establishing this record, invites skepticism by the overall fairness of decision.’’ 

So, again, that is what we are trying to get at, why the money 

was done. You know, maybe we need to get the folks that made 

those final decisions and get them before the committee to determine why they did it. I know you are—I think the GAO said they 

are trying to protect the process, but that is the problem. We do 

not know why it went, and there is—in our mind there is some 

great doubt as to why it went certain places. 

So, again, I would encourage you to continue to bring that information forward to GAO, but to Congress, so that we know that 

things are done in a fair and transparent way. 

So thank you very much, and I yield back. 

Mr. MICA. Ms. Brown? 

Ms. BROWN. Yes. I just want to let you know that I feel it was 

very fair. Florida got the money, and that is what I wanted to happen. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. KIENITZ. We wish they would have kept it. 

Ms. BROWN. I wish we could have kept it, too. But quickly, let 

me just ask you a couple of quick questions. 

The chairman often talks about—my friend, Mr. Mica—highspeed rail. And he forgets an intercity passenger rail. And he 

thinks all—and his definition of high speed is different from the 

international definition, because we do not have the infrastructure 

in place. 

Can you clarify that for me, sir? 

31 

Mr. KIENITZ. As a general matter, I have to say I agree with the 

chairman’s fundamental underlying point, which is high-speed rail 

is the goal. 

Ms. BROWN. It is the goal. 

Mr. KIENITZ. What we found in trying to spend $8 billion of Recovery Act funding to create jobs as quickly as possible is that the 

state of readiness of grantees to accept funds to have fully designed 

and ready projects to go from what is, frankly, a pathetic rail system that we have in a lot of America to high-speed rail in one step, 

it just was not there. 

Ms. BROWN. And $8 billion won’t—— 

Mr. KIENITZ. In a couple of places—— 

Ms. BROWN [continuing]. Take us there, either. 

Mr. KIENITZ. Yes. California and Florida, where it had stuff that 

was pretty much ready, and everyone else was back behind that. 

And so, we looked to the European experience. And in very few 

places did they go from nothing to high-speed rail in one step. 

Ms. BROWN. Yes, sir. 

Mr. KIENITZ. They went from slow rail to medium rail, medium 

rail to faster rail, faster rail to high-speed rail. And I think, over 

the long term, our country is mostly going to have to follow that 

path. So we are taking a lot of service that is 70 miles an hour and 

upgrading it to 110. Some places where there is 110 it is going to 

be upgraded to 130. The Northeast Corridor, they can go faster. 

California is the one place where they are literally starting at nothing and building it capable of 220. That is high-speed rail. 

Now, unfortunately, that is going to take 10 years. So a lot of the 

criticism we get about California is, ‘‘Well, where is the results?’’ 

Well, in California we are doing what people have said that we 

should have done in other places, and then the criticism we get is, 

‘‘Well, we cannot—there is nothing to see.’’ So it is a damned if you 

do, damned if you don’t situation a little bit. 

Ms. BROWN. Yes, sir. Mr. Herr, you indicated that some of the 

funds was turned back because of Davis-Bacon or Buy American 

provision. What kind of projects are you talking about, and how 

many was turned back? 

Mr. TRIMBLE. I believe that was—— 

Ms. BROWN. I mean who said that? Yes, sir. 

Mr. TRIMBLE. That’s me. Yes, that was in reference to the clean 

water infrastructure projects. And that was—for the nine States 

that we went out and visited, generally the States were able to 

move forward with those requirements. Where that came up is in 

each of those States they mentioned that certain projects declined 

the funding, or were not in—— 

Ms. BROWN. OK. How many? How many? 

Mr. TRIMBLE. It was anecdotal. They did not track, so we do not 

have numbers on it. 

Generally, this was happening with projects that were already 

under contract. So the applicants did not want to go back and revise all their contract documentation. 

Ms. BROWN. OK. On the clean water, who was that? Was that 

you, with the water, also? Because basically, the funds went into 

the Revolving Fund, and the States already had the projects. 

Mr. TRIMBLE. Right. 

32 

Ms. BROWN. So the question was—as we move forward, we are 

trying to learn something from this—is it a conflict, when we want 

to try to get the projects to the most needy area and it may be that 

the States do not—did not take this into consideration with their 

Revolving Fund? 

Mr. TRIMBLE. Well, I think—and I think Mr. Elkins will have 

some work on this, as well, with the targeting to disadvantaged 

communities, the challenge in that, in terms of the Revolving Fund 

for the water projects, is there was no requirement to target those 

monies to disadvantaged communities. 

I think the EPA IG has work indicating that EPA does not have 

the data to track what money went to which community. We had 

data, because we had done field work in nine States, and we found 

that about—I believe it was around 25 percent had gone to disadvantaged communities. 

Ms. BROWN. Well, I am confused because I thought, in the overall 

project, it was to say that so much should go to disadvantaged communities. 

Mr. TRIMBLE. I believe that is for transportation. Not on the 

water side. There is a requirement for—a 20 percent green requirement, and then there was a requirement for 50 percent of the 

money to be given out as additional subsidization, which is grants 

and things. But that additional subsidization was not linked to disadvantaged communities. 

Ms. BROWN. OK. I am confused about that. 

Can you tell me the percentage of the stimulus dollars that went 

to tax cuts, and not to, per se, projects or generating jobs, just directly to tax cuts? 

Mr. TRIMBLE. I do not have that number. 

Ms. BROWN. Does anyone have that information? I think it is 

one-third, but—— 

[No response.] 

Ms. BROWN. All right, thank you. 

Mr. MICA. Other Members seek recognition? Our side? Mr.—OK, 

Mr. Lankford, you are recognized. 

Mr. Lankford? Oh, we need to provide the new Members with 

communications. 

Mr. LANKFORD. That is right. Freshman Members do not get 

electricity at their station. Keep them in their place. 

I appreciate you all coming in and getting a chance to talk about 

this. I want to further that conversation about some communities 

or States initially having a conversation about getting stimulus dollars and then withdrawing on that. Finish out that conversation 

that you had begun. Why do you think that is? It sounded like it 

was paperwork requirements, or other things that were going into 

it, that they would initiate that and then step away and say no. 

Mr. TRIMBLE. Yes. Some of the projects, in the majority of the examples that we had it was the communities that had those projects 

did not want to go back and amend existing contract documents for 

an ongoing project, to include the Buy America requirements, the 

Davis-Bacon requirements, as well as the reporting requirements. 

So they—— 

Mr. LANKFORD. It was the assumption that it would drive up the 

cost of the project? 

33 

Mr. TRIMBLE. In some cases. 

Mr. LANKFORD. If they got the Federal dollars, it would actually 

be more expensive than if they just did it locally and made local 

decisions, or—— 

Mr. TRIMBLE. Or they would go and get base SRF funds to fund 

that part of the project, or use the bond money for that portion. 

So, for example, I believe in Connecticut there was a project, it 

is about an $11 million project. The stimulus money was going to 

be about $1.2 million of that. And rather than take on those additional requirements, they went elsewhere for that portion of the 

funding. 

Mr. LANKFORD. OK. Let me ask a couple questions. Just—the 

State decisionmaking process on the whole—and anyone can respond to this—as the States were choosing which projects to be 

able to take on, mostly positive, you would say, as far as their decisions on what projects to take, as you look back on it now in retrospect, and say, ‘‘They made good decisions on those projects’’? 

I know the stipulations have had to be quick. We talked about 

the small to medium-sized projects. But on the whole, we look at 

their decisionmaking and say, ‘‘These seem to be positive’’? 

Mr. KIENITZ. I would say, from my point of view, sir, on the 

transportation side we actually had a pretty wide variety of strategies that States followed. Some States went to their State priority 

list, went to the first project that was not getting money, and went 

down until the money ran out. Other States adopted a very specific 

strategy to say, ‘‘I am going to pick the quickest projects I can possibly get.’’ 

Other States—I know in Pennsylvania we said bridges are a big 

problem, we are going to put this into bridges. I know Kansas, for 

example, decided to do three or four big highway projects, and not 

spread it around to a bunch of little things. 

So, every single one of them followed the correct procedures. 

Which of those is better? I am not sure I really know. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Not necessarily good or bad—— 

Mr. KIENITZ. Yes. 

Mr. LANKFORD [continuing]. But you are saying that they seem 

to be consistently good in making the decisions on that, the different strategies—— 

Mr. KIENITZ. Exactly. But it was all very by-the-book. 

Mr. LANKFORD. OK. 

Mr. HERR. We looked at the expenditure rates for the highway 

funding and five States are now over 95 percent in terms of their 

expenditures: Oklahoma, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, and 

Maine. And there are two States that have spent about one-third: 

Virginia and Hawaii. 

Three others States are around 50 percent. Virginia pursued 

some bigger ticket projects. But they had different strategies to do 

that, and there were some tight obligation deadlines, as well. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Great. Mr. Elkins, I think you were going to try 

to jump in, as well. 

Mr. ELKINS. Yes. Actually, I was just going to comment that 

within EPA OIG we just have not looked at that particular area 

as yet. 

34 

Mr. LANKFORD. OK. Well, there has been ongoing conversation 

about how much flexibility States should have in making decisions 

about their own transportation dollars and how that is handled, 

and this is a unique experiment for us, to see a very rapid decisionmaking process to see how States handle flexibility in making decisions on what are the best projects they see in their State, rather 

than from a Federal side stepping in and us evaluating for them 

what we see is the best State. So it is just an interesting analogy. 

I do want to be able to follow up, as well, on an initial comment 

that was made about suspension and debarment. Three hundred 

days from making a decision on suspension, 400 days on making 

a decision on debarment. Now, my understanding is that has been 

in the process of changing, which is great. And I want to be able 

to follow up on that. But talk me through the process on that, and 

where things are, from your side. 

Mr. SCOVEL. Thank you, sir. It was my office that did the report—— 

Mr. LANKFORD. Yes. 

Mr. SCOVEL [continuing]. About a year-and-a-half ago at this 

point, and we testified last year before House Oversight and Government Reform on it. 

We examined the Department’s suspension and debarment process. As you mentioned, 300 days, on average, to reach a decision 

on suspension; 400 days, on average, to reach a debarment decision. We found that there was insufficient oversight and 

prioritization and resources allocated within the Department to 

those efforts. 

We also found, frankly, that a couple of the operating administrations were imposing their own unnecessary and redundant review processes on top of what was stipulated by the Department 

itself. And that created a lot of the delay. The risk, of course, when 

there is that kind of delay, is that not only the Department of 

Transportation, but other Federal agencies may award Federal contracts to contractors or others whose reliability or responsibility is 

subject to question or, in fact, has been decided through adjudication in the case of a conviction. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Two quick statements. What do you think is a 

reasonable period of time for making that decision? 

Mr. SCOVEL. The Department has set 45 days. 

Mr. LANKFORD. All right. That is significantly shorter than 400 

days. 

Mr. SCOVEL. Absolutely. And the Department has recognized the 

validity of that number, and we would acknowledge that as a very 

worthwhile goal. 

Mr. LANKFORD. OK. And then, once someone is awarded the contract, even if they—you know, let’s say they have been awarded a 

contract during that time period of the decisionmaking process, 

then later they are debarred. Does that contract then finish out, or 

is that contract then null and void? 

Mr. SCOVEL. It is my understanding that they have the contract 

at that point. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Love to be able to follow up with you on that 

one—— 

Mr. KIENITZ. The only thing I will—— 

35 

Mr. LANKFORD [continuing]. Taking corrective actions, that is 

great. Just talk us through where things are now. 

Mr. KIENITZ. Yes, sir. Thank you. The only thing I would say is 

that I think we have recognized this, once again, as value added 

that we have gotten out of the inspector general. I mean they are 

an independent entity and when they do not like what we are 

doing, they certainly tell us. This has been a valuable area, and we 

actually sent our counsel’s office up to testify in front of the committee about this. This is something that is getting the Secretary’s 

personal attention. We have established this goal for a 45-day turnaround. 

But I think, as you find in a lot of DOT programs, you know, we 

talk about 1 DOT but we really actually have 10 independent operating administrations. And so we have a great variability in how 

they have been handling things. So that is part of what we are trying to do, is impose a little bit more structure on everybody, so 

there is consistency. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. The gentleman’s time has expired. Mr. 

Holden? 

Mr. HOLDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Kienitz, it is 

good to see you again. 

In 2005 in SAFETEA–LU, Congress enacted a $1.7 billion program somewhat similar to the stimulus program, the TIGER grant 

program, called the Projects of National and Regional Significance 

program. Unlike the TIGER grant program, however, all the 

projects that were awarded funding in the PNRS program were selected by Congress through earmarks. Could you compare these 

two programs, and tell us how the two programs have done so far 

in getting their funds obligated? And could you also compare the 

transparency of the two programs, and tell us how much information was provided by Congress on why specific projects were selected? 

Mr. KIENITZ. As to the obligation rate, I think I can talk about 

that. A number of those programs from SAFETEA–LU, the regional and national significance, zero funds have been outlaid because the direction to fund a specific project was put in for a 

project that ended up not being viable or not being ready, for whatever reason. 

So, I think after 6 years, the obligation rate is in the 50 to 60 

percent range for that program. In 2 years, the TIGER grant program, we have obligated, I think, 99 percent of that money. 

That is because one of the levels of staff review that we do is a 

fairly intense scrub of the readiness of the project, such that we got 

submissions for a bunch of projects that were interesting and valuable and not ready, and basically mostly we did not select them, 

not because they were not valuable, but because they were not 

ready. 

On the question of transparency, I know that our process is intensely transparent, and a huge amount of effort has gone into 

that, and we have accepted the critiques that we have gotten on 

that point, and are trying to improve. I think you all know more 

about the process of selecting earmarks than I do, so I will just 

leave it at that. 

Mr. HOLDEN. Well, we happen to like them. At least I do. 

36 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. HOLDEN. I believe in your opening statement—I hate to have 

you repeat it; this hearing has been going on for a while—but you 

talked about the GAO report, particularly on intercity passenger 

rail, when the report referred to ‘‘good grantmaking practices.’’ I 

believe you mentioned how often GAO uses that term, ‘‘good.’’ What 

percentage—— 

Mr. KIENITZ. Yes, it is 14 times out of 169,000 individual opinions. So it is a rarity. 

Mr. HOLDEN. Very, very rare. 

Mr. KIENITZ. Let’s just say that. 

Mr. HOLDEN. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. KIENITZ. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. MICA. Other Members seek recognition? Mr. Capuano? 

Mr. CAPUANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To begin, on the highspeed rail, I want to echo the chairman’s comments. But I would 

suggest very strongly that one of the reasons we do not have real 

high-speed rail in this country is because you get too many projects 

going on. Pick one, make it work, and others will desire it. Simple. 

Stop trying to create 50 different projects, half of which will never 

work, and you will make a lot more progress, just like we did with 

subways. Years ago, nobody—— 

Mr. MICA. Would the gentleman yield? Could I associate myself 

with the remarks of the gentleman? Just for the record, so we insert right there that I associate—— 

Mr. CAPUANO. Well, that is—I am just following up on—— 

Mr. MICA. Thank you, yield back. 

Mr. CAPUANO [continuing]. Your comments, Mr. Chairman. 

I guess, first of all, does anybody here know who the genius was 

that, after a year-and-a-half of me and my friends getting the living heck beat out of us because of a stimulus, some genius decided 

to stop calling it stimulus and call it ARRA? Are any of you the 

geniuses? Because if you are, we are going to have a problem. 

Mr. KIENITZ. I am a genius, but I am not that genius. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Good. Thank you for that one. And, Mr. Elkins, I 

just want to congratulate you. You actually used the word ‘‘stimulus’’ in your title. Thank you for that, because I kind of figure if 

I am going to take the grief for something, when it starts working 

people should know where it comes from. And I will tell you nobody 

knows. 

And I would ask any of you. When we were debating stimulus, 

did any of you call it ARRA? 

[No response.] 

Mr. CAPUANO. You got that directive after the fact. If you find 

the genius who changed the terminology, please let me know. 

I would like to ask the members up here. Any of you have permanent jobs? 

Mr. KIENITZ. So far. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Is it permanent? 

Mr. KIENITZ. Oh, no. It is at the pleasure of the President, actually. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Anybody here have a permanent job? Anybody in 

the audience have a permanent job? 

[No response.] 

37 

Mr. CAPUANO. I have the closest to permanent. I am here until 

next January or—if the voters do not decide to change me after 

that. So there is no such thing as a permanent job, that I am aware 

of. If there is, I do not know anybody who has one. The concept of 

creating a job is always temporary, always temporary. 

And Secretary Kienitz—you are the only one, I think, to use 

numbers—280,000 job years of work. What the hell is a job year? 

Mr. KIENITZ. What we are trying to do is, rather than count individual people—some have worked 1 hour and some have worked 

every hour of every year—— 

Mr. CAPUANO. But you do realize that nobody has a clue what 

you are talking about. 

Mr. KIENITZ. Right. And I can explain—— 

Mr. CAPUANO. When I go home and I say ‘‘job years,’’ they look 

at me like I have three heads. How many jobs did we create in the 

Department of Transportation through the stimulus? 

Mr. KIENITZ. In the third quarter of last year there were 65,000 

people at work on stimulus projects. But the number of areas depended on which month—— 

Mr. CAPUANO. Yes, I understand the number of areas. I am looking to be—a legitimate answer—when I get asked at home, ‘‘How 

many jobs did we create with the stimulus?’’ you are going to tell 

me 65,000 is a fair number? 

Mr. KIENITZ. That was the number in the fall, correct. In the 

summer, the number tends to be higher. In the winter, it tends to 

be lower. 

Mr. CAPUANO. So if I say 75,000 jobs, that is a reasonable number—— 

Mr. KIENITZ. Sure. 

Mr. CAPUANO [continuing]. That would be hard to debate? 

Mr. KIENITZ. I think so. I don’t know. These guys might—— 

Mr. CAPUANO. Does everybody agree with that general number? 

Mr. HERR. We also have some data in our testimony, too, that 

shows the quarterly variation. It is in that ballpark, 50,000 to 

75,000—— 

Mr. CAPUANO. In that ballpark. And that is just DOT. Does that 

include EPA and others, or just DOT? 

Mr. ELKINS. We have not done work in that area, so I really 

couldn’t—— 

Mr. CAPUANO. So it is an absolutely minimum of 75,000 jobs, and 

that is only on 7 percent of the stimulus. 

Mr. KIENITZ. Right, and that is only the direct actual people employed, rather than the follow-on—— 

Mr. CAPUANO. I understand. 

Mr. KIENITZ. Yes. 

Mr. CAPUANO. So—but again, I am trying to come up with something that we can absolutely agree on. Not looking for debate. 

So—and everybody here—as I heard the testimony, everybody 

here pretty much said that there is very little or virtually no waste, 

fraud, and abuse in the monies out there. Did I hear this correctly? 

[No response.] 

Mr. CAPUANO. There is very little waste, fraud, and abuse in the 

whole program, is that a fair—— 

38 

Mr. SCOVEL. So far. Sir, I would not characterize it as very little. 

I would say surprisingly—I surprising low level. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Surprising? 

Mr. SCOVEL. Yes. 

Mr. CAPUANO. Surprising is not necessarily, my term, and objective term. 

Mr. SCOVEL. It is not. 

Mr. CAPUANO. It is either a lot or not a lot. 

Mr. SCOVEL. Right. 

Mr. CAPUANO. And it is not a lot. 

Mr. SCOVEL. It is not a lot. 

Mr. CAPUANO. You may be surprised by that, but somehow I am 

not. 

Mr. SCOVEL. I am. 

Mr. CAPUANO. So that we have a program that is only 7 percent 

of the total expenditures that created a minimum of 75,000 jobs 

with very little waste, fraud, and abuse. Does anybody here not call 

a program with that record an incredible success? Maybe even a 

surprising success? I would call that a massive success, one that 

I am proud to have been associated with, one that I am proud to 

have voted for, one that I am proud to have voted for. So, with all 

the grief that we took for a year-and-a-half on the stimulus, turned 

out pretty good. With some bumps, but pretty good. 

I just want to make sure I heard all this testimony the same, because we talk a lot in terms that the average American—and that 

includes me—have a hard time following. I do not think I have a 

hard time following that. We created a lot of jobs. We ended up 

with infrastructure improvements that will help the economy in a 

long-term situation. We made life in this country better, and we 

did it with very little waste, fraud, and abuse. 

Thank you, gentlemen. I am very proud to have voted for this 

bill. I yield back. 

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman. Other Members seek recognition? Mr. Southerland? 

Mr. SOUTHERLAND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As far as the—I 

am curious on the jobs issue. How many—and I just—I am asking 

for clarification. I know you just were asked the number of jobs in 

the Department. I think you said 65,000. 

Mr. KIENITZ. That was in the fall. 

Mr. SOUTHERLAND. In the fall. Were those added jobs to DOT to 

oversee the stimulus projects, or were those existing jobs that were 

already there that were given oversight over the stimulus funds? 

Mr. KIENITZ. No, these are actually people working at construction sites on transportation projects, building them. 

Mr. SOUTHERLAND. OK. So those were both private and Federal—— 

Mr. KIENITZ. Almost—99 percent private sector. This is all bid 

out to the private sector. 

Mr. SOUTHERLAND. OK. As far as the—how many—so, obviously, 

we do not know those jobs, since they are private sector—we have 

no idea whether those jobs are obviously going to exist after the 

stimulus dollars—— 

Mr. KIENITZ. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. 

39 

Mr. SOUTHERLAND. OK. I am just curious. How do you—what 

have we learned here—and I wasn’t here, I know I just arrived 

about 20, 30 minutes ago—what is the greatest—where did the 

American people get the biggest bang for their buck? 

And I know that is a very difficult question, because you addressed how each State made their own decisions on—and I like 

that very much, I think you are the best ones positioned to do that. 

Just real quick, though, I mean when you look back over your 

career, you know, when you are retired and you say, ‘‘Hey, let’s 

talk about the stimulus dollars,’’ what did we do great? 

Mr. KIENITZ. I will answer it and then the gentleman can answer. I think for transportation, the most obvious lasting legacy of 

the stimulus will be improved road and pavement condition. 

Mr. SOUTHERLAND. OK. 

Mr. KIENITZ. And that is something that we track according to 

an international standard about tracking pavement conditions. You 

are supposed to replace pavement surface every 7 years and 

underlayment every 15 years, according to a schedule that is well 

known by engineers. 

And, for much of the last 40 or 50 years we just do not do that 

on the schedule that we should, and that is why roads are in bad 

shape. And we just got a huge amount of backlog out of the system. 

And that is all stuff that in 7 years from now and 15 years from 

now is all going to have to be done again, because that is the way 

it works. But at least for this upcoming period, that stuff is going 

to be in way better shape. 

And on the transit side, 12,000 new buses to replace 15- and 20- 

year-old buses that break down all the time and have to be fixed, 

that is going to be a big legacy. 

Mr. HERR. I think it is a very fair question, and it is something 

that we have recommended the DOT take steps to do, to provide 

an assessment that looks across the $48 billion. I think that timeframe is going to come up in about a year or so. As Mr. Kienitz 

mentioned, certainly with regard to pavement, buses, things of that 

nature. We have laid out what some of those are at this point. 

At some point you can also look at bridge rehabilitation as well, 

and there are databases that would allow someone to look back and 

determine whether a structurally deficient bridge was improved or 

if a bridge that needed to be repaired that was in a queue has been 

repaired. So there is an opportunity to do that, and we certainly 

encourage the Department to take that step, too. 

Mr. SOUTHERLAND. I know, because time is precious, let me ask 

my follow-up question for those who did not get a chance at that 

one. 

When you are retired and you are back and you are looking back 

over the stimulus dollars and the last 2 years, where will you be 

honest and say, ‘‘Man, the American people got the shaft on this 

one’’? 

[No response.] 

Mr. SOUTHERLAND. I mean—and that is not a leading question, 

I am just being fair. I have asked you where our successes were, 

and I think it is fair—I am a small business owner, OK? To say 

that, hey, you know, the—I mean what did we learn? 

40 

Mr. TRIMBLE. I mean, from our perspective, the work we did 

early on, in terms of providing oversight on the process, I think it 

did a lot to prevent any sort of disaster stories from happening. We 

and the IGs have been out there making sort of day-to-day or bimonthly reports on this issue to try to improve the oversight. So 

I do not think we have seen those kind of sort of big derailments 

of the process. 

Mr. HERR. As you think about things like this in the future, 

there is a tension between doing things quickly, getting half the 

money obligated in 120 days and the other half within a year—— 

Mr. SOUTHERLAND. Right. 

Mr. HERR. And then coming back later and asking, ‘‘How many 

big ticket projects got underway?’’ There are trade-offs in that respect. 

Mr. SCOVEL. Sir, if I may cite one point. 

Mr. SOUTHERLAND. Sure. 

Mr. SCOVEL. And this is a question mark that we have, and it 

remains over the next number of years to be resolved. But it has 

to do with high-speed rail. 

Our statement points out that FRA has not yet issued detailed 

guidance for forecasting processes that would help determine sustainability and sustained award decisions. Neither has FRA yet 

issued guidance on core management responsibilities to provide the 

oversight that only the agency can do. 

At the end of the process, if that is not a success, then high-speed 

rail may well be marked a deficiency in the eyes of the American 

public—— 

Mr. SOUTHERLAND. Well, and I think this. You know, I tell people 

that everything I learned to be a Member of Congress I learned in 

our home by the age of 10. It is really not complicated, OK? My 

father would make sure that we, as children—that he gave us a little bit before he gave us a whole lot. He wanted us to mess up with 

just a little bit before we messed up with a whole lot. That is good 

parenting. Now that we perpetuate our family’s 60-year business, 

it is good that that principle is followed. 

The only thing that I can look—when we talk about high-speed 

rail, what is the definition of a little bit before we bite off a lot? 

I would say Amtrak. How have we managed? For every dollar of 

revenue that we sell and that we generate, we generate $2 in expenses. My father would have a little meeting of the minds if, at 

the age of 10, I wasted $2 for every dollar he gave me. And he 

would stop and say, ‘‘You know what, son? This was $5 here. I am 

not about to give you $50.’’ Let’s understand the process. 

You know, we talked to America that this is complicated up here. 

I have to tell you it is not. I go back to the lessons of my youth. 

And thankfully, at the end of the week, I get to thank my parents 

for the lessons that they gave me as a child in their home. I hope 

that you—because you are decisionmakers, and your decisions affect hundreds upon hundreds of thousands—millions of people, we 

must prove able with a little bit before we force the American people to give us a lot. 

I would say, over the stimulus, how many times did we feed a 

man a fish, where what we really should have done is taught that 

41 

man how to fish, because we have then taken care of him for the 

rest of his life? 

I know this was a difficult challenge. But unless we say, ‘‘Where 

did we screw up, what do we know, what have we learned, and 

what are our options going forward,’’ I would say you have got to 

spend your time focusing on where did the American people not get 

their biggest bang for their buck. If we claimed we were going to 

freeze unemployment at 8 percent and we jumped to 20—I mean 

jumped to 10, excuse me—we got to 10, what should we have done 

to prevent that? 

I am not accusing anyone. I am saying that you gentlemen are 

in the position—the American people demand and deserve us answering those questions. So thank you for testifying today. Mr. 

Chair, I yield back. 

Mr. MICA. Thank the gentleman. 

Mr. SOUTHERLAND. I probably exceeded my 5 minutes; I apologize. 

Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman for his questions. And any others seek recognition? 

[No response.] 

Mr. MICA. If not, let me just conclude this hearing by saying that 

I have tried to follow up again, I think, in a responsible oversight 

manner. Mr. Oberstar, the former chair, and myself had committed 

to do this. For the most part, the funds that were spent, we have 

had a partial success story. 

My concern has been that we did not put even more money into 

infrastructure, get it out faster and put more people to work, rather than paying unemployment benefits for social programs, for artificial subsidization of a whole host of things that turned out to be— 

and the best possible description would be a total failure. We did 

put some people to work, and not enough people. There are not permanent jobs for anyone, but we can do longer term jobs, and we 

can also wisely invest the limited tax dollars that we have available. 

Unfortunately, the stimulus dollars too—every dollar we spent, 

42¢ was borrowed money, and at a very expensive premium for the 

future. 

So, I am disappointed overall in the stimulus, again, $787 billion. 

We have tried to be good stewards over the limited amount—some 

$48 billion in the Department of Transportation, and some $63 billion total. I would like to continue our discussion of the expenditure 

of the money, particularly in the rail area. 

We do need a successful program in this country of high-speed 

rail. I associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman from 

Massachusetts, Mr. Capuano, that we should focus—we have a corridor that we own that is a national asset, an asset to Amtrak, and 

would be the perfect model for us, and have the highest value of 

return for the entire Nation. 

What’s a guy from Florida saying, ‘‘Put the money in the Northeast Corridor’’ for? Because 75 percent of the chronically delayed 

flights in the Nation start from the Northeast Corridor, because we 

have the fixed transit systems to interconnect like they did in Europe, which I don’t have in Florida. Orlando still doesn’t have any 

42 

fixed transit, Tampa does not. And trying to make that work is not 

going to happen. 

And now we face the same thing with the California project between Bakersfield and Fresno, neither, again, that have the population or the transit systems to connect into. And I know you start 

with a small segment, but what we need is a successful segment. 

And we have a corridor in which that can happen. So I look forward to working with the members of this panel, with the administration, Secretary LaHood, with the Vice President and the President to try to have a success, not a failure, in that regard. 

I appreciate, again, the work of the inspectors general, the General Accountability Office, and the under secretary for policy of the 

Department of Transportation. We will have additional questions 

which we will submit and be made part of the record, and we will 

leave the record open for a period of 2 weeks to request that information, also receive answers. 

There being no further business today before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, this meeting is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:12 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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