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55–031 PDF 2010

RECOVERY ACT: 

ONE-YEAR PROGRESS REPORT FOR 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENTS 

(111–88) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

February 23, 2010 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 

( 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia, Vice 

Chair 

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 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

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 

MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

LAURA A. RICHARDSON, California 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas 

PHIL HARE, Illinois 

JOHN A. BOCCIERI, Ohio 

MARK H. SCHAUER, Michigan 

BETSY MARKEY, Colorado 

MICHAEL E. MCMAHON, New York 

THOMAS S. P. PERRIELLO, Virginia 

DINA TITUS, Nevada 

HARRY TEAGUE, New Mexico 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

VACANCY 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio 

BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky 

ANH ‘‘JOSEPH’’ CAO, Louisiana 

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois 

PETE OLSON, Texas 

(II) 

(III) 

CONTENTS Page 

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... v 

TESTIMONY 

Carper, Tom C., Chairman of the Board, Amtrak ................................................ 06 

Darcy, Jo-Ellen, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, U.S. Army 

Corps of Engineers ............................................................................................... 06 

Fernandez, John, Assistant Secretary for Economic Development, U.S. Department of Commerce ........................................................................................ 06 

Hooks, Craig E., Assistant Administrator for Administration and Resources 

Management, EnvironmentalProtection Agency ............................................... 06 

Peck, Robert A., Commissioner of Public Buildings, Government Services 

Administration ..................................................................................................... 06 

Porcari, Hon. John D., Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Transportation . 06 

Rajk, Martin J., Deputy Assistant Commandant for Resources and Deputy 

Chief Financial Officer, U.S. Coast Guard ......................................................... 06 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Cohen, Hon. Steve, of Tennessee ............................................................................ 80 

Johnson, Hon. Eddie Bernice, of Texas .................................................................. 81 

Mitchell, Hon. Harry E., of Arizona ....................................................................... 88 

Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota ................................................................. 89 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Carper, Tom C. ........................................................................................................ 95 

Darcy, Jo-Ellen ......................................................................................................... 100 

Fernandez, John ...................................................................................................... 106 

Hooks, Craig E. ........................................................................................................ 113 

Peck, Robert A. ........................................................................................................ 124 

Porcari, Hon. John D. .............................................................................................. 147 

Rajk, Martin J. ......................................................................................................... 162 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Majority Staff: .....................

Report entitled, ‘‘The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 

Transportation and Infrastructure Provisions Implementation Satus 

as of January 15, 2010’’ ............................................................................ xviii 

Graph entitled, ‘‘T&I Committee Transparency and Accountability Information by State and Formula Funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5) (Recovery Act) Submissions Received by T&I Committee (Data Reported as of Deember 

31, 2009)’’ ...................................................................................................lxxxvii 

Chart entitled, ‘‘T&I Committee Transparency and Accountability Information by State under the American Recovery and Reinvestment 

Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5) (Recovery Act) Submissions Received by 

T&I Committee (Data Reported as of Deember 31, 2009) Percentage 

of Allocated Funds Associcated with Project Stages, Highways and 

Bridges’’ ...................................................................................................... xciv 

Chart entitled, ‘‘T&I Committee Transparency and Accountability Information by State under the American Recovery and Reinvestment 

Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5) (Recovery Act) Submissions Received by 

T&I Committee (Data Reported as of Deember 31, 2009) Percentage 

of Allocated Funds Associcated with Project Stages, Clean Water 

State Revolving Fund’’ .............................................................................. xcv 

Page

IV 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Majority Staff—Continued 

Chart entitled, ‘‘Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure the 

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5) (Recovery Act) MILES IMPROVED by Recovery Act Highway and 

Bridge Funds’’ ............................................................................................ xcvi 

Chart entitled, ‘‘Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure the 

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5) (Recovery Act) BRIDGES IMPROVED by Recovery Act Highway and 

Bridge Funds’’ ............................................................................................ xcvii 

Hooks, Craig E., Assistant Administrator for Administration and Resources 

Management, EnvironmentalProtection Agency: ..............................................

Response to request for information from Rep. Oberstar, a Representative in Congress from the State of Minnesota: .......................................

Regarding combined sewage overflow ..................................................... 60 

Regarding non point source and Superfund projects ............................. 63 

Mica, Rep. John L., a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida: ...

‘‘American Recovery and Reinvestment Act High-Speed and Intercity 

Passenger Rail Grants -- announced January 28, 2010 ......................... 23 

‘‘TIGER Grant Distribution,’’ chart ............................................................. 20 

‘‘TIGER Grant Distribution State with Highest Unemployment,’’chart .. 21 

Peck, Robert A., Commissioner of Public Buildings, Government Services 

Administration: ....................................................................................................

Response to request for information from Rep. Oberstar, a Representative in Congress from the State of Minnesota ........................................ 69 

Responses to questions from Rep. Mica, a Representative in Congress 

from the State of Florida .......................................................................... 142 

Porcari, Hon. John D., Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Transportation: 

Response to request for information from Rep. Mica, a Representative 

in Congress from the State of Florida ..................................................... 156 

Responses to questions from Rep. Richardson, a Representative in Congress from the State of California ............................................................ 42 

ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD 

Federal Emergency Management Administration, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Timothy W. Manning, Deputy Administrator Protection and 

National Preparedness, written testimony ........................................................ 168 

International Boundary and Water Commission, Edward Drusina, United 

States Commissioner, written testimony ........................................................... 173 

Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 

Dave White, Chief, written testimony ................................................................ 179 

Smithsonian Institution, Dr. Wayne Clough, Secretary, written testimony ...... 175 

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(1) 

RECOVERY ACT: ONE-YEAR PROGRESS REPORT FOR TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENTS 

Tuesday, February 23, 2010 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, WASHINGTON, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in Room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. James Oberstar [chairman of the Committee] presiding. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. The Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure will come to order. 

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating in this 

reconvened meeting, snow-delayed meeting of the Committee on 

Transportation. I made it in; I don’t know about the rest of the 

world. But nothing else did. And if we had all had snowmobiles, 

as self-respecting people in Minnesota do—the ice is 30 inches 

thick on Leech Lake, where this past weekend they held the 

Eelpout Festival and had some 20,000 people in town to do ice fishing. 

Mr. Mica, that probably doesn’t happen in your district. 

Mr. MICA. Almost. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. This is to be and it will be, was to have been last 

week and it is now, the 1-year anniversary review of progress made 

under this Committee’s portions of the Recovery Act. This is the 

14th in a series of hearings we have held on progress made under 

the stimulus. 

The act has resulted in 10,348 highway, transit, and wastewater 

projects, breaking ground all across the country. Although they had 

a slow start at EPA because of various complexities of the rulemakings that needed to be done, every stimulus dollar allocated to 

EPA into the State revolving loan funds is now under contract. And 

that is a great achievement. 

These 10,348 projects have created, sustained 300,000 direct onproject jobs. I have been to at least 5 States, 6 States, to see those 

projects in progress. Total employment from highway, transit, 

wastewater treatment, direct—and those jobs that are in the supply chain, supplying sand and gravel and aggregate and cement 

and Ready Mix and asphalt and rebar and fencing and fence posts 

and I-beams, have resulted in over 938,000 jobs. 

Those are jobs this Committee has tabulated and calculated and 

can account for. I don’t speak for the other Committees, but we 

have 15 categories of reporting, and all available on the Committee 

website. You can track these projects down to the millions of hours 

2 

worked, the job hours created, sustained, and total payroll of job 

hours created. So this is what I promised to do, it is what I said 

would be done, and it has been accomplished. On those direct on-site jobs, payroll: $1.5 billion. Federal taxes paid by those workers who are on the job: $310 million. Unemployment compensation checks avoided: $254 million. Those are real accomplishments. Those translate into lives restored, home mortgages being paid, kids being sent to school, health insurance. Most 

of those union jobs are reinstated and restored. 

But we need to go on from there. We need to pass the additional ′′Jobs for Main Street′′ bill. The House has passed it. The Senate 

is slowly making its way, not to be derogatory—slowly making its 

way, painfully, toward resolution of that issue. And we need the 

long-term, 6-year surface transportation bill that we have been 

working on in this Committee. Now, the $64.1 billion attributed to our Committee, our Committee’s jurisdiction, we can account for 16,692 projects, totaling $56 

billion. Federal agencies, States, and partners have obligated $42.3 

billion of that for 16,000 projects. 

And while there is some misunderstanding and misapprehension 

in the news reporting on transportation infrastructure and transportation stimulus dollars, the jobs precede the outlays. States 

award the bids; contractors begin putting their equipment and 

their personnel on the job site. After the first week of work, they 

send a voucher to the State DOT. The State DOT verifies that the 

work claimed has been accomplished, pays the contractor, vouchers 

the Federal Highway Administration, who then makes a reimbursement electronically overnight. So the jobs have already been 

in place for a week before there is actually an outlay. And that is 

a great misunderstanding. I have to explain that time and again 

to the news folk. 

All 50 States and the District of Columbia have signed contracts 

for 10,592 projects. Work has begun on 9,241 projects. Work completed on 3,148 projects. $2.9 billion in 45 States and the District 

of Columbia. 

Recovery Act investments are bringing the Nation’s highway, 

bridge, and public transit systems closer to a state of good repair— 

that is, cutting down the number of projects in States’ portfolios of 

state-of-good-repair needs, to bring road surfaces, bridge surfaces, 

transit systems into compliance with this engineering standard of 

′′state of good repair.′′ 

And in completing this work, States can account for 24,000 miles 

of road surface improvements. That is nearly half of the mileage 

of the Interstate Highway System. Over 1,100 bridge replacement, 

redecking, resurfacing, reconditioning, widening—that is an extraordinary accomplishment. It took 50 years to do the interstate; 

it has taken a year to do 24,000 miles of road surface. 

And the Federal Transit Administration reports that the investment funding we provided them will, when completed, result in 

purchase or rehab of 10,561 vehicles, 613 railcars or locomotives, 

and rehab of 2,325 passenger and 202 maintenance facilities. Amtrak: 141 projects, 80,000 concrete ties, 60 cars, 21 superliners, 15 

locomotives, 270 station improvements. FAA has nearly completed 

all of its—it is 92 percent out: 649 projects, $1.2 billion, 155 runVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:46 Jul 20, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00100 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\55031.0 KAYLA
3 

way improvement projects, 139 airports that account for 11 million 

operations a year, and 82 taxiway improvements at 78 airports 

that handle 8 million annual takeoffs and landings. 

The State revolving loan fund I have already cited has 1,800 

projects out to bid. Wastewater infrastructure will result in 375 

projects, 60 million people, almost a third of the U.S. population 

that is now served by sewer distribution systems. EPA has awarded $582 million for 57 Superfund projects. The 

Superfund was delayed for 10 years without reauthorization of the 

Superfund Act, and the fund was running close to zero. But we 

have been able, with stimulus funds, to do 57 Superfund projects, 

on which work is either under way or completed already, at $443 

million. 

The Corps of Engineers has 772 projects, $2.8 billion. The GSA 

will report on theirs. I won’t go through the rest of them. 

I do want to say EDA has done a superb job. All their meager $147 million—it was a lot more than that when it left the House, 

nearly $4 billion, but it was whittled down, unfortunately, in conference—but that money is all out. And not only is it doing construction projects in industrial parks, but it has launched longterm investments in job-creating industries that are operating in 

those industrial parks. 

And, Secretary Fernandez, you were with me in Nashua just recently, last week. It wasn’t a Recovery Act project, but it was a 

long-reviewed EDA project that will result in developing the first 

steel mill in the iron ore mining country in the United States. 

American steel, Mr. Holden, American steel. Next to an American 

iron ore mine, with American workers and American jobs. 

So I think this is a very successful report, a very successful year. 

Much more to be done. And while I mentioned the 24,000 lane 

miles of highway improvement, that accounts for 4 percent of the 

576,000 miles of highway in America and of the Federal highway 

system that is rated not good, in poor condition. We have a long 

way to go. That is why we need the 6-year bill. 

And now, Mr. Mica, my partner, thank you for being here, and 

the floor is yours. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. Thank you for the almost ride this morning, too, even though I didn’t want you to pick me up. 

Well, I think the Chairman has outlaid some of those facts and 

statistics that need to be cited on a positive vein, and I do think 

that there has been some progress made in the last year. We are 

a little over a year out now, and a few days. 

And I also commend him for the bipartisan manner in which we 

both committed to conduct oversight. And I think we have definitely followed through with being responsible stewards of taxpayer 

dollars. 

My father has been dead this year 38 years, but it is funny: Even 

though somebody is long passed, in your memory you have some 

haunting, oh, phrases and things, philosophies that they left you 

with. I remember my father was very frugal. Some people may also 

accuse me of the same trait. But he used to say, ′′Son, it is not how 

much you spend, it is how you spend it.′′ And not only do we have 

an obligation to report back on some of the positive things—and I 

do have to commend some of the agencies. Even the EPA is workVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:46 Jul 20, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00101 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\55031.0 KAYLA
4 

ing hard to get the money out. EDA has a very good record in 

leveraging a small amount of money, around $4,000, and actually 

creating jobs, and I commend them. They got one of the smallest 

amount and have probably done one of the biggest, at least percentage, of creating jobs with a small amount of money. So I commend them. 

Overall, we have to do a better job. Mr. Oberstar and I were try- ing for a number double the $63.5 billion for infrastructure that 

was in the $787 billion bill. I was just recounting how we came 

back, was it in December or something, and were asked to put a 

package together, and then it got whittled down to the $63.5 billion. 

Unfortunately, the total spent today—and that is $10.1 billion— 

is only 16 percent. That is expended. So we can do better there. We 

still have $20 billion—right on the target of $20 billion on infrastructure not allocated, which is still a pretty high number when, 

this week, they will probably be asking for more. And I have no 

problem with putting more into job creation. But we want that to 

happen. We have to spend what we have been charged with to 

date. So, some good, positive news. Now, DOT got $48.1 billion. Unfortunately, so far only $9 billion has gotten out and $35.6 billion allocated. So we have to assist and 

find ways to get money for infrastructure projects, even in the 

areas we tightly oversee, out faster. 

I do have concerns also, and I will get into it with some of the 

witnesses in a few minutes, about how some of the stimulus money 

was expended. Our job is also to be good stewards, as I said, of taxpayer dollars and how those dollars were spent and were they 

spent—I mean, anybody can spend money, and it not how many 

dollars you spend, it is how effective. Our target was, I thought, to 

help the American people, to recover the economy, help create jobs, 

and get this country back to a sound economic footing. And then 

most of the other problems, sort of, would fall into line. So I am 

committed to that. I do have some very serious questions about 

how some of the money was spent by some of the agencies, and we 

will get into more detail as we hear from the witnesses. 

So, with those opening comments, I yield back. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I thank the gentleman. I thank my colleague and 

my partner in this endeavor of the Committee. 

And Mr. Mica was right, we had a bipartisan agreement in this 

Committee in December of 2008. We actually had it in December 

of 2007 and through much of the year. But when the Committee’s 

work got swallowed up in a much bigger package and our work was 

diminished both in size and in comparison, we had some falloff, understandably. 

Mr. MICA. And, for the record, I might say that we also had 

agreement on a 6-year reauthorization bill and were prepared to 

move forward with that and met in a bipartisan, bicameral fashion 

to move forward, and other factors intervened. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Until we ran into the can-do, change-you-can-believe-in administration that didn’t believe in it. 

Mr. MICA. Well, we—— 

Mr. OBERSTAR. You don’t have to say that. I did. 

Mr. MICA. There is always hope for change. Thank you. 

5 

Mr. OBERSTAR. It is coming. 

Under previous agreement, we have 2 minutes for Subcommittee 

Chairs or Ranking Members. 

Ms. Johnson, welcome, despite your new neckwear. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. It will be off soon. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. It will be off soon. That is good news. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thursday. It has been on since January 

the 4th. I am truly tired of my partner. 

Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, thank you for holding this 

hearing today and for continuing your steadfast commitment to 

holding States accountable for the disbursal of stimulus funds. 

Over the past year, this Committee has again and again held 

hearings on the status of Recovery Act funds and, as appropriate, 

have praised and criticized the efforts of both Federal and State 

agencies in getting funds out the door to the American people. And 

this is different because today we have the opportunity to challenge 

those agencies and States that have been slow to turn this unprecedented Federal investment into good-paying jobs, such as my State 

of Texas that is unique and slow. 

Through this Committee’s periodic reporting, I was concerned to 

again find my home State of Texas near the bottom of the allocation charts through the month of December. So, naturally, I contacted the State department of transportation and the Texas Water 

Development Board to find out why they appear to be slower at 

getting their stimulus dollars distributed than most other States. 

And the State department of transportation has assured me that 

all their stimulus funds will be obligated by the March 1st statutory deadline. 

And the State further maintained that, while they may have 

been one of the fastest States in obligating funds, it is in part because they agreed on a definitive set of criteria for evaluating the 

ability projects to receive the funds. And the criteria included 

projects that improve safety of transportation systems, projects on 

corridors of statewide significance or regional priority, projects that 

leverage or pool resources projects that create long-term economic 

benefit, projects in areas that are economically distressed, and, finally, fair and equitable distribution of the projects around the 

State. 

Texas is a very large State. It has nearly 500 Recovery Act 

projects, over five times as many as some smaller States. And some 

of these are large-scale projects for which expenditures will be paid 

out over a time to provide long-term and sustained jobs. 

So I noted earlier, I believe it is also appropriate to praise our 

agencies and States for their efforts, as well. And so today I commend the Environmental Protection Agency and the States for 

their efforts with the Clean Water State Revolving Fund and investment in our Nation’s wastewater infrastructure. 

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this leadership. And I will ask 

the rest of my statement be placed in the record. Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Without objection, so ordered. 

And we welcome you back and pray for a speedy recovery. Thank 

you. 

We will proceed now with our panel. 

6 

The Chair will just make a reminder for Members and for audience that it is the rule of the Committee that there be no audible 

cell phone or BlackBerry devices in the course of Committee hearings. It is a rule rigorously and frequently insisted on by Mr. 

Young and Mr. Shuster and myself. 

Now we will begin with Mr. Porcari, who is the Deputy Secretary 

of Transportation. We have also Craig Hooks, Assistant Administrator for EPA. Administrator Lisa Jackson is testifying, as we 

speak, at the budget hearing in the other body. And Secretary 

LaHood also asked to be—he would have been here but for the 

snow delay, and he had a commitment also with the budget in the 

other body. 

Mr. Robert Peck, commissioner of public buildings at GSA; JoEllen Darcy, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works; John 

Fernandez, Assistant Secretary for Economic Development; Martin 

Rajk, Deputy Assistant Commandant for the Coast Guard; and 

Tom Carper, chairman of the board of Amtrak. 

So, Mr. Porcari, we will begin with you. Welcome. Thank you for 

being here. 

STATEMENTS OF THE HON. JOHN D. PORCARI, DEPUTY SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; CRAIG E. 

HOOKS, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR FOR ADMINISTRATION 

AND RESOURCES MANAGEMENT, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY; ROBERT A. PECK, COMMISSIONER OF PUBLIC 

BUILDINGS, GOVERNMENT SERVICES ADMINISTRATION; JOELLEN DARCY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE ARMY FOR 

CIVIL WORKS, U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS; JOHN 

FERNANDEZ, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE; MARTIN J. 

RAJK, DEPUTY ASSISTANT COMMANDANT FOR RESOURCES 

AND DEPUTY CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, U.S. COAST 

GUARD; TOM C. CARPER, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, AMTRAK 

Mr. PORCARI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Mica, 

and Members of the Committee. Thanks for having me here today. 

It is great to be here to talk about the Department of Transportation’s accomplishments at this 1-year anniversary of the Recovery 

and Reinvestment Act. 

As you know, February 17th was that anniversary. We have accomplished much. I will tell you that we have met every single 

deadline, and we intend to continue doing so. 

Overall, the Recovery Act provided $48.1 billion for transportation projects for our Nation’s highways and bridges, transit systems, airports, railways, and shipyards. To date, we have obligated 

$36 billion. That is for more than 13,600 projects around the country. 

This is substantial progress in a relatively short amount of time. 

And it was made possible in our transportation program because 

of the Recovery Act’s reliance on DOT’s existing formula-based 

structures and authorities and procedures. 

The single largest portion of it, $27.5 billion, was targeted at improving highways and bridges. More than 2,160 projects have already been completed, and over 7,600 are currently under way. 

7 

These projects represent more than just infrastructure improvements. These projects are helping communities throughout the Nation. Already, the Federal Highway Administration has funded 

$722 million in contractor payroll payments from Recovery Act 

projects. On the transit side, the Recovery Act provided $8.4 billion to be 

used for our transit systems. During the past year, the Federal 

Transit Administration has approved the purchase of more than 

11,000 bus and rail vehicles. These purchases support domestic 

manufacturing jobs right here in America. 

The Recovery Act also provided the Federal Aviation Administra- tion with a total of $1.3 billion in additional resources for badly 

needed improvements at our Nation’s airports. The majority of 

these funds, $1.1 billion of the $1.3 billion, were designated as airport improvement grants. Over the past year, we have awarded 

100 percent of the funds for those, for a total of 360 projects. And 

I would point out, we originally thought that we could fund 300 

projects, but because of the good bids, we were able to fund 360 at 

344 different airport locations. Together, these efforts have resulted 

in approximately 6,000 jobs on the aviation side. 

On rail, all the contributions have resulted in jobs, as well. The 

high-speed rail capability is one of the most exciting portions of the 

Recovery Act for us. That $8 billion provided to the Federal Railroad Administration is a substantial downpayment on a large highspeed rail corridor network across the country. And the 13 corridors that were identified in this first round are a very strong beginning for a high-speed rail network throughout the country. 

We also had discretionary TIGER grants as part of this new spending. Last week, we awarded the recipients of $1.5 billion 

worth of TIGER grants that were provided in the Recovery Act. We 

received more than 1,400 applications, totaling almost $60 billion, 

from all 50 States and the territories and the District of Columbia. 

Because of the very strong demand, we were able to award fewer 

than 3 percent of the projects actual funding. 

We are hopeful that Congress will continue this program. It is 

an innovative, multimodal way to attack some of our more pressing 

transportation problems. And, from the very strong applications we 

had, we are confident that it would be well-received in the future. 

As President Obama made clear in his State of the Union Address, his number-one priority in 2010 is accelerating the pace of 

job creation. Transportation is an important part of his plan to put 

Americans back to work. And the President has called for new investments in a wide range of infrastructure, such as highway, transit, rail, aviation, and water, designed to get projects out the door 

as quickly as possible. 

We think the transportation results achieved in this first year 

speak for themselves. It demonstrates that we can produce these 

projects and these jobs with long-lasting benefits. We would urge 

Congress to consider supporting future jobs-creation legislation. 

Again, thank you for the opportunity to share our accomplishments over the past year. I look forward to answering your questions. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. 

Mr. Hooks? 

8 

Mr. HOOKS. Good morning, Chairman Oberstar, Ranking Member Mica, and Members of the Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss EPA’s progress in implementing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. One year ago, EPA was entrusted with more than $7 billion to 

invest in our economy to rebuild critical infrastructure in our communities, to create jobs for our citizens, and to rekindle our economy. EPA has worked diligently to move Recovery Act money into 

the hands of its partners and to clear the way for rapid investments in construction, land use, and redevelopment. I am glad to 

be back before you on this Committee to report on our progress. 

EPA has obligated 99 percent of its Recovery Act funds. The Recovery Act required that all the State revolving funds be under contract by February 17, 2010. This included approximately $4 billion 

in clean water and about $2 billion in drinking water funds. We aggressively reached out to States and territories to help them meet 

this spending deadline. The administrator personally called Governors to offer assistance, and I called State Recovery Act officials 

to raise concerns, where needed, and thank them for their efforts. 

And I am proud to say that every State and territory, through hard 

work and under extraordinary pressure, has successfully met the 

Recovery Act deadline for the SRFs. 

Recovery Act funds under the Clean Water SRF program have 

resulted in nearly 1,900 assistance agreements and more than 

1,500 projects where construction has begun. These projects will 

create thousands of jobs and serve more than 68 million people. In Johnson County, Kansas, a $15 million wastewater treatment 

plant improvement project will result in an entirely energy-self-sufficient facility. Along with new jobs, that project will provide almost $600,000 in annual cost savings for rate payers and reduce 

greenhouse gas emissions by more than 9,700 metric tons annually. 

This is the largest green project in Kansas, contributing to the 

Recovery Act requirement that 20 percent of the SRF funds be used 

for green infrastructure, water and energy efficiencies, and innovative projects. Annabeth Surbaugh, the chairman of the Johnson 

County Board of Supervisors, commented, ′′Investing in green 

projects is a win-win situation because of JohnsonCounty’s strong 

commitment to sustainability, energy conservation, and reduction 

of greenhouse gases.′′ 

Other green projects include upgrading pumping stations to increase energy efficiency, water recycling, reclamation projects, and 

making greater use of natural processes to address urban storm 

water runoff. I am pleased to say that every State met the green 

projects requirement. 

Through the Recovery Act, the Superfund program funded cleanups at 26 sites that would not have been funded otherwise and 

supported ongoing cleanups at 25 more sites. All of Superfund’s Recovery Act funds have been obligated, and as of February 18th, 

construction is under way at 38 sites. 

In South Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Superfund program will 

use Recovery Act funds to remove soil from the yards of approximately 500 homes in a community with arsenic levels as high as 

2,800 parts per million, more than 100 times the level selected in 

the cleanup remedy. We are removing a significant health threat 

9 

from the people’s yards, one that is especially dangerous to children 

playing in those yards. 

I am also pleased to report that, as of February 18th, the 

Brownfields program has obligated 99.7 percent of its Recovery 

funds. In Woonsocket, Rhode Island, a Recovery grant allowed the 

city to clean up the last remaining corner lot of a former 

Brownfield site. This will facilitate the completion of an $80 million 

middle school redevelopment project. 

EPA is grateful to have been entrusted by Congress with distrib- uting more than $7 billion in Recovery Act funding. We are proud 

to be a part of the solution for American communities and American families facing economic challenges. These projects have created jobs, and they will leave communities cleaner and healthier 

and better places to buy a home or invest in a business. 

Our most recent report from EPA’s contract and grant stimulus 

award recipients indicated that nearly 6,800 direct jobs were created or retained. And this is just the beginning, for, as more construction and cleanup activities get under way, this number should 

grow. 

We are excited about these accomplishments and look forward to 

continuing our work with this Committee, our partners, and the 

public to ensure an economically and environmentally healthier 

country for all Americans. 

Thank you again for inviting me to testify here today, and I look 

forward to answering any questions you may have. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Hooks. That is a very good report 

and a very thorough report. 

Mr. Peck? 

Mr. PECK. Good morning, Chairman Oberstar, Ranking Member 

Mica, and Members of the Committee. 

One year ago, $5.5 billion in funding provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act gave us at GSA an unprecedented and exciting opportunity to contribute to the Nation’s economic recovery and to environmental sustainability. We are helping stimulate job growth and retention in the construction and real 

estate sectors, as well as develop markets in energy-efficient technologies, renewable energy, and green buildings—and, by the way, 

increase the value of our Federal building assets, improve their 

functioning for Federal agencies and the public, and reduce our 

backlog of needed capital improvements. 

Since passage of the Recovery Act, we established and met all of our target dates for contract awards and outlays. We rewarded $1 

billion worth of contracts by August 1st, 2009, and as of December 

31st, 2009, had awarded $2 billion. As of last Friday, that number 

was up to $2.25 billion. We are on track to meet our next target 

of awarding contracts totaling $4 billion—in other words, an additional $2 billion from December—by March 31st and $5 billion by 

this September. We also anticipate expenditures totaling $1 billion to contractors 

by September for work completed. In other words, we will outlay 

a billion dollars by the end of September. That is the equivalent 

of more than 10,000 job years. We are getting people back to work. 

As of December, our Recovery Act funding recipients indicated that 

1,646 prime contracting jobs had been funded. 

10 

We have accomplished these goals in addition to managing our 

normal capital program. Last year, GSA awarded twice the dollar 

amount in contracts within 8 months that we typically award in an 

entire normal year. We surpassed our contract goal in December by 

$70 million on a $2 billion goal despite awards coming in, on average, 8 to 10 percent below our projected estimates. 

We carefully monitor project progress and identify any variances 

early in our project schedules. We have been able quickly to identify and revise our spending plans to reallocate savings from 

projects under way towards other projects. We have updated that 

plan twice and submitted those revisions to Congress. The most 

current plan includes 261 major projects—seven more than we initially reported, again due to those savings—nearly 300 total 

projects, including rather small ones, in all 50 States, the District 

of Columbia, and two U.S. territories. The spending plan revisions 

that we have made represented a reallocation of more than $200 

million in savings. 

In addition to our Recovery Act funds, we expect to receive approximately $1 billion in Recovery Act funds from other agencies 

to support their real estate needs. To date, we have entered into 

agreements with those agencies totaling $397 million in 26 

projects. And, of those, we have awarded $120 million in contracts. 

I would point out, as you did, Mr. Chairman, that our obligation 

is that our contract awards flow directly to our contractors and directly into the construction real estate and architecture engineering 

sectors even before they become actual payments for jobs. When we 

make a contract award, money does not begin flowing immediately, 

but the contract award is a catalyst that starts money flowing as 

contractors begin securing financing, hiring personnel, and taking 

first steps on the project. Moreover, we pay in arrears; in other 

words, we have to see actual progress on the ground before we 

issue a payment. So there are jobs being created before those are 

reflected in the numbers of our outlays. 

As we move forward with our projects, we are also including 

measures to convert our buildings into high-performance green 

buildings. We have already installed 37 energy-efficiency lighting 

systems, seven photovoltaic roof projects, and 136 advanced metering projects. We are currently constructing 49 lighting projects, 22 

photovoltaic roofs, as well as a solar hot water project, a geothermal project, and wind projects. 

Our projects include the huge Department of Homeland Security 

project at the St. Elizabeth’s campus in Washington. It is the largest Federal project in this area since construction of the Pentagon. 

We have started a job center on the site. We started our opportunity center and got more than 445 job applications. 

We are also leveraging our Recovery Act investments to become 

a green proving ground. At the Major General Emmet J. Bean Federal Center in Indianapolis, we intend to design and install a stateof-the-art photovoltaic roof with 4,500 solar panels. In all, our energy savings are going to result in annual savings of 812,000 million BTUs, the equivalent of the power it takes to run 21,000 

homes. 

11 

We have also launched a pre-apprenticeship program with contract awards in Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon. And both 

organizations have already graduated classes. 

In conclusion, we were entrusted with a significant increase in 

funding to support the construction and modernization of high-performance green buildings. The men and women in GSA have risen 

to the challenge. And we look forward to working with you and 

Members of the Committee as we continue to deliver this work. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much for that report. It is good 

to see the very consistent and speeded-up implementation at GSA, 

which was off to a slow start compared to other agencies. But you 

made up time and have a good report here for us, and we will come 

back with some questions later. 

Mr. PECK. Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Ms. Darcy? 

Ms. DARCY. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, thank 

you for the opportunity to testify before you today to discuss the 

implementation of the Civil Works appropriation within the Recovery Act. 

If I may, I will summarize my statement here and ask that my 

full statement be entered into the record. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. All statements will be included in the record in 

full. 

Ms. DARCY. The Recovery Act provides funds to meet the intent 

of the President and Congress to put our fellow citizens to work 

and to help in the recovery of the Nation’s economy. 

The accomplishment of Corps of Engineers Civil Works projects 

through Recovery Act funding has begun and continues to contribute to the Nation’s safety, economy, environment, and quality 

of life. The Recovery Act provides funding to the Corps to accomplish these goals through the development and restoration of the 

Nation’s water and related resources. 

Total discretionary funding for civil works in the Recovery Act is $4.6 billion. The Corps is following the Recovery Act’s general principles to manage and expend funds to achieve the Act’s stated purposes, including commencing expenditures and activities as quickly 

as possible, consistent with prudent management and consistent 

with the President’s intent to apply merit-based principles to use 

the funds for purposes with long-term benefits to the Nation. 

Nearly all of the $4.6 billion appropriated for Civil Works has 

been identified for specific Civil Works projects and activities. As 

of February 16th, financial obligations totalled just over $3 billion. 

As of that date, outlays totalled $930 million, which is updated 

from the numbers in my completed statement. 

There are 830 Civil Works projects across 49 States and in both 

Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. Among those projects being carried out by the Corps are 284 navigation projects, 304 flood risk 

management projects, 143 environmental restoration projects, 148 

environmental infrastructure projects, and 35 hydropower projects, 

as well as inspections of 820 levees. 

About 74 percent of the Corps’s contract actions have been 

awarded to small businesses, and approximately 46 percent of the 

total dollar value has been awarded to small businesses. In addition, we are continuing to encourage our larger companies receiving 

12 

Civil Works contracts to hire local small businesses as their subcontractors. 

For the Civil Works program, stimulus effects begin with contract award because that is when the contractor begins to hire the 

workers, order the materials and equipment, and take other steps 

to complete the work, creating ripples throughout the economy. As 

a result, stimulus impacts for Corps projects are more closely related to the obligation of Recovery funds, primarily through contract awards, rather than through the subsequent outlays which 

provide payments to contractors for work they already have completed or for supplies and equipment they already have purchased. 

In the official recipient reporting system, contractors reported 

that the Civil Works Recovery Act contracts supported 6,047 jobs 

in just this last quarter. In addition to these jobs, the Recovery Act 

investment supports numerous indirect jobs in industries supplying 

materials and equipment. 

On February 19th, I was pleased to attend the groundbreaking 

ceremony commemorating the new construction work that was 

made possible by the Recovery Act at Locks and Dams No. 4 in 

Charleroi, Pennsylvania, along the Monongahela River, which is in 

former Congressman Murtha’s district. The work was authorized in 

1992 by Congress because aging navigation locks and dams in 

Charleroi, Elizabeth, and Braddock, Pennsylvania, were crumbling 

and dangerous. 

The Charleroi Locks and Dams represent a major Federal investment over a number of years. The additional funding made available through the Recovery Act will permit the Corps to complete 

construction of the critical lock walls at Charleroi by 2011, sooner 

than would otherwise have been possible. Unfortunately, Congressman Murtha wasn’t there, but I think he would be pleased. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, for 

the opportunity to testify. I look forward to answering your questions. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much. 

And thank you for that reference to our good friend and former 

colleague, Jack Murtha, whose accomplishments are writ large and 

who may be remembered for a great many things, but one in particular: At the end of the Cold War era, I talked to him about shifting some of those saved defense dollars to breast cancer research. 

And within the Appropriations Committee, he was able to do that, 

and that budget went from $35 million to $300 million. And many 

women’s lives are being saved because of not only the accelerated 

research on breast cancer, but also the education programs that 

have been funded by that savings from the Cold War peace dividend. Had that information been available 15 years earlier, I might 

not have lost my wife. 

Mr. Fernandez? 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Thank you, Chairman Oberstar, Ranking Member Mica, and Members of the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to testify today on behalf of the Department of Commerce’s 

Economic Development Administration. 

I have been asked to provide you with an update on our progress 

regarding EDA’s Recovery Act projects. I am pleased to report that 

many communities that were hit hard by the economic recession 

13 

are already putting these funds to work, breaking ground, hiring 

workers, and leveraging significant private investment. EDA received $150 million in Recovery Act funding. By the end 

of September, a full year ahead of schedule, we obligated 100 percent of our allocation, funding 68 projects in 37 States. We invested 

$50 million to promote the development of regional innovation clusters, $37 million to promote business incubation, $27 million to 

promote green jobs, and $11 million to promote global trade. Our investments range from as small as $184,000 up to $6.4 million. These projects target a wide range of economically distressed 

and underserved communities. We targeted projects that assisted 

communities as they built up their local assets and infrastructure 

to strengthen their regional economy and enhance their global economic competitiveness. EDA awarded $141 million, or about 96 percent of our total Recovery Act funds, for capital investment projects. Our investments 

are expected to leverage approximately $981 million in private investment over the next few years. Committee staff has a complete 

list of all of our EDA Recovery Act projects that go into great detail 

in terms of the project description, job creation numbers, and private leverage. 

To date, 41 percent of EDA’s Recovery Act projects are already under way. These projects represent about $50 million or 34 percent of our total allocation. I am pleased to report that, to date, 

nearly all of our projects within the EDA portfolio have met anticipated construction start dates and other project implementation 

milestones. We have been encouraged that some of our projects, in 

fact, have started ahead of schedule. 

The Recovery Act requires new measures for unprecedented accountability and transparency. With our regional offices, we developed specific outreach initiatives to assist our recipient partners in 

meeting these additional reporting requirements. At the end of the 

second reporting period, 100 percent of EDA’s grant recipients have 

successfully reported on their progress. 

Our investments support a diverse mix of economic development 

activities that are proven to be an effective way of creating longterm economic stability and job growth. Simply put, we know what 

works, and that is why we are particularly focused on investments 

that support regional, collaborative innovation strategies. 

EDA’s ability to successfully implement the Recovery Act should 

be no surprise to those familiar with the agency. In part, our success is due to the fact that EDA has a tremendous experience 

working with a national network of local and State economic development professionals. This bottom-up approach to economic development is a key strength of our programs. Historically, EDA’s program investments have been very efficient. EDA investments serve 

a catalytic role in local communities. The number of jobs created 

and the amount of private-sector investment leverage continue to 

be quite strong. 

To the Chairman and others on the Committee, we have had a 

long-term and very successful relationship working with this Committee. We remain eager to work with you to help our country recovery from this economic recession. And as we prepare for reauthorization, we certainly look forward working with the Committee 

14 

to develop an even stronger framework for sustainable economic 

development. 

To Members of the Committee, to the Chairman, Ranking Member Mica and others, I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and I look forward to answering any questions. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. [presiding.] Thank you very much, Mr. 

Fernandez. 

Now, Mr. Rajk? 

Mr. RAJK. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, distinguished Members 

of the Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you 

today on the Coast Guard’s continued progress in executing funding received through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The $240 million appropriated to the Coast Guard by the act is 

allowing us to address critical projects in our Alteration of Bridges 

Program, selected shore facility projects, as well as to help sustain 

operation of our high-endurance cutters. Recovery Act funding is 

providing a significant impact in each of these programs to support 

our hardworking guardians and, ultimately, the American people. $142 million designated for the alteration of four bridges addresses significant obstructions to navigation and is critical to improve the safe and efficient movement of people and commerce 

through the communities of Mobile, Alabama; Joliet, Illinois; Burlington, Iowa; and Galveston, Texas. Once all bridge projects are 

complete, they will provide an estimated $18 million of annual 

commercial benefit in and around these communities. 

Additionally, construction on these four bridges leverages the over $120 million previously appropriated for these projects. Without the Recovery Act funding, undertaking these four projects 

would not have been possible until additional appropriations were 

made. 

To date, the funding for all four projects has been obligated and 

three construction contracts have been awarded. A second bid solicitation for construction of the Galveston Causeway is expected to 

be under contract in early April. The three bridges under contract 

are moving along well, with contractors working on each of the 

projects as we meet here today. 

The recipients’ reporting indicates that they have created or retained 65 jobs through these projects. In addition, our discussions 

with the Burlington Bridge contractor indicates that there has been 

at least 37 unreported jobs created or sustained indirectly through 

the building and manufacturing of supplies critical for the project. 

Direct on-site work for all of these bridges will be increasing as the 

spring approaches. 

The $88 million appropriated for Coast Guard shore construction 

includes critical projects such as building housing and barracks for 

our personnel where no suitable and affordable housing exists. 

Shore projects also include revitalizing mooring facilities and shop 

buildings. 

Once complete, these projects will allow us to better execute our 

operational missions. So far, we have awarded contracts on four of 

the seven projects and obligated just over $12 million, which represents 14 percent of the shore construction funds and is consistent 

with our original planning. 

15 

The contracting aspects for each of these seven projects have had 

their challenges. Most significantly, we planned to utilize a national multi-award construction contract for five of the seven 

projects, but that contract award was protested. As a result, we are 

pursuing individual contracts for each project. Currently, all contracts that have been awarded, along with those that are yet to be 

awarded, are intended for small-business set-aside programs. 

The $10 million appropriated for engineering changes on our 

high-endurance cutters is being leveraged to upgrade critical pieces 

of equipment that most commonly contribute to major cutter casualties that adversely impact operations. These are some of our 

oldest and hardest-working ships, which the crews continue to 

struggle to keep operational. These upgrades will go a long way to 

helping their efforts. 

For example, one of the projects entails replacing the onboard 

boilers, which have become very difficult to maintain, as indicated 

by over 200 casualties in the past 10 years across the fleet. Without doing something for these absolutely critical systems, these 

ships would continue to lose operational days due to casualties. In 

fact, the Coast Guard Cutter Hamilton, which recently completed 

its boiler upgrade, was supporting operations off the coast of Haiti. 

Hamilton has since been relieved by the cutter Dallas. 

Contracts have been awarded for four of the seven high-endurance cutter engineering changes, with the goal of obligating all 

funds by the end of April. All of these projects are also benefitting 

the important ship repair industry. 

Mr. Chairman, all of these projects will facilitate our mission accomplishment to best serve the American public. Our contracting 

staff, engineers, and project managers continue to aggressively pursue the execution of these projects in support of the intent of the 

act. 

I would like to thank the Committee for their continued support 

of the Coast Guard and the opportunity to testify today. I am 

pleased to answer your questions. Thank you. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Carper? 

Mr. CARPER. Thank you, Madam Chairman and Ranking Member Mica and Members of the Committee, for the opportunity to 

testify before your Committee today. 

I would like to give you a quick summary of what we plan to do, 

where we are today, and where we plan to go over the course of 

the coming year. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Could you speak a little bit closer to the 

mike? 

Mr. CARPER. Okay. Sorry, ma’am. Is that better? 

Amtrak was, as you know, a recipient of nearly $1.3 billion in 

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 grant funding. 

As I speak, more than $1 billion worth of projects are under way. 

And I expect that when the deadline arrives February of 2011, we 

will have completed the replacement of all or a significant part of 

eight bridges, the improvement and repair of 38 Amtrak facilities 

and 270 stations, and the return of 81 stored and damaged cars 

and 15 locomotives to service. 

16 

Throughout the process, we have pursued three important but 

subsidiary objectives: to ensure that we get the best possible value 

for our money; to get as much as possible done within the allotted 

time; and to make the spending process as transparent as possible, 

with the important and overriding focus of creating jobs. 

The Federal Railroad Administration has approved more than 99 

percent of the total funding, and we expect to make the bulk of our 

outlays in 2010. We are reporting to and meeting with the FRA on 

a weekly basis and contacting them far more frequently as we work 

through the grant and contracting process. 

About 49 percent of the funding has gone to the Northeast Corridor projects, while the remaining 51 percent has been distributed 

across our national system. As of February 22nd, we have awarded 

413 ARRA contracts, with a total dollar value of $722.8 million. 

We have also invested in our fleet. Our mechanical department 

intends to return a total of 81 cars and 15 locomotives to service 

with ARRA funding. And the first rehabilitated car rolled off the 

line at our shops in Bear, Delaware, on July 13th, not quite 5 

months after the President signed ARRA into law. When this program is complete, we will have added enough equipment for roughly 10 additional trains with several engines to spare—10 trains 

that will allow us to grow revenue and add ridership. 

Mr. CARPER. Amtrak has already created almost 600 full-time 

equivalent positions as a result of our working on everything from 

replacing ties and rail in our yard in Niles, Michigan, to clearing 

brush and deadfall and cutting back overhanging trees along all 3 

divisions of the Northeast Corridor. This cleanup program is combined with other ongoing efforts to reduce the number of incidents 

that affect our electric traction system. A cleanup of this kind is 

long overdue and has contributed to improvements in our train performance. 

Another part of this year’s story is stations. Many of these 

projects will be station improvements associated with our Mobility 

First program of station accessibility that includes $38 million of 

our funding. In all, we will invest a total $144 million from all 

funding sources in fiscal year 2010 to address the compliance of our 

stations with the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

For too long the lack of funding greatly hindered our ability to 

make station improvements. Five years is our goal for all stations 

to be ADA compliant. Examples are Wilmington, Delaware, and 

Sanford, Florida, projects that are already under way, on schedule 

and within budget. Many of these projects are ideal for small businesses, and they are spread all over the country. Forty-five percent 

of the contracts we have awarded to date have gone to small businesses. We have laid the groundwork for a productive year, and I 

am confident we will bring the work in on time. 

I want to close again by noting that we have created more than 

600 full-time equivalents in our workforce, plus a growing number 

of, vendor-created jobs. We are putting them to work building 

much-needed capacity and infrastructure improvements. This process has helped us prepare for larger projects that we expect to undertake in the future, and it helped us build a better, more transparent railroad. 

17 

I thank you very much for the opportunity today and look forward to taking some questions. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. We will begin the first round of questions now, and my questions will go to the Deputy Secretary 

Porcari. Do you feel that requiring States to obligate 50 percent of 

their highway and bridge funding within 120 days of receiving 

their apportionment was a good idea? And I ask that because some 

in my State felt this requirement led to short-term construction 

projects that did not yield long-term jobs. I would just like to know 

if you agree with them. 

Mr. PORCARI. Madam Chair, it is a good question. I do believe 

it made sense to have that 50 percent obligation requirement within the first 120 days. And just to give the Committee a sense of 

where I am coming from, in the early days of the Recovery Act, I 

was a State DOT secretary delivering projects under the Recovery 

Act. What tended to happen was your truly shovel-ready projects, 

the ones that were ready to go, you got out the door as quickly as 

possible, putting people to work as quickly as possible. As we are 

in the latter part of the Recovery Act projects right now, what we 

are seeing are larger, more complicated projects that couldn’t move 

on the same time frame, but if you look around the country, you 

are seeing a number of those larger projects now. So I think it is 

actually a good combination of immediately getting people back to 

work, the recovery part of this, and also larger projects that create 

jobs that take a little longer to get out the door, the reinvestment 

part, if you will, of the bill, and I think it is a good balance. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. So if by chance a second stimulus, you 

feel that you have a better vision on how to require the States and 

the agencies to comply with the time frame. 

Mr. PORCARI. We believe the time frames in our legislation are 

actually pretty good ones. We have been working with our State 

and local partners. I mentioned earlier that we have met every 

deadline so far. We expect to continue to do that. 

I will tell you for the March 1st deadline for Federal highways, 

as of today we already have 30 States at 100 percent obligation. We 

have 11 States at 97 percent or above. The rest will make it by 

March 1st. Likewise, we believe every one of our transit recipients 

will make the March 5th deadline. The system that we use, which 

is our existing reimbursable process, is one that the States and the 

transit agencies understand. Going forward in a jobs bill, any further investments in transportation infrastructure, if they work the 

same way, we expect to get the same results. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Mica. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you. I have a question to follow up for our Deputy Secretary of Transportation. 

I guess that the purpose of the TIGER discretionary grants was, 

as you said, to try to create jobs in our most economically depressed area as soon as possible. These jobs had to be shovel ready 

or ready to go to actually employ folks; is that correct? 

Mr. PORCARI. Yes, it is correct. There is a separate time frame, 

as you know, for the TIGER discretionary grants. 

18 

Mr. MICA. So there were thousands of these submitted. Did you 

rank them, and was there any consideration of unemployment or 

the economic situation in the States? 

Mr. PORCARI. Yes, sir. It was explicitly one of the things that we 

looked at. I will tell you that there was tremendous demand. We 

had over 1,400 TIGER applications, $60 billion worth of applications for $1.5 billion in funding. 

Mr. MICA. My question really deals, though, with—I have another slide there, the bigger one, that shows all of the awards for 

TIGER grants. You had about 1.5 billion in discretionary money. 

If you look at the top of the list, you see the lowest unemployment, 

141 million went to States below 6.9 percent unemployment. That 

to me doesn’t quite make sense. 

Take the chart of the 10 States with the highest unemployment. 

We have a separate chart. Just pull that out so it is bigger, that 

second chart. Okay. 

Now, of course, as a Member from Florida, there are certain 

things that stand out in this TIGER grant distribution, a little 

chart, which, Madam Chair, I would like both these charts to be 

made part of the record. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Okay. 

Mr. MICA. Without objection, thank you. 

This one sort of baffles me. I thought maybe Florida didn’t apply. 

I tried to figure out some of the reasoning, and I found, in fact, 

Florida had 115 project requests from Florida receiving—or asking 

for a total of 4.2 billion. The Florida Department of Transportation 

alone requested Four projects, totaling 287 million, and they got 

zero. Now, we had 11.8 percent unemployment. 

I really would like you to submit to the Committee, too, if you 

could, any of the paperwork in the evaluation process. Now, I know 

you put these on line, and I appreciate that transparency, but 

somewhere something doesn’t click. I thought, well, maybe Florida 

they got some high-speed rail money, 1.1 billion. But that is not 

immediate; that would be years before that money is actually 

spent. We don’t even have the commission together or finalized 

plans. I thought, well, Illinois got 1.1- and 1.2- or something, about 

2.3 billion towards rail, passenger rail, and they got 120 million. 

And then I see the lowest unemployment States under 6.9 getting 

TIGER discretionary. Somehow it doesn’t appear that it is targeted 

to these States. And then we look at the piddly amounts that is 

going there. So somehow this doesn’t click in my mind. 

Mr. PORCARI. It is a great question that I will be happy to answer. 

Mr. MICA. I would like the background, too, of the evaluation 

process, because how Florida could not have one project read to go 

and be in the top 10 unemployment. Senator Nelson is also directing inquiry to the Secretary on this matter, but somehow we got 

screwed in this process, and I want to find out how and why. It 

just is unconscionable that we would be in the top 10 and have 

States with half the unemployment getting these discretionary 

grants for economic recovery and targeted. 

Mr. Carper—— 

Mr. PORCARI. I will be happy to answer that, if you would like. 

19 

Mr. MICA. Well, again, I would like to see if you could submit for 

the record. I don’t have a whole lot of time. I don’t want to take 

the Committee’s—— 

Mr. PORCARI. We will submit the criteria. 

[The information follows:] 

20 


Insert offset folio 94 here 55031.094
21 


Insert offset folio 95 here 55031.095
22 

Mr. PORCARI. I would also say that of the TIGER awards, sir, 60 

percent went to economically distressed areas, which is far in excess of the nationwide distribution. 

Mr. MICA. I would think that if you asked Members of Congress 

what percentage you would like to go to economically distressed 

areas, I would like to see it in a 90 percent, 95 percent, in that 

range. Sixty is nice, but you tell that to people who are standing 

in line. 

I was on the phone this morning with a father whose son was 

released from the United States military with a medical disability 

and can’t get a damn job. And I can tell him that we—and this kid 

has been out of the military and can’t find even menial work. So 

again, it is just very frustrating from our standpoint. 

I know. You are trying to do the best you can. But I would like 

to see those records, and I think Senator Nelson would, too. 

Mr. Carper, you were recipient of—there are 78 high-speed and— 

so-called high-speed and passenger rail grants. You were recipient, 

I think, or Amtrak participated in about over 70. I think it is somewhere in the 76 range project, right? Of the 78 you are going to 

participate in 76 of them according to our Subcommittee staff evaluation. We do have an evaluation of those, which I would like to 

be made a part of the record, a full list we have evaluated. 

Mr. CARPER. I can’t give an exact number. 

Mr. MICA. I can. I am just telling you the Committee staff, the 

Rail Subcommittee staff on the Minority will submit that for the 

record. If you have a dispute. 

Mr. CARPER. Understood. 

[The information follows:] 

23 


Insert offset folio 97 here 55031.097
24 


Insert offset folio 98 here 55031.098
25 

Mr. MICA. It is 76 out of 78. 

Mr. CARPER. Okay. 

Mr. MICA. Now, the training thing, you mentioned transparency 

at least twice. I don’t know of where I can, even as a Member of 

Congress, get the transparent information. At least DOT puts 

theirs on the line. I know you are on the recipient end, and it 

should be FRA’s obligation to put those on line, but they are not 

on line. I want to see them on line, and I want you to put them 

on line. Can you handle that? 

Mr. CARPER. We will do our best to get them on line. I can’t understand why we couldn’t, and we will get back to you and make 

sure that that happens. 

Mr. MICA. Because I think there should be transparency in that 

process. You know, people criticize congressional earmarks. I think 

we should have the transparency in executive and administrative 

earmarks. And today I am going to declare war on agencies who 

make determinations for awarding grants behind closed doors. At 

least we are elected officials, at least we are elected officials. 

And I am not picking on the Obama administration. Remember 

when we failed to pass an appropriations measure for transportation appropriations? The Members who were here, some of you 

were here, there were 1,155 earmarks that went before our Committee we put on display. They were provided by an elected Member of Congress through the congressional process, passed in the 

House of Representatives, open to the public, and that Bush administration, when we failed to determine how that $800 million 

was to be spent, took that money, and behind closed doors some arrogant Bush administration folks put it on five projects of their 

choice with no hearing, no public recourse. 

Now, if the Obama administration is going to do the same damn 

thing, I am declaring war on executive earmarks today. I want 

them open and transparent. If it is FRA, it should be. We are Members of Congress, and we deserve to know, and the American public 

deserves to know. So I guess that is my speech for the morning. 

You don’t have to answer, Mr. Carper, but I am looking forward—it is not totally your responsibility. FRA is not here for me 

to bash this morning, but I do want that on line, and I will demand 

it. And I am going to write a letter and ask Mr. Oberstar, Ms. 

Brown, Mr. Shuster to sign it and request it. 

Mr. CARPER. Congressman, if I might, perhaps I misunderstood 

the question or wasn’t thinking quite clearly. The numbers that 

you refer to, I believe, are projects that were requested by the 

State, and they likely will be on our service on our lines. 

Mr. MICA. Again, between FRA and Amtrak as the recipient, I 

want them on line. 

Finally, Mr. Peck. Good morning, Mr. Peck. 

Mr. PECK. Good morning. 

Mr. MICA. Sorry you couldn’t get away without me saying something. 

I am sure you saw this Washington Post story about the commercial real estate situation in D.C., which is desperate, but which presents us, Ms. Norton, with a great opportunity. I saw your number 

of dollars available, allocated, obligated, expended. Worked with 

Ms. Norton, the Chairman to see that at this time when we have 

26 

a fire sale and we are leasing, we have expensive leases, when we 

have public agencies that can be housed at 50 cents, 25 cents on 

the dollar, that we act now instead of later and take advantage of 

this situation. 

I used to be in the development business, and I always bought, 

sir, at fire sales, and I made a lot of money. Not, God forbid, we 

should make any money on the Federal Government or have money 

to give the taxpayers back, but at least expend the money that is 

available in making wise investments at this time, which may not 

occur for some time. Things will come back. This is a great city, 

this is a great National Capital. It will always have value. So if we 

take those funds sitting there, work together and get this money 

out. 

I took Mr. Oberstar out on a ride around town to see what is 

available. Ms. Norton knows what I am talking about. We need to 

get some of that under contract ASAP. No C-R-A-P, just ASAP. 

Mr. PECK. Thank you. 

Mr. Mica, I know you know, just for the record, of course, we 

can’t use Recovery Act funds for building purchases because they 

don’t create jobs. However, what you are referring to is that we do 

have some unobligated balances, and we can use general tax funds 

to purchase buildings, and I will tell you that we do have one significant building purchase under negotiation in the District of Columbia. I can’t say what it is right now, because we haven’t closed 

the deal, but I hear you. You are absolutely right. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much for sticking 

around. We hope you will put some emotion into it. 

Ms. Norton. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And I thank 

the Ranking Member for raising an important issue. The Federal 

building fund is going broke precisely because we do too much leaving, and the Ranking Member has specific buildings he would like 

us to buy. But I am right with them when it comes to what GSA 

ought to be doing. This is their economy; they can buy and they 

can lease at amounts they will never be able to do again. That is 

why we have been having repeated hearings on GSA. We have had 

four tracking hearings, which may account for why GSA, in fact, 

I am pleased to say, has speeded up in at least its obligations. 

Mr. Peck says he can’t tell you what building it is that is under 

contract, but, of course, it is a matter of public record, because the 

administration, for the first time in almost 20 years that I have 

been on this Subcommittee, put money in its appropriation to purchase a building. That has never happened since I have been a 

Member of this Subcommittee, and it did so last year. 

I would like to see more of that done. But, of course, we are going 

to have to come up with the hard cash if we want to purchase 

money. I this think this is the time to do it. Let us all get rich like 

the Ranking Member did doing precisely that. 

Mr. MICA. Ms. Norton, would your yield for just a second? 

Ms. NORTON. I will always yield to the Ranking Member. 

Mr. MICA. Let me make it perfectly clear, because I know things 

can be misinterpreted by the press. First, I know no Washington 

real estate developers, I have nothing for sale, I have no specific 

building. I do have one agency that I would like to be located—all 

27 

their things collocated, and I don’t care where the hell they put 

them, just put them in someplace cost-effective for the taxpayer. 

Ms. NORTON. The Ranking Member wants us to move people out 

of a government-owned building and put the people in a leased 

building in the District of Columbia. No, rather he wants us to buy 

another building for these people. I mean, all of this makes sense 

in its own way. If he and I can get together and come up with some 

cash, I think we ought to do just that. 

I have first some questions for the EDA. I want everybody to 

note that the EDA has allocated all this money and had a whole 

lot less money than everybody else. And I think it is worth noting 

that the EDA is at least obligated—is this Mr. Fernandez—or all 

its funds. Now, the reason it is worth noting is unlike the GSA 

which has control over funds, can go into the ground itself, EDA 

has to work through the States. You are really talking about State 

projects, aren’t you? 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. More so local projects. 

Ms. NORTON. In other words, it is the locality that has to obligate 

the funds and has to go through all of the machinations that are 

necessary. It is not you who goes into the ground, you, EDA. 

Now, let me ask you if there is—the people compete for this little 

bit of money relative to what some people like the GSA or, for that 

matter, the transit folks had. You had, what is it, 147 million? 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Correct. We had 147 million. In terms of applications, I think the total amount of requests we had added up to 

about 241 million. 

Ms. NORTON. One of the great issues, the Congressional Black 

Caucus had an entire press conference on this, was the notion of 

whether or not funds are being targeted to the hardest-hit parts of 

our country. You have cities in the United States—my own city, for 

example, has 12 percent unemployment. That is typical of big cities 

in the United States. You are not geared toward big cities, but you 

are certainly geared towards the most depressed areas of the country. 

Was there any—is there any correlation between the unemployment rate in the localities that won these contracts and the contract—the success in winning a contract? In other words, can you 

tell me that the hardest-hit areas, in fact, are who got this entire 

amount of obligated funds? 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. I can’t say that absolutely in terms of projects 

that were funded were—— 

Ms. NORTON. That is really not my question. All of your projects 

come from hard-hit areas. 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Correct. 

Ms. NORTON. You can go to some States and find surprises—for 

example, Pennsylvania has a lower unemployment rate than I 

thought it would have. I am asking whether there was a criterion 

among those used to award contracts that went to the unemployment rate? 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Yes. And in fact I appreciate you clarifying that 

for me. The EDA’s programs are specifically limited to eligible 

areas, and that eligibility is based on unemployment numbers as 

well as average incomes. We typically use at EDA a 24-month lag 

period, and that is by statute, to determine eligibility. With the 

28 

ARRA, with the Recovery Act we actually had an opportunity to 

fine-tune our criteria, and we used a shorter period to reflect the 

urgent nature of the Recovery Act. So in that case it was 3 months. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Fernandez, it would be helpful if you would 

submit to the Committee, and I would like a copy, the lists of those 

who applied and their unemployment rate versus those who succeeded and their unemployment rate so we can see that correlation. 

It is an important one and would help to clarify this matter. 

Ms. NORTON. Now, I have a question for you and for Mr. Peck 

that is the same genre of question. You have obligated all of your 

money, but then apparently you have broken ground on 20 of the 

projects, and that would mean 45 million of the 147 million, and 

that is 31 percent of the amount allocated. 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Correct. 

Ms. NORTON. Now, one of the great issues that has arisen in 

these hearings, my own tracking hearings and these hearings, is 

the jargon and the difference between obligation and outlays. 

Now, the GSA has the same issue: 2.1 billion obligated, but only 

184 million in outlays. Now, as far as the public is concerned, obligation may not mean very much. We know it is very pregnant with 

meaning, but one of the reasons that there may be dissatisfaction 

with stimulus is we keep talking about large amounts of money, 

but people do not see that money on the ground, even in the case 

of EDA where all of your money has been allocated. 

So I would like each of you to respond concerning outlays, which 

means that people are on the ground, weekly you are floating 

money out there to pay somebody who is on the ground. Whereas 

obligation, as far as we understand it, means that there is some 

money in the bank waiting to go on the ground. 

So, Mr. Peck, Mr. Fernandez, which of you would like to explain 

the discrepancy between obligation and outlays in your own figures 

today? 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. I think it is pretty—it is a very relevant point. 

In our case 93 percent of our projects are expected to be initiated 

by July 1 of this year. 

Ms. NORTON. Say that again. 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. You know, to date we reported that a percentage of our projects have already been started in terms of breaking 

ground. As you noted earlier, in some cases construction projects— 

in all cases, in fact, for EDA—are paid on a reimbursable basis. So 

a project may actually start, but we will not disburse until the request for reimbursement is submitted. 

Ms. NORTON. People will not work long without being paid. 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. True. You would be surprised in terms of how 

some of our local agencies are more urgent about reimbursement 

than others. 

Ms. NORTON. So you think the problem is at the local level? 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. No. I think the issue with construction projects, 

there is often complex work that has to be completed before you 

can break ground. But my point is that by July 1 of this year, 93 

percent of our projects are expected to be initiated in terms of the 

work will be—the designs will be completed, the ground will be 

broken, and the projects will be moving forward. 

Ms. NORTON. All 68 grants will have ground broken—— 

29 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Yes. 

Ms. NORTON. —by July. That is important. 

Mr. Peck, what is important is we began on—February the bill 

passed. I recognize that some of this period has been the winter, 

but some of it has not been the winter. Part of the spring, of 

course, was the tooling up after we passed the bill. In your case as 

well we have this huge amount. You seem to be on track to, in fact, 

get it spent—excuse me, get it obligated. I am very pleased with, 

after a great deal of trouble, you have done very good work with 

the apprenticeship so that we again begin to see something happening. I congratulate you on that. But of 2.1 billion obligated to 

see only 184 million, which means somebody is being paid, is a 

matter of some concern. 

Mr. PECK. Let me take you through a couple of different kind of 

projects but, first some numbers. We have about 300 projects. We 

have 92 in the construction phase, which means the money is going 

to start to flow. And as I said, by September—right now we are at 

about 10 percent of a ratio of outlays to obligations, actual spending obligations. By September we will be up to 25, 26 percent. 

Ms. NORTON. Are you on track knowing that essentially the 

building period is coming up, it is sort of between late March— 

what is it, a 6-month period or so? You tell me—when if you want 

jobs, both jobs essentially are going to have to be created and on 

the ground in these spring, summer, early fall months? 

Mr. PECK. Depends on the area. We are building a new border 

station in Calexico, and we can go year round, and Calexico gets 

hot, but there is no snow for sure. But you are right, in a lot of 

areas it is seasonal. 

But on a large project, here is what has happened. There has 

been on a—take a large modernization on which we had to hire an 

architect or a large new building, we have had a lot of instances 

in which architects and engineers have worked around the clock to 

finish their designs. When they finish their design, their jobs stop, 

and then there is a little bit of a lag because we produce construction documents, and we go out to bid. It takes a couple of months 

to get people to bid on complex projects. We have done everything 

we can, by the way, to streamline fast track contract awards, and 

it takes a while before the buildings go in the ground. That is one 

issue. 

Second, however, is that while we are doing that, and I think 

this is important to note, we don’t track it. We have been very conservative about what we claim as job retention and job creation so 

that when we award a contract to a contractor, and their people 

know they are going to have a job coming, that contractor can borrow and keep people on the payroll who might have otherwise been 

let go. 

Ms. NORTON. Do you know how many jobs you expect to be created by your portion of the stimulus fund? 

Mr. PECK. By the end it should be around 60,000 jobs. We will 

have about 10,000 by—we changed the way we measure. We are 

doing it quarterly now, not cumulatively. But by the end of September, we will have 10,000 jobs created. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. Time has expired. 

30 

Mr. Brown. 

Mr. BROWN OF SOUTH CAROLINA. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Mr. Secretary, I am really appreciative. South Carolina was one 

of those States that did get a $10 million grant to continue the 

funding from I-73. And I noticed in part of the criteria for the funding, you could use it either as a grant, or you could use it as a subsidy cost, TIFIA credit assistance. Tell me how that works. And I 

guess the States would make that choice, or is part of the funding 

mechanism? Is it direct either/or. 

Mr. PORCARI. It is a very good question, sir. First, as you know, 

there are far more projects than we had funding. I-73 is a good example of a very badly needed but also expensive highway project 

that would be a direct connection to Myrtle Beach. What this does 

is gives the States the option of either using what we call challenge 

grant to either cover the TIFIA subsidy for a TIFIA loan, or to use 

it for any elements of the project financing that they would like to 

fund. The idea would be it can be a catalyst for the financing package for a project of that scope, and we will be flexible with the 

State in how they want to proceed. 

The indications we have gotten from different States on this 

process is they are going to probably approach it different ways, 

but what we wanted to do was give the maximum flexibility and 

use this as the catalyst to get the project going. 

Mr. BROWN OF SOUTH CAROLINA. Do you think—this is sort of 

forward a little bit to look at the job bill that is being created, I 

guess—did the Senate pass it yesterday; is that correct, the job 

bill? 

Mr. PORCARI. Yes. 

Mr. BROWN OF SOUTH CAROLINA. How many dollars’ worth of 

highway funding is going to be in that bill? 

Mr. PORCARI. Thirty-eight billion, I believe. We would presume 

that it would operate essentially the same way that the Recovery 

Act funding did. So the same types of projects would typically be 

available; the time frames would presumably be similar. We are 

geared up and ready to go for it. 

Mr. BROWN OF SOUTH CAROLINA. Well, that means that the 

money will be disbursed back to the States by some kind of formula, or these TIGER grants will actually be allocated by grants? 

Mr. PORCARI. Like the Recovery Act, we would anticipate it 

would work both ways, that the majority would be formula, the 

way the States are used to it now, but there would also be an ability through the TIGER grants to do the same thing that we did 

with these, which is fund projects that do not easily fit into any 

other categories. 

I would point out also that in other fiscal year 2010 funding, 

there will be another round of TIGER grants, $600 million. We expect to award those by the end of this calendar year. So the types 

of projects and some of specific projects that applied for but did not 

get funding in this round could be eligible for the next round. And 

we have been encouraging applicants that were not successful in 

this round to come in for a debriefing so we can maximize their opportunity for this next $600 million. 

31 

Mr. BROWN OF SOUTH CAROLINA. So you will ask for additional 

grants, or you will just be able to use those same grants and go 

back and requalify. 

Mr. PORCARI. They will have to resubmit. We are required to put 

out a separate notice of funding availability, which we are doing. 

Essentially you can take those same applications, strengthen them, 

and again we would encourage people to get a debrief from us and 

then resubmit them. 

Mr. BROWN OF SOUTH CAROLINA. I don’t remember if you remem- ber all the details or not, but that was about a $300 million request 

for I-73. 

Mr. PORCARI. Yes. 

Mr. BROWN OF SOUTH CAROLINA. We were able to get 10 million. 

South Carolina is one of those States, as Mr. Mica mentioned, 12.6 

percent unemployment. In this particular region in the Dillon parts 

of South Carolina, the unemployment was probably approaching 20 

percent. So this would be a win-win for us so we could exceed that 

somehow. 

And one other thing, just a side note, Madam Chair, I know it 

is a different subject, but back in South Carolina we were able to 

create, my Chair, the Ways and Means Committee, what we call 

an infrastructure bank. I know we have been talking about that as 

we go through the reauthorization bill for the next bill highway 

bill. But I don’t know exactly how far you have actually taken a 

look at it, but it seems we need some way to leverage the funding 

we have to maximize the projects to create more jobs. I thought 

that may be another tool we could use. 

Mr. PORCARI. It certainly is another tool, and in the President’s 

budget a proposed infrastructure fund is part of the proposal, an 

infrastructure banklike proposal, which would be another tool in 

the tool box for these projects. Again, on I-73 we do recognize both 

the need and the economic distress of the area. That is a great illustration of a project that would be jobs in the short term and 

then long-term reinvestment from an economic development plan, 

paying off year after year after year. 

Mr. BROWN OF SOUTH CAROLINA. I think it is a window of opportunity in the recovery mode that we find our country in today that 

we spend the money for infrastructure improvement. We know the 

economy is going come back, and we are going have the infrastructure that will move commerce and create jobs in the future. Anyway thank you for your service. 

Mr. PORCARI. We agree, sir. 

Mr. BROWN OF SOUTH CAROLINA. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Brown. 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. I want to piggyback on what Congressman Brown just said, because one of the things about this Committee—and I want to use the disclaimer here that one of the 

things I have enjoyed about being on this Committee is the nature 

of the bipartisanship of this Committee and that we work together. 

And I want to be clear that this administration, the President, the 

Vice President and Secretary LaHood, has worked with this Chairperson and with the Ranking Member as far as high-speed rail is 

concerned. And I want everybody to be clear that they have worked 

32 

with us due diligently. They have come to Florida; they have talked 

to the Florida officials. And I am very pleased that we had transparency as far as the projects are concerned, as high speed is concerned in this country. And I just want to get that on the record 

before we get started. 

And also about the stimulus, let me tell you, because of Mr. 

Oberstar and the hearings that we are having today and the hearings that we have had, we can truly say that we know how the dollars have been spent. We can piggyback on the States that have 

received the dollars and where those dollars are. And Members of 

Congress and to the city council, to every single level, we have been 

able to contact the officials and make them move those dollars out. 

And so I just want to put that on the record. This is bipartisanship. I don’t understand how sometimes the rhetoric break down 

for whatever the moment or the time, but I want to be clear that 

I am very pleased with this administration, and, in fact, I, as 

Chair, am going to have hearings in Florida. We are going to take 

it to Florida and California, but I want to go to two or three cities 

in Florida because we have benefited from high speed, and it is an 

example of how this country can benefit with high speed, and it can 

change the conflicts of this country. 

I mean, 50 years ago when Eisenhower and the Members of Congress decided to do the highway system, that was great for the 

country. Now we are in a new era. All of our competitors are moving forward. I just returned from Germany where you can get on 

a train and you can go 200 miles in less than an hour. That is the 

future of this country, and we need to work together in a bipartisan way and cut down on the rhetoric. 

Now, let us go to Mr. Carper. Would you please tell me—and my 

question—I am very happy with the project that you did in Sanford, Florida—— 

Mr. CARPER. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. —that the President and the Vice President was one of the first announcements that is in both Mr. Mica 

and in my district. Can you tell us how many jobs that is going to 

generate? 

Mr. CARPER. How many specific jobs? I can’t tell you that specifically today, Congresswoman, but I would be happy to get that to 

you very quickly. 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. Well, I can tell you that we are very excited about that project. 

Mr. Peck, one of the things that you talked about—and my question is why is it we don’t do more design build, because basically 

it takes months to plan and then more months to get it out? Why 

can’t we have more demonstrated projects that shown design build, 

because that would actually really put people to work and cut down 

on the number of the amount of time. We have done some of that 

in VA, and I am very pleased with the project. I don’t understand 

why it will take us, let us say, 5 years to build a hospital where 

in the private sector right next door can do it in 18 months. And 

this is a Democrat talking here. 

Mr. PECK. You are talking to a private-sector real estate person, 

too. In our Recovery Act projects, in fact, we are doing a lot of them 

design build because it does speed up the process. The reason I 

33 

think that traditionally we haven’t done them so much is some of 

our projects have had longer lead times, and getting agreement on 

the requirements from agencies are complex. Not a good excuse. 

We are doing a lot more design build. We are also using another 

process called the construction manager is constructor, which also 

allows us to fast-track the design and get a builder on board early 

on so the architects and builders are working together at an early 

stage in the process. 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. So this will help expedite some of these 

projects? 

Mr. PECK. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. Mr. Porcari, tell us something about the 

TIGER grants. We are so happy that we got a billion-plus for the 

initial round, but there will be other rounds with the TIGER 

grants. Tell us for everybody in the room that is interested in the 

TIGER grants, because that was one of the hottest items all over 

the country. Everywhere you went, people had projects that didn’t 

actually fit into certain categories, and so it is a great deal of pentup desire. I think you all received how many applications for a limited amount of money? 

Mr. PORCARI. We received over 1,400 applications, $60 billion 

worth of requests for $1.5 billion worth of funding. 

And you are correct, ma’am, it is a great program in that projects 

that are of regional or national significance that don’t necessarily 

fit in the 108 or so of our stovepipe programs were eligible for this. 

If you look at the awards around the country, these are projects 

that for the most part typically can’t get funded any other way, but 

are critically important from an economic development competitiveness and jobs point of view. 

So we were evaluating things like the condition and performance 

of the existing systems; whether it was highway, freight rail, port 

or any others; livability; environmental sustainability. Those were 

some of the explicit goals that we had in this program. 

And as you point out, there is another round. That was $1.5 billion nationwide. The next round will be $600 million. It will be 

awarded by the end of this calendar year. 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. Thank you all for what you are doing. 

Transportation received less than 4 percent of the money, but we 

generate about 50 percent of the jobs, so thank you again. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you again. 

Mr. Diaz-Balart. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Kind of piggybacking on what Congresswoman Brown said, this 

is one of the pleasures of working on this Committee is the fact 

that it is not partisan. And frankly, this Chairman has been emphatic in making sure the money is well spent. We have to be emphatic because we have seen where some of the stimulus money 

has gone elsewhere; $18 million for a Web page of stimulus money, 

funds going to congressional districts that don’t exist, stimulus 

funds going to political campaign consultants. Now, if that happens 

in another country, we don’t call it waste, we call it corruption. 

But this Committee and this Chairman, Chairman Oberstar, has 

been dead set against letting that happen at least in the area of 

34 

responsibility that the Committee has oversight. And once again I 

need to commend that Chairman and this Committee for that. 

I do want to talk about the TIGER grants. So TIGER grants 

were, again, stimulus money; is that correct? 

Mr. PORCARI. That is correct. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. So it is to stimulate the economy because the 

economy is hurting, and because particularly in some States are 

doing worse than others. 

The State of Florida—I know you have already heard it from Mr. 

Mica—the State of Florida submitted, if I am not mistaken, multiple requests. I believe it was 115 projects requested from Florida 

that included local governments and FDOT. Now, FDOT only requested four projects. Florida, which is in the top 10 of unemployment numbers, received zero money from TIGER; is that correct? 

Mr. PORCARI. That is correct. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. So you could not find one project in Florida, 

not one that qualified for TIGER grants? 

Mr. PORCARI. No, sir. There were worthy projects all over the 

country that did not get funded. As I mentioned, only about 3 percent of the our projects were able to—I would point out that economically distressed areas is something that we paid careful attention to. You previously saw a slide from Mr. Mica of the State unemployment numbers. Especially the large States, the unemployment varies, obviously, in different parts of the State. We were trying to zoom in on the particular pockets of higher distress through 

the economically distressed areas. As I previously testified, 60 percent of the projects went to economically distressed areas. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. I understand that. Is there any debate that 

Florida is in the top 10 of unemployment? 

Mr. PORCARI. No, we are not debating that. It is the lack of 

enough TIGER funding to satisfy the need. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. I understand that. You have a number of 

States, and I am sure they are worthwhile projects. I am not saying they are not worthwhile projects. We have a number of States 

that have much lower unemployment, including lower than the national average, which obviously is very high, that received millions 

of dollars, and Florida, that is the top, top of the Nation as far as 

unemployment, received zero dollars. I mean, tell me how that is 

justified. 

Mr. PORCARI. First you previously heard Florida received a very 

significant high-speed rail grant as part of Recovery Act funding. 

So in addition to the rest of the recovery funding, Florida received 

one of the single largest—— 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Let me stop you there. The other States that 

received high-speed rail, did they also not get any money? 

Mr. PORCARI. The unemployment and economically distressed 

areas, sir, is one of the criteria. It is not the only one. It is a combination of a couple of things. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Correct me if I am wrong. I guess you are trying to justify Florida getting zero because they received high-speed 

rail lines. If that is the case—let us not lose that thought, you 

brought that up—are our States that receive high-speed rail 

money, did they, any of those States, receive zero TIGER grant 

money? 

35 

Mr. PORCARI. I don’t know offhand. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Secretary, again, look, we are adults here. 

If you are going to use that as a justification, and then let us be 

consistent, please. If you are telling me one of the reasons Florida—and by the way, that may be the case, but if you are telling 

me that one of the reasons Florida did not get TIGER grants is because it got high-speed rail, and if then that was the policy—— 

Mr. PORCARI. No, sir, that was not the policy. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. So you are taking that back. 

Mr. PORCARI. No. If I can just clarify, I did not mean to imply 

that States that got high-speed rail grants would not get TIGER 

grants, and that was a criteria. What I did want to point out is 

that in addition to the formula recovery money that Florida got, it 

did get a very significant high-speed rail grant that was awarded 

on the merits. With both the high-speed rail program and the 

TIGER program, we were in the unfortunate position of having far 

more meritorious projects than we could possibly award. 

Economically distressed areas was one of the considerations, and 

it is an important one because both recovery and reinvestment are 

the aims of the bill. I would encourage, and I have had the discussion with your State DOT secretary about this—I would encourage 

the applicants for the new TIGER projects to come and let us go 

through a debriefing on the strengths and weaknesses of the individual proposals so they can maximize their opportunity for the 

next round. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. I appreciate that, Mr. Secretary. I think that 

is a worthwhile exercise, a worthwhile effort, and I am grateful for 

that. I just want to make it very clear for the record, I don’t know 

however you cut it or look at it or whatever justification or whatever criteria, there is no explanation why Florida was not able to 

qualify for one single dollar of TIGER grants. I am sorry, sir. I appreciate the fact that you are willing to look at it and look at their 

proposals and make sure that they are done better, or whatever it 

may be, but there is no justification, absolutely zero justification, 

for Florida to have gotten skunked from TIGER grant money. 

Thank you. 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. [Presiding.] Ms. Brown. 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. I just want to say that I, too, am disappointed that we didn’t get TIGER grants, but if you turn to Florida and you look at every single category, Florida has received significant amounts of taxpayer dollars. And part of the problem, 

when Florida initially received money, it was sitting in Tallahassee, and we had to move it. We were 51, Mr. Chairman. If you had 

not brought it to our attention—it is only 50 States—in the States 

using the transportation dollars, 51 out of 50 States. So if we didn’t 

move it—and once we got on top of it because of your leadership, 

Florida became 36. 

So it is not like money is not sitting in Tallahassee. They need 

to move it out into the community. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. It is a State implementation program. 

Mr. Michaud is next. 

Mr. MICHAUD. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

36 

Mr. Secretary, first of all, I want to thank the Department of 

Transportation for getting the money out quick, as you have heard, 

the infrastructures funding, although the stimulus package actually has been one of the ones that has been able to get the most 

out and had a big impact. 

In your testimony you said that the President made clear in the 

State of the Union Address that his number one priority in 2010 

is accelerating job creation, the pace of job creation. Transportation 

is an important part of his plan to put Americans back to work, 

and he urged Congress to consider supporting a jobs bill. That is 

great, and as you heard, the Chairman and others Members of this 

Committee were very concerned of the fact that the same administration requested an 18-month delay in the transportation reauthorization. And when you look at the impact that the stimulus 

money would have had, it would have been a greater impact. However, having talked to contractors, they actually put on hold purchasing equipment, decided to pay overtime versus hiring new people because they are concerned whether it is 18 months, might be 

24, might be 36 months. 

I am concerned of the fact that some of the individuals surrounded by the administration—I know Chairman Oberstar mentioned Larry Summers, which is not—he has not been very supportive of infrastructure funding. How committed is the administration in creating jobs—although it is a year late—but how committed are they in creating jobs, and if they are so committed, why 

aren’t they really aggressively moving to get Congress, which we 

are prepared in the House, to pass the transportation reauthorization bill? That is a job-creation bill. 

Mr. PORCARI. Sir, one very important part, from the transportation perspective probably the single most important part, of the 

Senate jobs bill is an extension of the surface transportation authorization until the end of this calendar year. That starts to provide the kind of certainty and predictability that you illustrate. 

I would also mention, because it needs clarification, I believe, 

there is a difference in the Recovery Act funding between outlays 

and obligation. And the important part is obligation, because we 

work on a reimbursable basis, the obligation is when the job starts, 

it is when the work starts. We are reimbursing when the work is 

done. This is like buying a new automobile. You don’t pay the manufacturer to build it. They build it, they deliver it, you test-drive 

it, and then you pay for it. 

So, the jobs, the investment are up front. The Federal reimbursement is at the back of the process. 

Mr. MICHAUD. You talked about predictability. I understand 

what the Senate did on their bill. They are going to have part of 

the funding similar to the TIGER. We heard some concern with the 

administration giving out TIGER grants and some other accusation 

as it relates to that. Do you think for predictability it is better for 

all the transportation funding to run through the funding formula, 

for predictability? 

Mr. PORCARI. I think that the TIGER grant process in particular 

has shown that there is a value for both, especially merit-based 

projects that don’t fit within one of our existing formulas and typically can’t be funded any other way. One illustration in the TIGER 

37 

grant awards you saw last week would be our freight-rail capacity 

projects, where it is incredibly important from an economic development perspective for the Nation, but it can’t get funded any 

other way. A program like TIGER is the only way we are going to 

be able to make those investments. So the combination of formula 

funds which the States and our other recipients know and are good 

at getting projects out the door and then merit-based projects like 

TIGER for some of the ones that don’t fit in those categories is actually a good combination. 

Mr. MICHAUD. Mr. Carper, you mentioned the money that your 

company or Amtrak is putting for new locomotives and what have 

you. A couple of questions. One is that I was reading a newspaper 

article where 80 percent of the money has gone to foreign manufacturing for the wind turbines. Is all your funding here locally? That 

is my first question. 

And for those that belong or are part of the administration, also 

reading an article this last week where the U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk is encouraging Mexico to sign on to the government 

procurement agreement so that Mexico can actually have access to 

some of the stimulus funding which was intended to create jobs 

here in the U.S. 

One question to Mr. Carper and for those involved in the administration, isn’t the administration coordinating what is happening, 

or are you going to encourage other countries to access the stimulus money? 

Mr. CARPER. Thank you, Congressman. 

First of all, the 80 vehicles that I mentioned and the locomotives 

are all in the rebuild mode, so we are reconstructing those, but certainly Amtrak is certainly going to comply with the Buy American 

component. That has been a great deal of conversation about that, 

and we are committed to doing that. We are hopeful it will be the 

genesis for restarting a big manufacturing base for rail. 

If I might, I want to make sure that one thing is clear. That has 

to do with the transparency, and, Congressman, if you can bear 

with me, it will probably speak to the question that you have. I 

want to make sure that I make it very clear that the $1.3 billion— 

and in there, if you go on our Web site, you will be able to see 

where we are spending every one of those dollars. There was a reference earlier about some other projects, that while those projects 

will be on our service and our lines, the money is not coming to 

Amtrak, and so it is not reflected on our website. But the money 

that comes directly to Amtrakis shown—we are very proud of our 

transparency, and I want to make sure that we made that point 

that our transparency on our Web site is first rate. So I hope that 

answers your question. 

Mr. MICHAUD. And, Mr. Chairman, I noticed the administration 

officials are silent on that issue about job creation. If they want to 

submit it to the record, Mr. Chairman. Because my concern is the 

President has been talking about job creation here at home; we 

have heard the panel here talk about what good that the stimulus 

package has done for Americans. But, by the same token, you have 

part of the administration encouraging Mexico to sign on to the 

Government Procurement Agreement under the WTO so they can 

get around the Buy American provision. So you have one hand sayVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:46 Jul 20, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00135 Fmt 6602 Sfmt 6602 P:\DOCS\55031.0 KAYLA
38 

ing one thing; another hand is encouraging countries to access out 

what is remaining of our stimulus package. And that is a big concern. 

If they can’t answer it today, if they could provide the Committee 

with their answer of why they are encouraging other countries to 

access the stimulus funding. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. We certainly expect answers to those questions. 

And the fundamental principle of the Buy American Act goes 

back to the 1930s. In fact, it was enacted in 1930. And it was rigorously enforced by Roosevelt in the WPA. And we simply reverted 

to this principle, re-enforced this principle in the stimulus. These 

are U.S. tax dollars. The purpose of the programs is to put Americans to work and use American materials in this product. 

The Chinese are not hiring Americans. They are not buying 

American materials in their $580 billion stimulus program. Nor 

have the Japanese, nor have the South Koreans, nor has the European community. France has a $47 billion stimulus program; they 

are not out here looking to buy American equipment or materials 

to put into their stimulus programs. 

And in other areas, other arenas, fine, that is a different matter. 

But the purpose of this program is use American tax dollars to put 

Americans to work. 

Mr. PECK. Mr. Chairman, may I answer, too, by saying, in some 

cases and, as you know, under Buy American under the Recovery 

Act, we can buy foreign goods if we don’t have American goods—— 

Mr. OBERSTAR. There are exceptions in the law that are specified 

particularly, and there is a process by which you have to proceed 

to resolve those matters. 

Mr. PECK. Correct. And I think one of the—for us at GSA, I can 

tell you that one of the things that we think is an opportunity we 

have been given in the Recovery Act is to buy some green building 

products in the kind of bulk in which we can help make the market 

for American manufacturers to start making them. There have 

been cases where we haven’t found an American manufacturer. We 

have been approached by some who have said if we can buy enough 

of their product, they will be able to set up a plant here. And we 

are hoping to have a couple of those successes to report to you. 

Mr. MICHAUD. I agree. And the whole idea—and I understand, 

like the Chairman said, there are provisions if we can’t buy it here. 

But for the administration to be encouraging countries that do not 

qualify under GPA to become qualified so they can go after the 

stimulus money is wrong. No two ways about it, it is wrong, dead 

wrong. 

Mr. PORCARI. Mr. Chairman, if I may, I just want to make clear 

for the transportation part of the stimulus program, Buy American 

has applied from the beginning. We have granted no waivers that 

did not meet the statutory criteria. We had one transit project that 

actually started discussing that. We made it clear that the project 

would not go forward if that was the case. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. You are hearing it straight from the Members of 

the Committee. 

The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. Cao? 

39 

Mr. CAO. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank you 

for the support that you have shown, especially to the States and, 

more particularly, to the city of New Orleans in this recovery process. I know that you have been a strong advocate of high-speed 

rail. 

And that would be the first question that I would ask Secretary 

Porcari. Will there be a second-round application for high-speed 

rail? 

And, first of all, before you answer, I would like to thank the secretary for—or at least the decision to provide New Orleans with 

$45 million in TIGER funding. I would like to thank him for coming down to New Orleans to take a look at the city’s streetcar system and recognizing that it is a vital part of the city and to the 

economic recovery of the city. 

So, if you can answer my question about the second-round application for high-speed rail. 

Mr. PORCARI. Yes, sir. First, on the TIGER streetcar grant for 

New Orleans, that is a great example of both economic stimulus 

and livability and how those fit together in a long-term investment 

that will help the country. 

Yes, there will be a second round of high-speed rail grants. We 

will be working directly with the applicants on that. We look forward to that, knowing that the high-speed rail program in the Recovery Act was the first step, an important first step, but just the 

first step for what will be a nationwide, comprehensive high-speed 

rail network. 

Mr. CAO. Can you provide me with the time with respect to when 

the second-round application will be requested? 

Mr. PORCARI. Yes. In rough terms, we anticipate making the 

awards prior to the end of this calendar year for those. The criteria 

and some of the specifics on that we will be happy to get to you. 

They are being developed right now. 

Mr. CAO. And it will be from the stimulus money so that there 

won’t be any matching requirements from the States? 

Mr. PORCARI. These will actually be 80-20. They will require a 

20 percent match. These are post-stimulus dollars. 

Mr. CAO. Okay. Thank you. 

Mr. Hooks, I have noticed that you have been sitting there very 

quiet, and I don’t want to leave you out of the conversation. And 

my question to you is, how many jobs have been created through 

the EPA stimulus funding? And how many of those jobs go to, for 

example, inspectors who go out to sites and to inspect sites? 

Mr. HOOKS. I cannot necessarily break down the precise nature 

of what those jobs are. Right now we estimate about 6,800 jobs 

have been produced or created or retained at this point in time 

based on recipient reporting. 

Mr. CAO. Well, Mr. Hooks, I would like to put some of those 

6,800 people to work. There is a church in Norcross, Georgia. It is 

a Vietnamese-American church. It serves about 1,100 families. 

There is a waste transfer plant that is about to be built right next 

to the church. If I were a student looking out the window, I would 

be looking straight at the waste transfer station. 

So I have no idea where the Federal jurisdiction is, but it seems 

to me that there is an environmental issue if there is a waste 

40 

transfer station right next to a fully functional, operating church. 

So if you can have your people look into that for me, I would really 

appreciate it. 

Mr. HOOKS. We would be happy to follow up on that. 

Mr. CAO. If you can have your staff contact my staff, we can give 

you the information and you can send people out. 

Mr. HOOKS. I would appreciate that. We will. Thank you. 

Mr. CAO. And, Ms. Darcy, this question has really nothing to do 

with the stimulus jobs, but there is an issue that is being raised 

in the Second District and also in the adjacent congressional district. Recently, a Federal judge issued a judgment after trial holding the Army Corps of Engineers responsible for the floodings in 

St. Bernard Parish, as well as in the Lower Ninth Ward. 

And the question that many of my constituents have asked of me 

to ask you is whether or not the Army Corps of Engineers planned 

to pay on the judgment. What is the Army Corps’s plan to do? 

Ms. DARCY. Because of the nature of this ongoing litigation, it is 

not something that I can address at this time. The Department of 

Justice is still looking at that decision. 

Mr. CAO. Okay. 

That is all the questions I have, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Cao. 

Mrs. Napolitano? Oh, you have—Ms. Richardson? 

Ms. RICHARDSON. Thank you. 

That was very kind of you, Mrs. Napolitano. 

Mr. Porcari, first of all, I want to say, thank you for being here, 

and all of our folks who have testified today. And, Mr. Porcari, I 

had an opportunity for you to come to my district, which I greatly 

appreciate. 

I would like to build on Ms. Norton’s request that this Committee 

would receive a report or a map or something that gives us an 

overlay based upon what projects have actually been funded and 

how that relates to the unemployment and the economic-understressed areas. I remember Ms. Edwards and I, when we first 

talked about supporting the stimulus package, many of us talked 

about having the commitment that the dollars were going to go into 

the unemployment areas. 

And also, the second question that I wanted to ask that wasn’t 

in your testimony and we talked about last time that we would get 

this time and I don’t see it, and that is: What new contractors have 

been able to now play in this arena that were not currently working at the time when this all started? 

And I know there has been a big play on words of whether it is 

jobs that were sustained versus jobs that were created. But if all 

we did out of this whole process of over $800 billion is only to ensure that the people who were already working got to work a few 

more hours, that certainly was not my objective. 

So, if you could—and this is my second time requesting this— 

that the report that would come to this Committee at our next 

meeting would include the information of what new contractors, 

minority contractors in particular, have been able to gain employment, gain contracts in light of all of this money that came out, 

and then also a record of how this overlays economically with unemployment in the economically distressed areas. 

41 

Mr. PORCARI. We will do that. We will need to get the contractor 

information from the recipients, but we will work with them to do 

that. 

[The information follows:] 

42 


Insert offset folio 96 here 55031.096
43 

Ms. RICHARDSON. Okay. 

My next point is, I noticed I was a little surprised in your testimony, it gave a recap of what has happened with the money, but 

it didn’t really talk about lessons learned. And because I unfortunately only have 3 minutes and the next thing I need to talk about 

is pretty important, I would just like to ask that you would forward 

to the Committee, okay, in light of what we did with the stimulus, 

if we were to do something again, what would be some of the key 

things that you have now heard out across the country that would 

enable us to spend the money in the best way? 

And let me give you a couple examples. I have heard in my community that because of the way that the language was written, 

there has been a greater focus on short-term projects versus longterm projects because it had to be shovel-ready. Well, you know, 

yeah, we have done a lot of paving, but there were some other very 

key projects that needed to get done that couldn’t get done because 

it was going to take longer. Also, there was an issue about funding 

being allowed for design and some of these things. So I would just 

be very curious to hear what you have learned as you have been 

going out and about, and if you could supply it to this Committee. 

Finally, I would like to actually chime in to my colleague from 

Florida. I was a little disappointed with the TIGER allocations. 

And not only am I going to request my particular area to get a debriefing, I would like to get a debriefing. Because I, to be very 

frank with you, sir, I find it hard to understand how you can fund 

port communities, fund goods movement throughout the United 

States, and yet fail to fund the largest one in the United States. 

It doesn’t make sense. And so, I would like to have a real serious 

conversation to understand what was the criteria, how things were 

determined to be selected, and what we need to do moving forward. 

I believe, as a Member of Congress, we are a part of the U.S. 

House of Representatives. So when you came and you did the tour, 

I made sure that you went to the Colton Crossing because I believe 

I have, as a Member of this Committee, just as much obligation to 

support Mrs. Napolitano as I do Mr. Baca and so on. And I applaud 

what was done. I have no problems with the ones that were picked, 

particularly in California. I think they were right on. But I think 

there were some others that should have been done, as well, in addition to that. And I think it is glaringly a problem. 

It further alarms me when I hear your comment about highspeed rail, because when you come from a State like California, 

okay, California, yeah, we got $2.3 billion, but the route is from, 

for example, Anaheim to Los Angeles. So even though that is right 

next-door to me, that is still not—so if you are looking at, well, 

okay, LA got X amount and so we now need to do some over here, 

it is not necessarily reflective. And we need to make sure whoever 

is making these decisions understands the map, because it doesn’t 

make sense. 

And, with that, I have 2 seconds. So I look forward to speaking 

to you. 

Mr. PORCARI. Thank you. We will be happy to do the debriefing 

and talk about the project criteria. I will say again, both high-speed 

rail and the TIGER grant process, merit-based process, overVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:46 Jul 20, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00141 Fmt 6602 Sfmt 6602 P:\DOCS\55031.0 KAYLA
44 

whelming demand, and we look forward to the next rounds of 

them. 

If I can just spend one moment, if I may, ma’am, on the lessons 

learned. One, clearly, is reporting requirements, streamlining 

them, because the States, in particular, had multiple reports they 

had to put together. It turned into a bit of an administrative burden. 

The other comment that you made, which I think is a very important one, is about the short-term resurfacing-type projects 

versus longer-term. I think of the Recovery Act as a three-stage 

rocket, and what you saw in the beginning, in the first 120 days, 

were the easy, already-permitted projects that you could get out 

the door, which tended to be resurfacing. The next 120 days and 

leading up to now, you tended to see and we are seeing now much 

more complicated, much more expensive projects coming on line 

that were close but not ready to go to bid in the first 120 days. And 

then, finally, the third stage of that rocket really is the things like 

the TIGER grants and the high-speed rail, which have a longer 

time frame, typically, than the other two parts I just described but 

will really pay off in the future. 

Ms. RICHARDSON. Thank you, sir. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Let’s see. Mrs. Napolitano, you are next. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. And thank 

you for allowing me to yield over to Ms. Richardson. 

I have a lot of questions and probably will have to be in writing, 

but the first one is to Ms. Darcy. 

You have great people in LA. Colonel Magness works beautifully 

on the Whittier Narrows. And that is one of the areas that I wanted to bring up. Because, in November of last year, I handed you 

a letter in regard to the ability to be able to raise the additional 

three feet in the conservation pool. I haven’t heard anything. There 

has been some kind of a delay at headquarters, your headquarters, 

in being able to allow the county to move forward with that. It 

would allow for probably 1,100 acre-feet to be retained in that pool 

for replenishment for the basin. And I have a copy of it; I will give 

it to you. 

But I certainly would want to make sure that that moves forward so that that can be done. It would save a lot of water, and 

given California’s drought situation. So, thank you very much for 

that. And I won’t belabor it. I know you work great with us in our 

area. 

To Mr. Peck on GSA, the areas in my district that have been 

working with GSA includes the Norwalk Tank Farm, which is an 

area that is contaminated. It would be nice to be able to have the 

government release that contamination site, continue to clean it up, 

but be able to have some of that money be able to be in the pocket 

of GSA and the government for use in other areas. And I don’t 

want to follow up on that right now, but I would like to maybe 

speak to you on that. 

And, Mr. Porcari, the grade separations, as part of the TIGER 

grants, as you well know, the Alameda Corridor going straight to 

my district is a—even Mr. Chair has deemed it of national significance, a corridor of national significance. Yet those separations— 

45 

there are 54 going through my district, which bring in all the 40, 

50 percent of the Nation’s goods to the rest of the country. Those 

are project-ready, ready to go. They have already done most of the 

work. Yet we have very limited funds to be able to get that. 

Now, the railroads need to be forced, and hopefully someday we 

will be able to put into effect laws that will require them to put 

more funding into participation of grade separations, because they 

benefit in getting the goods on time delivered to the rest of the Nation. 

Those are some of the things that I have in mind. The high-speed 

rail, I love it. And I am sorry, Ms. Brown, great job. California is 

getting a lot of funding for that. And like Ms. Richardson was stating, it is going through, yet there is very few—I had to force the 

issue with the High Speed Rail Authority to sit with the locals, especially in my area because a lot of it goes through my area, to be 

able to determine whether, are they talking eminent domain? Have 

they purchased the right of ways? Which they have not. Have they 

talked to the locals about the ability to go through the communities? The cities are saying, no, you are not. So, while they may 

have plans, they are going to run into legal objections from the 

communities they plan to go through. 

And I certainly have some concerns and some issues, but I wanted to sit and discuss with somebody and bring the people who are 

actually going to be affected to the table, so that there is at least 

an understanding of what—if they want to go through it, fine. I 

need mass transit. I really don’t need high-speed rail in my area. 

I need to move my masses. There is 12 million people in LA County 

alone that need to go to work. And we only have bus transit. And, 

as you well know, you have one accident and you have a tie-up. 

So those are just mostly comments that I want to be able to be 

sure that we look at. I have just recently heard that the cost of 

going from San Francisco to LA was deemed to be 55. It has now 

gone to 105. And this is just mere—how would I say—speculation, 

because it is not built yet. 

I just want to ensure—and I need the dialogue on the right-ofway issues and maybe have somebody come to my district and talk 

to the communities involved. They have done an MOU with the 

High Speed Rail Authority, but we have no idea where they are 

moving forward, because, as Ms. Richardson is stating, it goes from 

LA—it doesn’t go through our districts, in many areas. 

Comments, very quickly? Do any of you request from your contractors information about how many jobs have been created with 

them? Because we—I hear it in my district, people saying, well, we 

have gotten jobs developed out of the stimulus money, but yet I 

have no idea where those jobs are coming from. And if you would 

request your contractors to report to you how many jobs have been 

developed, it would be very helpful, because we keep hearing that 

there is no job development. 

The other area in the lessons learned is, we are going to have 

10,000 veterans coming home starting in March, 10,000 a month, 

throughout the United States. Are you making any provisions for 

them to be hired first? Because right now one of the highest homeless population is women veterans. I take great exception to that. 

46 

They have served this country; they need to be able to be put to 

work so they can be able to get back into society. 

Another one would be the projections of some of these projects, 

because everybody wants to be able to bid on projects. Have you 

determined if there is any excess money left over from projects 

done to be able to be put into new projects because they are not 

going to use it? I am hearing this from some of my water projects 

in my Subcommittee. And those are things I think this Committee 

would like to know. If you are, then what can we do to be able to 

alert some of the communicates that have high unemployment or 

that have a greater need to be able to move projects forward that 

are already on line, that can move forward? I wouldn’t say 30-day 

shovel-ready, but at least maybe a 6-month period. 

And, with that, Mr. Chair, I have gone over my time. Thank you 

for your indulgence. 

And I certainly would like to hear some answers if anybody is 

willing to comment. 

Mr. PORCARI. Ma’am, I would love to. 

Starting with where you ended, the money left over from low 

bids on projects, we have experienced that in our recovery projects 

across the board. The States’ transit authorities and aviation eligible projects have been able to recycle that money and put additional projects out. 

One example: We originally thought we would do about 300 airport improvement projects. We have done 360 because of the good 

bids. So the money is going right back out for additional projects. 

I believe my colleagues are actually doing the same. And that is 

true across the board. 

I will be very happy to convene a meeting with the High Speed 

Rail Authority on the issues that you brought up. I would point 

out, we have been pushing the applicants on high-speed rail very 

hard, in this case the California High Speed Rail Authority, to get 

their act together in the sense of working with all of the stakeholders, working as regions, not as specific areas, not working as 

one State where they cross State boundaries. The successful applicants are the ones that are actually doing a good job with that. So 

your point is well-taken. I will be happy to set that up. 

And then, finally, if I may, on the Colton Crossing project, I 

think what it shows, more than anything else, is how dire the 

needs are for those improvements. And for those not familiar with 

this project, this is a freight rail improvement where two major 

Class 1 railroads intersect. And when you have 40 percent of the 

Nation’s imports coming through that one very small pipeline, it is 

a critically needed improvement. 

The at-grade crossings that you mentioned are also critically 

needed, but I think it illustrates, more than anything else, how far 

behind we are in our infrastructure. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Thank you. 

Mr. CARPER. Congresswoman, if I might, we do track the jobs. 

We do it in work hours. And we do that consistently, and that is 

reflected on our Web site. 

And I would like to make the comment, also, that Amtrak has 

been longing for so long to have capital funds that, if we had the 

ability to move it, if bids come in under, et cetera, we are certainly 

47 

putting it to good use. So I think you can be assured of that. And 

we would be happy to talk to you further on that. 

Thank you. 

Ms. DARCY. If I might address your concern about our returning warriors, we are using $3 million of ARRA money to train returning veterans in what is called our Veterans Curation Project. We 

are training them to have skills to do digitization and other skills 

to help us in our archeological cataloging. We have an ongoing 

project now in Augusta, Georgia, one in St. Louis, and now one 

here in Washington, D.C. We are hoping that this kind of project 

can get additional funding—and we are looking toward next year’s 

budget to try to provide additional funds for that. 

Mr. PECK. And, finally, if I might, on contract job reporting, we 

are by the White House Recovery Act Office required to have our 

contractors tell us how many jobs they are creating. As I said before, the rules under which they do that are really stringent and 

very conservative. And, really, they have to have actually been paid 

for a job by us before they can report it. So when they hire people 

in anticipation of payment, they are not reporting those jobs yet. 

And that may be why you are hearing some people saying, ′′I think 

I have a job because of the stimulus program, the Recovery Act,′′ 

and we are not reporting it yet. 

Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Mr. Chair, I would like to have this Committee maybe have a report on some of those figures that the administration has but we may not have them at our disposal. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. We have included in our 30-day reports all of the 

information that comes to us directly, comes to this Committee directly from State DOTs and from other participating Federal agencies. And if there is any additional information that they have, we 

will, through the course of this hearing, request that to be included 

and distributed to all Members. 

Mr. Hare? 

Mr. HARE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And, Chairman Carper, welcome to the hearing. I didn’t get a 

chance to introduce you, which I would have loved to have done. 

You are the former mayor of Macomb, which is in my district. And 

I just want to say for the record, they couldn’t have picked a better 

person to do this. And I worked with you and I worked with your 

predecessor on Amtrak and the importance of fully funding it. And 

you are right, it is nice to be able to see that, you know, we are 

starting to actually invest in passenger rail. And I am a strong proponent of that. 

I may want to ask the panel for some help on this. I don’t know 

if you can do this for me, Mr. Chairman, but we—and I appreciate 

the high-speed rail that was announced for Illinois. And the Governor, as you know, of our State put $45 million into the Quad Cities, to Chicago passenger rail. And that came through an investment, which I think infrastructure is an incredibly great investment to put people back to work. We are short about $4 million or $5 million on the depot end of 

it, where they want to put the depot at. And I don’t know who I 

should talk to, so I guess I am asking you maybe for some assistance, or maybe you could have whoever I need to talk to talked to. 

Because this is, by the way, going to put 800 people to work, and 

48 

it is ready to go. It will be huge. We are going to build a new Western Illinois University campus. Young people are going to come 

from Chicago. As you know, they go to Western Illinois now, in 

Macomb, Illinois. So any help that I can, you know, work with the 

staffs on, I would generally love that. 

But let me just say, you know, I think you have done a wonderful 

job here. And putting people back to work is great. So I guess that 

is more of a plea to get some help here. 

But, you know, I just wanted to ask you, Mr. Porcari, you said there is $38 billion, you think, in the Senate bill. The Chairman 

came to my district, and we had young people—I think you remember, Mr. Chairman—with T-shirts on, on a highway. It is US-34. 

And we all have in our districts terrible, terrible highways. But 

here young people came to lunch to meet with the Chairman; they 

had these shirts. This is a highway that has a curve that goes right 

around the high school. And eventually—it is going to happen. I 

mean, it is not a question of if; it is going to be when. If we don’t 

get this thing fixed, what we are going to have—and I think you 

know, Chairman Carper, where we are talking about here—you 

know, you are going to have this school getting rammed into while 

these kids are in school. 

What is the process of applying for the funds? What can Illinois 

do? Because I have two that are very, very dangerous. And my fear 

is, if we don’t get these things moving quickly, we are going to read 

about something in the paper. And, again, you know, I want to be 

very proactive on this, and I don’t exactly know how to do it, so 

any help I can get, again, would be great. 

Mr. PORCARI. Congressmen, first up, I need to apologize. The 

version of the jobs bill that was passed yesterday has a surface 

transportation extension until the end of this calendar year. It does 

not have, any longer, that additional funding. What it does bring 

us, though, is that consistency and predictability. So the existing 

formula funding for every State through the surface transportation 

bill would be extended through the end of this year. 

I need to also caveat that by just reminding the Subcommittee 

that the Highway Trust Fund will need a cash infusion sometime 

this late spring for it to continue to be viable. So I think you are 

speaking to the larger need that is out there that we are currently 

struggling to fund. 

Mr. HARE. Well, I worked hard to get on this Committee, and the 

reason I did was because, as I said earlier, I believe that investing 

in infrastructure, you know, particularly when we are in a recession—but we have got—you know, 20 years to go, the president of 

the iron workers said, you know, X number percent of bridges were 

in dire need. And, so far, I think, only a very handful of those in 

20 years have even been touched. 

And this Chairman has worked tirelessly to try to get a 

multiyear highway bill, reauthorization bill. And I am not going to, 

and I know he won’t—but anything we can do. And I would hope 

that you would let the President know that this is huge for the 

American people. Because we cannot piecemeal this, I believe. You 

just simply cannot piecemeal it. 

And when you take a look at the moneys that have been spent 

by the government on some things that people find a little bit 

49 

testy—$750 billion for banks—and yet we are having a very tough 

time funding the Inland Waterway Trust Fund, we are having a 

tough time getting a multiyear highway bill, the kinds of money 

that Chairman Carper would love to have so we could expand Amtrak, you know, those are all things that I think, if we are going 

to get this economy moving again, that is how we are going to do 

it. And a little bit here and a little bit there I think really doesn’t 

get to where we need to go. 

And Congressman Michaud just was mentioning—I don’t know if 

he is still here; no, he left. But, you know, here again, if we are 

going to make these railcars—you know, I have an empty factory 

in Galesburg, Illinois, a former Maytag plant that was outsourced 

to Reynosa, Mexico, due to NAFTA. We would love to make them 

there. So if anybody is interested in a wonderful facility in Galesburg, Illinois—aren’t you glad I am here today? 

But these cars and these kinds of things need to be made here. 

And, you know, we are going to insist, from my end of it. I will be 

livid if we find out that we take taxpayers’ money and we send it 

to other countries to manufacture stuff when we are sitting here 

in Illinois, 11.1, and the gentleman from Florida talked about the 

unemployment rate there. So anything that we can do to do that. 

But just to give you one final example. Mr. Chairman, on this 

Chicago thing, to repeat it, 800 jobs are going to be created. And 

I just have to conclude by saying—everybody has gone over their 

time limit—I must be living in a different time warp here. Because 

I hear people talking about how the stimulus hasn’t put anybody 

to work or saved a job or done anything. And for those people who 

are doing it, either I am on the wrong planet or I don’t know where 

they are getting their figures from. Because, quite frankly, we are 

seeing a number of things that—and a number of good things. 

And if the Chairman has his way, and I hope he will, with the 

surface transportation bill, we can get this country back moving together and we can actually start repairing bridges. My fear is, I 

don’t want to see a repeat of what happened in Minneapolis. But 

sometimes, you know, people say to me, ′′Well, that is the way Congress reacts. It has to be horrible before anything gets done.′′ So, 

whatever you can encourage the administration to do. And I would 

be happy to—I am sorry I went over and I went on a rant here a 

little bit—but, you know, whatever you could do to get the message 

and to move this. I will work with anybody here. 

Mr. PORCARI. Congressman, those are some great points. If I can 

just address one, because I know we are out of time. 

On high-speed rail, the American manufacturing component of it 

is critical to us. Secretary LaHood called together the existing and 

potential manufacturers basically to tell them that the Buy American Act is the floor, not the ceiling, that we expect more of them 

in this. 

And we have, coming out of that, we have commitments from 30 

manufacturers, all different parts of the supply chain, that they are 

either going to locate or expand in America if they get business as 

a part of high-speed rail. 

It is that kind of bully pulpit and raising the expectations that 

I think we can do up front and that we are very, very focused on. 

50 

Mr. CARPER. Mr. Chairman, I know we are late, but I would like 

to respond to Congressman Hare. 

And thank you for the kind words. 

The project that you are speaking of, Congressman, is an example of what we are seeing around the country in certain areas—and 

I am sorry that the congressman from Maine is not here—is the 

development that is coming in around stations, whether it be in Illinois or Maine or California or Florida or wherever. I mean, transit-oriented development is a given, and it is starting to happen 

with passenger rail. 

The example here, however, is development that is waiting for 

two major projects to happen. One is a university expansion, and 

the other is the expansion of passenger rail. And those jobs may 

not get equated as we are reporting them there, but it is happening 

around the country, and we fully support it. 

We have been working very hard with the folks in the Quad Cities and on into Iowa, I might add. And we will follow up with your 

staff on the depot situation and any projects that might be available. 

Mr. HARE. Thank you very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Hare. 

Now, Ms. Edwards. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I thank all of our witnesses today for your patience. 

I have just a couple of areas of inquiry, because I agree with Mr. 

Hare and with so many of us here on this Committee. Infrastructure—we have long-term, major infrastructure needs in this country: water and sewer, transportation. There is not a dime that 

would be spent on infrastructure that wouldn’t pay off in jobs right 

now and in true economic growth for the future. So it seems like 

a no-brainer. I don’t know why we are even wrestling with what 

we need to do here, but we are. 

But I do have some concerns. I am looking at the Buy American 

provisions. And, particularly, Mr. Hooks, I wonder if you could respond. I know that the EPA has issued 25 regional waivers. There 

was a nationwide waiver that was announced for June and then 

updated in August. And I wonder if you can tell me what that 

means in terms of dollars gone and jobs for the waivers that have 

been issued. Because I am really concerned that we have some 

gaps in Buy American that we really do need to close. 

And then I wonder if any of you have any comments, particularly 

Mr. Peck, about how we could actually strengthen Buy American 

with respect to services. I look at things like high-speed rail, for example, where some of the design services and stuff could easily be 

taken offshore because that is, kind of, where a lot of the work is. 

And so I don’t want to, you know, make these major investments 

and then, both on the service and the goods end, see American taxpayer dollars that aren’t used to buy American and build American. 

So I want comments on that. 

Mr. HOOKS. Let me respond to the Buy American question that 

you asked. We actually have issued 43 project-specific waivers at 

this point in time and four national waivers, a de minimus waiver 

51 

for minor components of various pieces of equipment that is necessary to be purchased. In my opinion, I think that is actually a 

fairly small number, 43 projects out of approximately about 3,200. 

I don’t—— 

Ms. EDWARDS. What does that mean in terms of dollar amounts 

and jobs? 

Mr. HOOKS. In terms of dollar amounts and jobs, I don’t have an 

algorithm that would give me that specific figure. We would have 

to do a little bit more prep, a little bit more research. And we could 

supply that for you at a later point in time. 

I can assure you that, at least in the conversations that we have 

been having, at least, with the recipients and with our States, our 

primary objective has been to purchase our products here in America. But, in some instances, due to historical purchases of equipment for entities that wanted to replace equipment that have previously purchased foreign-manufactured goods, in those instances 

we have granted a few waivers for replacement parts and things 

of that nature. 

With every request, they are specifically investigated to ensure 

there are no American manufacturers that could produce the same 

piece of equipment. In the event that we do have a manufacturer 

that does come forward, we actually make that information known 

across the country in the event that there is another entity or another waste management district, if you will, that also wanted to 

purchase a similar piece of equipment, to make sure that they are 

aware of what their potential capabilities are of these American 

companies. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Mr. Peck? 

Mr. PECK. Well, I can say, on the building side of GSA, the major 

services that we try to acquire—building maintenance services, 

cleaning services, even architectural engineering services—there 

are an abundance, fortunately, of American suppliers and contractors to do it. And so I have to say, in our Recovery Act work, I am 

unaware of any instance in which we have had to go somewhere 

else. And there are opportunities, but, for one reason or another— 

there are certainly great architects in other countries, but we have 

great architects here, and that is who we have been hiring to do 

the work. 

As I said before, my concern and something that I think the Recovery Act funding will allow us to overcome is that there are some 

aspects of sustainable design and development in which, right now, 

you have to use foreign components. And there, too, as I said, we 

are having active conversations with American suppliers in talking 

about how can we order enough from them to get them to on-shore 

their production. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Well, part of the challenge is we want them to 

know that it is a long-term investment. I mean, there is no incentive for them to bring work back on shore or bring it on shore if 

they don’t know that we have a long-term commitment. 

Before my time runs out, I do—well, it has probably already run 

out, but, Mr. Chairman, if you would indulge me for just a moment? 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Your time has not run out. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you. 

52 

I want to get to a question about the disadvantaged business 

participation. Because I have had this inquiry, and I know others 

on the Committee have, as well. And I know that we have a 10 percent aspirational goal. But what I don’t see is, sort of, State by 

State, what are States really doing? How do you keep track of that, 

Deputy Secretary Porcari? 

And it concerns me that we also, with Mr. Cummings’s and the 

Chairman’s help, allocated additional bonding authority, but only 

five applications, $50,000 out of $20 million—what are we doing to 

make sure that people even know that that authority is available 

so that disadvantaged businesses can take advantage of the bonding authority? 

And then, again, how are we really meeting that 10 percent aspirational goals? Because those are huge complaints that have come 

out of my district and within our State. 

Mr. PORCARI. I think those are excellent questions, and we have 

heard some of the same questions. 

One of the advantages of using the existing mechanisms and relationships and policies with the States in the Recovery Act is that 

the States and grant recipients know what they have to do, including with disadvantaged business enterprises. And they should have 

in place established programs to promote and get to that goal and 

beyond. 

It is clear that we have a lot of work to do on this. It is clear 

that some States have done a better job than others. It is, I will 

tell you, particularly frustrating that the bonding assistance program—which we are very appreciative of because it tackled one of 

the very specific barriers to entry that minority and disadvantaged 

businesses have, which is securing bonding so you can bid on a 

job—we are very frustrated that it hasn’t been used more than it 

has so far. 

We have been working with the Small Business Administration. 

We have a partnership with one of the largest minority-owned 

banks in the country to promote this. Brandon Neal, who directs 

our Office of Small and Disadvantaged Businesses, has literally 

been around the country promoting this and pushing our partners 

to do better at this. 

Ms. EDWARDS. I have to tell you, I mean, I was with a group of 

businesses just a few weeks ago. They had no idea it even existed. 

So I don’t know what it is that, you know, the Department is doing 

additionally to reach out and to encourage States to do the same. 

And I would like—I don’t know if it is possible, but we really do 

actually need a report, a specific report on minority business, disadvantaged business participation and where States are in terms 

of meeting those aspirational goals, by categories. I want to know 

how many women-owned businesses, how many African-Americanowned businesses, how many Latino-owned businesses are really 

contributing to getting to that 10 percent, which really should be 

a floor and not a ceiling. 

Mr. PORCARI. If I may suggest, maybe a place to start is we could 

sit down with you and make sure we are getting the information 

together that you would like on this. This is, again, something that 

we have not been as successful at as we would like to have been. 

We are looking for ways to improve the process and would appreVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:46 Jul 20, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00150 Fmt 6602 Sfmt 6602 P:\DOCS\55031.0 KAYLA
53 

ciate suggestions and input. We have talked to a number of minority contracting associations and professional groups and others as 

part of this, but it is clear we need to do more. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Look forward to working with you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. On that point, I just want to underscore that, 

early in this process last year, I convened a meeting of the building 

trades, the presidents of all the building trade’s unions, and the 

Tri-Caucus. And the Members of the Asia Pacific Islanders, the 

Hispanic caucus, the black caucus participated in this. I mean, we 

had a very frank exchange with the presidents of the trades about 

outreach, about inclusiveness, about bringing minority trainees 

into the program. The building trades, going back to the Middle 

Ages, were guilds, where the skill was handed down from father to 

son, from generation to generation. We need to break that chain 

and change things. 

And I designated Mrs. Napolitano to coordinate for the Tri-Caucus for follow-ups to those meetings. The presidents of the building 

trades all committed to initiate new programs, to recruit from the 

minority communities and bring people into their journeymen and 

apprenticeship programs. And the same needs to be done with the 

minority contracting community. 

And your point was well-taken about the need to outreach and 

notify companies of the existence of the bonding provisions. In Minneapolis, just last week—Mr. Ellison represents Minneapolis. And 

I met with minority contractors in Minneapolis. A good many were 

aware of the bonding, but they also didn’t have a way of accessing 

the funding. They didn’t quite know how to go about it. There were 

also concerns that the outreach was very successful for womenowned contracting firms but not black-owned or Hispanic-owned 

contracting firms. 

So I have discussed with Mrs. Napolitano about a follow-up 

meeting that we would have with the Department, with the associated general contractors, with the building trades. And we will set 

up a time to convene and have a roundtable discussion about these 

issues and have a full agenda, which we will develop with you. 

And, Ms. Brown, did you—— 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. Yes, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield to the gentlewoman. 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. Thank you. Because I want to add to 

that. There is a major discussion in the black caucus. And you 

know I had invited you to come and speak with the caucus on this 

issue, because there is a lot of concern that—let’s say that all of 

what we are discussing, all of the stimulus is like—I look at it like 

my grandmomma’s sweet potato pie. And we all contributed when 

we voted for the stimulus. In fact, it was all Democratic votes, not 

one Republican. But it is important that minorities and females get 

a slice of what I call my grandmomma’s sweet potato pie. 

And when we had the Secretary in Florida, we wanted to know— 

and so it is broader than just two or three people—we want to 

know how those programs are working and whether or not—because part of the problem, you have these big contracts. If you don’t 

break them down, then minorities or females cannot participate beVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:46 Jul 20, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00151 Fmt 6602 Sfmt 6602 P:\DOCS\55031.0 KAYLA
54 

cause they can’t—not just bond, but, you know, it is just the big 

guys get all of the dollars. And that is part of the problem. 

And that has been a part of the problem. And, basically, it is 

throughout the Federal Government. It is not just with transportation, even though we have had some successes, minimum. But, 

all through government, part of the problem is that minorities and 

females don’t get an opportunity to participate because of the size 

of some of these projects, general service in particular. I mean, that 

is one of the real good award systems. In other words, people have 

been doing business with general service for years, and so it is 

hard to break in. 

And so the question is, what can we do to let people know? And 

part of it is the workshops that you all have, some of that outreach, 

going into the community and letting them know that these opportunities are available and how you apply. I have had several of 

those workshops, and I would encourage other Members to do the 

same thing. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. We are going to follow up on them. We are going 

to have lessons learned in this arena, as well—— 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. As practices, I guess is what we should 

call it. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. —and establish new practices—— 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. New practices, yes. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. —as we go into the authorization for the 6-year 

surface transportation bill. 

Mr. Porcari, there has been much misrepresentation or misinformation about the pace of implementation of the stimulus program. And a good deal of it on talk radio and television reporting 

and newspaper and print reporting comes under the rubric, I would 

say, of misunderstanding of terms and then, in fact, misinformation 

to the general public. So let’s have a discussion now about the 

terms ′′allocate,′′ ′′obligate,′′ ′′outlay.′′ These are budgetary terms. 

Now, I said and I posited at the outset of this hearing that the 

jobs precede the reporting; the jobs are on the site. Contractors 

have ordered their materials with which to do the project. They 

have brought their workers back or hired new, put them on the job 

site. They perform work. Then the contractor bills the State on a 

highway project or an aviation project bills the airport authority, 

and then the State pays and then vouchers the Federal Government. So the jobs are out there long before the outlay takes place. 

But I want you to explain for public understanding ′′allocate,′′ 

′′obligate,′′ ′′outlay.′′ 

Mr. PORCARI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, because this is probably 

the single biggest misconception in the whole Recovery Act. And 

what we should all care about is exactly what you said, which is 

when the materials are ordered, when the jobs are created, when 

the layoffs are averted. And ′′obligation′′ and ′′outlay,′′ in particular, 

have been a source of confusion. 

Obligation for transportation projects is when those things happen. That is when the materials are ordered and the work happens. 

Because we work on a reimbursable basis, of those three terms, the 

one we should care about the least is actually ′′outlay,′′ because 

that is the end of the process. 

55 

Again, I have seen this from both sides, starting the Recovery 

Act, delivering projects in a State DOT, and I can tell you what 

′′obligation′′ actually means. It means you can talk to the State contractors associations and tell them, ′′These are the bid packages. 

These are when they are going to be on the street.′′ In fact, we put 

them on the street conditionally on the act being passed, so that 

the moment the bill is signed, you can actually award projects. 

That is when people are hired. 

The reimbursable process, what it does is protect our Federal 

taxpayers. I used the analogy before, if you are buying a car, you 

don’t pay the manufacturer to build it. They build the car; they employ the people to build the car. You buy the finished product after 

you have test-driven it. That is how our projects work. After it is 

completed, for our smaller and midsized projects, we reimburse the 

States the same day or within 24 hours. 

For the larger projects that are much more expensive and higher 

expense, we do that on a milestone basis. So think about having 

a house built. You don’t hand—if you are smart, at least, you don’t 

hand the builder a check up front for the entire cost of the house. 

You make progress payments based on the work that is actually 

done. And that is how our transportation projects work. 

So the color of the money, as it were, who is putting the money 

up front shouldn’t matter. Because the States, the transit authorities, in some cases, are actually fronting the money, getting the 

work under way, employing the people. When it is built right, when 

we have a project we can be proud of, when we have that investment, the Federal Government, with the Recovery dollars, is reimbursing. 

So the outlay, which is the actual Federal expenditure, is the 

least important of those three terms. The obligation, which is when 

we are saying, ′′Yep, that is a good project, you have met the Buy 

American Act, you have all your permits in hand, you are truly 

shovel-ready,′′ that is when the clock starts and when people are 

employed, the materials are ordered, and the economic stimulus is 

actually there. 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. Mr. Chairman, on that point—— 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield to the gentlelady. 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. There was a question asked earlier 

about how many inspectors. You use the inspectors to go and verify 

whether or not the project has been completed, specified according 

to what we are buying; is that correct? 

Mr. PORCARI. That is correct. The projects are inspected. 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. Okay. Because the question was, how 

many of these jobs was inspectors? You need the inspectors to certify that the work has been done. 

Mr. PORCARI. We absolutely do. The shortest duration transportation projects you have out there—think about a resurfacing 

project. Even those are 15 years’ life. You know, our bridge projects 

might be 60 or 70 years. You want to make sure you get the product you pay for. That is why we have a reimbursable process. So 

we are not using our Federal taxpayer dollars until we have a 

product that we are all proud of. And you need inspectors, obviously, to make sure we get our money’s worth. 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

56 

Mr. HOOKS. Mr. Chairman, if I could? 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Hooks? 

Mr. HOOKS. That question about inspectors was asked of me, actually, earlier. We actually do have inspectors. We just weren’t putting them—we weren’t using stimulus dollars to actually hire inspectors. Our region heads are actually visiting each State twice a 

year, plus some of our headquarters personnel are also visiting 

each State, to ensure that the moneys that have been appropriated 

for stimulus act projects are being, in fact, spent on stimulus 

projects as they were intended. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. So the point is that we have $32.2 billion obli- gated in highway and transit, 94 percent of the $34 billion that 

was approved. That translates to 12,414 projects approved. We 

have 12,252 projects out to bid. That is $26.4 billion, or 77 percent, 

through the end of December. That number is higher now because 

we are into February. 

So the point is that those who just didn’t agree with the stimulus 

can use any number they want, but they are not entitled to their 

own numbers. These are real numbers. The obligation—first, the 

DOT allocated to each State, told the State, ′′This is your formula 

allocation.′′ Now you are approved to proceed to obligate the 

funds—that is, to commit projects to these dollars. 

And then the next stage is to advertise for bids, for project-specific bids, correct? 

Mr. PORCARI. Correct. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And the bids come in, and then the bids are evaluated and awarded. And when the award is made, then the work 

can start. 

And I think we have an extraordinary track record, very successful track record, on the surface transportation program and transit 

and aviation. The FAA moved out and airport authorities committed over 400 projects in a very short period of time. 

Now, they have a different contracting authority than highway 

departments. They can take bids and hold the bid and hold the 

contractor to that for up to a year, many authorities have told me. 

It may be different with certain ones, but most of them can do that. 

Is that correct? 

Mr. PORCARI. That is correct. And I will tell you, contractors 

were so desperate for work that many of them held their bids even 

longer than they were required to. And that is an illustration of the 

good value we have gotten. I previously mentioned we thought that 

the Federal Aviation Administration would be able to do 300 airport improvement projects. The bids came in so aggressive and so 

low, we did 360. 

And working within the statutory process that the States had, 

they teed themselves up well, and some States were extremely aggressive about, for example, putting projects out to bid even before 

the stimulus bill was signed, subject to Federal appropriation. So 

that it was essentially a conditional award, so that those projects 

would start that much sooner. 

The reimbursement process has served us well in protecting our 

Federal taxpayer dollars. It has not been an impediment to getting 

the work done and the people hired, which, after all, is the goal 

here. 

57 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, I can say from personal experience that the 

aviation side worked so well that an airport authority just outside 

my district, although their territory—the lake water goes up to the 

shore. The lake is in my district, but the town isn’t, but they think 

they are. And they invited me to a ground breaking. By the time 

I got there, it was a ribbon cutting. The project was completed. It 

was a taxiway improvement. That is success. That is putting people 

to work. 

Mr. PORCARI. That is truly success. And there are countless stories like that throughout America. There were projects under way 

within 24 hours—under construction within 24 hours of the President signing the bill. I know that because we had the first one in 

the country. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Maryland, Silver Spring, 24 hours after signing. 

I know. I carried my report card around with me. You can’t read 

it from out there, but I have it in my vest pocket everywhere I go. 

This is my monthly updated report card on stimulus projects under 

the jurisdiction of this Committee. 

Now, Mr. Porcari, among the criticisms are those who can’t find 

anything else to do, say, ′′Oh, well, these are just short-term 

projects.′′ It isn’t DOT that made the selections. It wasn’t the Federal Highway Administration that made the selections. It is the 

State DOTs. 

And for years—and I have served here, this is my 36th year, and 

before that I was staff director of this Committee. I was an administrative assistant for my predecessor, who was also Chairman of 

this Committee. I have heard State after State say, ′′We have all 

this portfolio of repair projects. ’State of good repair,’ it is an engineering term. If we only had the money, we would do these.′′ Well, 

now they have the money, and they have been doing them. You 

can’t have it both ways. You can’t complain that these are shortterm projects and then say, ′′But our roads need fixing.′′ You have 

to do both at the same time. 

And, ′′Oh, we should have had longer-term projects,′′ now because the program has been such an undeniable success, with 

980,000 jobs nationwide. And I cited the numbers earlier of the unemployment compensation checks avoided, the taxes being paid by 

those at work, and the payrolls for those who are on the job. So 

now the critics find something else to carp about. ′′Well, they 

should have been longer-term projects.′′ Well, we will have plenty 

of time to do that in the 6-year authorization bill. 

Mr. PORCARI. It is very true. But we have long-term projects also 

in the Recovery Act. You know, I likened this to, kind of, a threestage rocket where the first projects out the door were things like 

resurfacing that can be done very quickly. Those have a 15-year 

life. 

The next series of projects—and one illustration would be the 

Caldecott Tunnel project in the San Francisco Bay area, which is 

now under way as part of the, kind of, second wave or the second 

stage. That is an improvement that will be there 50 years from 

now, easily. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And the interdispersal loop in Tulsa. I went to 

Ms. Fallin’s district. I went to Tulsa, I went to Oklahoma City. Secretary of Transportation Gary Ridley for Oklahoma said this is a 

58 

$76 million project. It is a 66-or-so-mile loop around the city of 

Tulsa. It has needed major repairs for years. They haven’t had the 

money to do it. 

The project entails 44 bridge redeckings and huge work on resurfacing the existing roadway and creating shoulder space for safety 

purposes. We went out on the job site, and I asked, ′′How long did 

it take to design this?′′ He said, ′′We had planned 18 months, design and engineering. But after your hearing in October of 2008,′′ 

in this Committee room, he said, ′′I went back to my staff and said, 

’That Committee is serious. We are going to have a stimulus program. We better get ready.’′′ And in 4 months they did the design 

and engineering for an 18-month design plan. And he said, ′′I told 

my engineers, ’You take your design work to church with you on 

Sunday, because if I need to talk to you, I will.’′′ And they did and 

he did. 

And so they have people on the job site. There were contractors 

out there telling me, ′′See that equipment? It was in mothballs 2 

months ago.′′ Now they are working. I went up to contractors. They 

are doing a continuous pour jersey barrier on one of the bridge segments, 44 bridges. And they said, ′′We are so glad to be working. 

We are so delighted to have our job.′′ It is working. 

So you will get back to us. And we will call you for meeting with 

the Tri-Caucus and to discuss. 

Mr. Hooks, lessons learned. EPA was off to a slow start—we 

noted that in hearings a year ago—because you had some internal 

difficulties interpreting the Buy American. Are those issues now 

fully resolved? 

Mr. HOOKS. Yes, sir, I believe so. We—— 

Mr. OBERSTAR. What are the lessons learned for the future? 

What advice do you give for your brother or sister agencies here 

and for us as we move forward? 

Mr. HOOKS. I think one of the things that we have learned 

throughout this process is a closer working relationship with our 

stakeholders, quite honestly. When faced with these new provisions, whether they were Buy American or Davis-Bacon, we actually sat down with our contractors, we sat down with the stakeholders. And we conducted numerous Webinars, visited the States, 

said these are new provisions to this particular group of entities 

that are actually building wastewater management treatment facilities. How are we going to work our way through this? It was a 

mass education program. 

And I think, in terms of the lessons learned, we developed a 

much closer working relationship as a result. I think we were able 

to work through many of the difficult issues that troubled us, that 

troubled the community. I think we were expecting a lot more Buy 

American waivers, in all honesty. To date, we have had just a 

handful. Work is proceeding. People are going to work. And we are 

purchasing our products, by and large, from American manufacturers. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I think the State agencies learned a great deal 

and learned to be more nimble and respond more quickly. Understandably the State Revolving Loan Fund for 12 years in the previous management of the Congress was not authorized. 

59 

Mr. HOOKS. I think one other thing the State does well is that 

typically it took 2 years from times of appropriation to times when 

they had to actually have this work under contract. They actually 

did it in 1 year. So we all learned how to expedite the process. 

Even internal to EPA, we have learned some things on how to 

achieve some administrative efficiencies that we will incorporate 

not only to finish out administering the Recovery Act funds, but we 

will put in as a permanent fixture in terms of the way we do business at the Agency. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I looked at the list for the State of Minnesota, the 

State Public Facilities Authority, managed by Jeff Freeman and 

Terry Kuhlman, been doing it for 25 years, they are career professionals. They have ranked every project, 1 through 263, in the 

wastewater treatment arena and small communities, 1,500 or 500 

population. And they have been waiting for years. Their mound 

systems are failing, their septic systems are failing, or they had 

100-year-old sewers that are grown through with tree roots, and 

now they are getting the funds for the projects. They were able to 

leverage the loan money and grant money together to take a $73 

million program and make a $502 million program out of it. 

Mr. HOOKS. I think the additional 50 percent of subsidization 

that we provided provided these communities an opportunity, heretofore that had not had an opportunity, to participate in this program, are engaged, as you said. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. So you have done combined sewer overflow; you 

said 6 percent of the projects are CSO. Do you have one or two examples of those? 

Mr. HOOKS. At my ready? No, unfortunately I don’t. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Provide that for the record. 

Mr. HOOKS. I will do that. 

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Mr. OBERSTAR. And for improving rehab or existing wastewater 

collection systems. In my hometown, Chisolm, Minnesota, their 

wastewater treatment system is a little old. I worked on it when 

I was in college pushing a ready-mix wheelbarrow up a ramp to 

pour it into the forms for the retaining facility. It is like my hip, 

osteoarthritis. I had it taken out and have a new one. The same 

thing with that system. It has got osteoarthritis; it needs to be replaced. There are lots of those all over the country. 

Mr. HOOKS. There are. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And this Recovery Act, the stimulus program, 

gives us the opportunity to do that rehab, rehabilitating and expanding of existing inadequate capacity. 

You have some examples of non-point source projects. I call that 

the new or the next frontier of the clean water program. 

Mr. HOOKS. One of the requirements of the Recovery Act, the 

goal was to have 20 percent of the wastewater monies spent on 

what they refer to as green project reserve. These are projects that 

basically capture water on site. 

Just a few months ago I had an opportunity to participate in a 

ground-breaking ceremony not too far from here, in Edmonston, 

Maryland, right next to Hyattsville, where a community had received some wastewater monies, and where they are instituting 

bioretention gardens and planting trees, capturing water on site. I 

think the community is also going to be instituting rain barrels. So 

there are a variety of practices that are used, historically used, 

across the country that are now being expanded. 

I think we originally thought we might have trouble trying to 

identify 20 percent for this green project reserve. It turns out we 

were oversubscribed; we were probably closer to 29 percent across 

the country in terms of these types of projects. Green infrastructure, water and energy efficiency are also included in that 20 percent as well, but we are highly pleased with some of the green infrastructure projects that have been developed. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Those are very encouraging, and I am glad that 

EPA has encouraged States to move and pushed them to move in 

that direction. It is not entirely your decision to make, but you can 

certainly encourage, and you have done, and Ms. Jackson deserves 

great credit, Administrator Jackson, for her leadership in that 

arena. 

Of course, we need to reauthorize the program. I said earlier for 

12 years of the previous Majority in Congress, it wasn’t done. For 

8 years the Bush administration never submitted a proposal to 

Congress to reauthorize the program. And we have done more in 

1 year of stimulus than has been done in several years of that program. But we have passed it in the 110th Congress, we passed it 

again in the first session of this Congress from this Committee and 

from the House, the reauthorization of the State Revolving Loan 

Fund. And the Senate needs to act on it, and I hope you and Ms. 

Jackson will insist on that with the President and the OMB and 

with the Senate leadership, get them going, let them move something over there. They haven’t passed much. 

You don’t have to respond to that. I don’t want to get you in trouble with the other body. 

Mr. HOOKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

62 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I will take them on. 

Superfund. How many Superfund sites yet remain to be dealt 

with? 

Mr. HOOKS. In the entire inventory? 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Yes. 

Mr. HOOKS. I am not sure. I will have to get that figure for you. 

[The information follows:] 

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65 

Mr. OBERSTAR. It is like 400 or 500 or so projects that need to be addressed. I compliment EPA for committing the $600 million 

we allocated for Superfund. You have undertaken work on 35 

projects. Do you have some examples of success stories there? 

Mr. HOOKS. We are actually up to 38 projects. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thirty-eight. 

Mr. HOOKS. At this point. I think one of the projects I actually 

used in my testimony was in Minnesota, as a matter of fact. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Yes, I am sorry, you did mention that. 

Mr. HOOKS. We were removing arsenic from, I think, approximately in 500 homes in the State of Minnesota, reducing that 

threat. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. All right. That is—in our next hearing, which will 

probably be in another 4 or 5 weeks, we will have an update on 

the progress. 

Mr. Peck, you told us that GSA has awarded twice the amount 

of contract awards in the last 6 months as GSA does in an entire 

year. That is a great achievement. How did you go about doing 

these projects differently than those in the regular year-by-year 

GSA program? 

Mr. PECK. A couple of things. One is we set up a dedicated office 

in the national headquarters to supervise the projects. We created 

and have 11 regions, and they really are our service delivery mechanisms. In each of the regions, we created a Recovery Act executive, and those people worked as a team starting to figure out how 

they could make things move faster. We put in some special tracking systems, and I have to say getting the funding to upgrade our 

information technology on tracking things helped. 

And then I have to say there is one other thing that I am fond 

of saying. We discovered some of our iteractive review processes internally could be collapsed, and there was a lot of—because we 

have lots of rules we have to go by, contracting rules, structural 

rules, mechanical standards that we follow, that a designer designs 

something, our regions review it, and particularly in this case when 

we were looking at new green technology, it would be reviewed by 

our national office as well, and it was starting to be a lot of back 

and forth. 

In about November we decided that some of the things were taking too long, and we instituted a system that I have termed ′′speed 

dating.′′ We told our regional officers that they could come to 

Washington, and told our national people they had a couple of 

hours in which they were going to work through their differences 

on the reviews and come up with something we could put on the 

street. 

One other lesson learned, since you have asked—two other lessons learned, and I would like to know, Ms. Brown talked about 

design build and some other ways we can accelerate funding. One 

of the reasons we haven’t done that sometimes in the past is because of constraints in funding. We will get the money to design 

a project, and then that project often sits on a shelf, and only later, 

years later sometimes, do you get the money to construct it. By the 

time you get to construction, almost inevitably something has happened to make the design somewhat obsolete. Either requirements 

have changed, or, better, in some way technology has improved. So 

66 

you are not going to build a building with 5-year-old technology, 

and you go back and redo the design. That is one reason we haven’t 

been able to use some of the compressed processes. The fact that 

we got full funding made us move forward. 

One other lesson I think we have is that knowing that you have 

the money to do it means that we take design to a point where we 

can actually get a shovel-ready project. You know, when you just 

get money for design, we go through design development, which is 

about 35 percent of design. It is not enough to put a bid document 

out on the street that a contractor can respond to. You would have 

to be crazy, if you could only get the money to design, to go all the 

way to a bid package not knowing when, if ever, you are ever going 

to put that product on the street. 

So in this instance—and I think this is a lesson for us for the 

future—in this instance in many cases we were able to do all the 

design at once. But in other cases we had to take old designs off 

the shelf, and then one of the lag periods, which we have discovered is we had to update the designs and get them from 35 percent 

to 65 percent. 

One of the things that I think we know in the economy is there 

are—at least in the real estate industry there are ups and downs. 

And to the extent that we could have a group of projects ready to 

go when the economy turns down so that we can get the advantage 

of the softer construction markets, we would all be better off. I 

can’t say we could put off if a roof fails; we would have to fix it 

no matter when it happens. But some of the projects, for example, 

replacing windows in a building, that could happen this year, or it 

could happen in some cases 5 years from now. We could hold off 

and get the advantage of a better bid. 

So there is a lesson for the government as a whole about having 

some capital requirements held off for a point in which we can get 

better bids. We will get a better price, and we will be able to stimulate the industry. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Those are good lessons learned and good practices. Maybe we can incorporate some of that in future GSA legislation. 

Did you have any bid challenges? Typically GSA has a plethora 

of challenges when bids are awarded. 

Mr. PECK. We have had some protests, as they are called. We 

had one that I have to say—we had two that I could cite in which 

we had protests where we were able to sit down with contractors 

and get the protest withdrawn. I think that is also a reflection of 

the climate. There is a real reason for people to say, I have to let 

this work go forward in my community. 

Another thing to remember is contractors have a lot of subcontractors who are anxious to get to work. General contractor that 

gives us a protest right now isn’t going to be very popular with a 

lot of the subcontractors. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I think that is generally true. I think there are 

very, very few challenges in the Federal highway program, none 

that I am aware of. 

You reference the Bean Federal Center, Indianapolis, where you 

plan to install 4,500 solar panels. Are those similar to the ones that 

were installed on the Department of Energy roof? 

67 

Mr. PECK. I am not familiar with those. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. They are a very new technology. 

Mr. PECK. Right. There is a new way—— 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I have a sample of it in my office. 

Mr. PECK. Yes, sir. The Bob Dole Courthouse in Kansas City, 

Kansas just got photovoltaic membranes really that you lay down 

flat on a roof service. The photovoltaic technology is really moving 

ahead, and that is another way in which we think that we can help 

make the market in the industry. You can now put them flat on 

a roof in appropriate places, and you can also start to put photovoltaic panels on facades that get a lot of sun, on vertical facades. 

And there are places where you don’t actually need transparency 

in the glass, or you can put them on a hard surface. We can actually get some energy generation that way. 

At the Bean Center, we have a photovoltaic lab there, so we are 

going to measure the results against what we are expecting. And 

one of the things we are saying is we want to be able to tell the 

American building industry, which needs to go green outside the 

government, too, how well these things are working, what is the 

best climate in which to install certain kinds of systems, and which 

of the different technologies are giving us the biggest energy reduction, bang for the buck. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, I think this is a very important initiative. 

Not only did our Speaker insist on green provisions in each of the 

Committee contributions to stimulus, but I started it in this Committee in 1977. 

We had a hearing in which we took testimony I happened to 

Chair. I wasn’t Chair of the Subcommittee, but the Subcommittee 

of Public Buildings and Grounds, and Teno Roncalio was the Chair. 

He had to be out of town that day, and so I was the only one left. 

First-term Members don’t get the Chair, at least in those days. And 

the sheet metal workers union and GSA had combined to do a 

study, a two-volume study, of converting Federal civilian office 

space to photovoltaics. The cost of energy generated by 

photovoltaics in 1977 was 1.75 a kilowatthour compared to 7 cents 

from the investor-owned utilities. They estimated that with a 

multiyear investment of $175 million a year for 3 years, you would 

generate enough production in the private sector to reduce the cost 

down to something approaching 10 or 12 cents or lower and further 

over a period of years. The government would be the consumer; the 

private sector the producer. 

I thought it was a terrific idea, so I took their proposal, drafted 

a bill, introduced it. Senator Humphrey did the same thing over in 

the Senate. We got it passed. Jimmy Carter signed it into law, put 

the $175 million for the first year in his subsequent budget and 

then lost the election. President Reagan abolished the whole alternative energy program; $960 million, poof, just went out the window. 

Mr. PECK. Mr. Chairman, around that time—— 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thirty years later I assumed the chairmanship of 

this Committee. So I am Chairman now; we are going to do this 

thing. We did it again. I dredged out my old bill. My testimony before the Committee was still in the Committee files, including my 

own typewritten testimony and my own red-line underline, and we 

68 

passed the bill, and we did it with the Department of Energy building, and now we put it into the stimulus. And now, by damn, it has 

to happen all across America. We have got to do this. 

Mr. PECK. Mr. Chairman, I would also say that around that time 

we put the first green roof on a building. Thirty-some years ago we 

were moving in a great direction, and it stopped. We are relearning 

those lessons, and we have—we are going to be able to report to 

you we have photovoltaics in amazing numbers all over the country. But there are other technologies, too, which America in some 

cases is behind other countries, and in some places we are doing 

pretty well. We have geothermal, chilled beams; there are all kinds 

of things you can do. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. This is another arena where the United States 

did the basic research, developed the technology, provided the resources and then didn’t invest. Other countries take our ideas, invest in them, and we end up buying solar panels from abroad. 

Mr. PECK. I know. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. That is not right. We need to do this at home, 

and the stimulus has given us an opportunity. 

Has GSA completed the survey of photovoltaic panel-ready facilities? 

Mr. PECK. In the—— 

Mr. OBERSTAR. This is in the bill we passed 2 years ago. 

Mr. PECK. Yes, sir. We have—I forget the number. I will provide 

it for the record. But of our limited-scope projects of which there 

are 100 and some, a large number are the photovoltaics. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I want to see that survey completed and have 

that material submitted to the Committee. 

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Mr. OBERSTAR. And final question for you, what is the status of 

the Public Buildings Fund? 

Mr. PECK. Well, there is a short-term and long-term answer. The 

short-term answer is in this year we are—the fund, as you know, 

will collect about $8.3 billion in revenue; $5 billion we immediately 

turn around and give to private-sector landlords from whom we 

lease space. About 52 percent of our inventory is in leased space. 

The fund still does produce a net income, but as you know, it is 

that net income only that we use to do capital upgrades on our 

buildings. And the short answer in the long term is that we are not 

producing enough net income in the Federal Building Fund to meet 

the capital expenditure, the capital improvement needs that that 

we have in our owned inventory. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. That is a subject we will deal with in another 

hearing. 

Mr. Porcari, I understand you have a 1:30 commitment. You may 

be excused. 

Mr. PORCARI. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Not the rest. 

Ms. Darcy. The Corps also got off to a late start, but you are 

catching up, and before you get to those, just one question. What 

is—this is not a stimulus project, but the second lock at Sault Ste. 

Marie was authorized in the 2007 Water Resources Development 

Act, vetoed. Congress overrode the veto, enormous bipartisan support, urgent need for the second lock at the Sault. Work has started. What is the status of that work? Because it was a new start, 

it was not eligible for stimulus funding. 

Ms. DARCY. Correct. The current benefit-to-cost ratio of the Sault 

lock is not in keeping with the 1-to-1 (or greater)benefit to cost 

ratio that we budget for. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, that benefit ratio is an old one, I know, I 

have got the documents, and it does not reflect the new work that 

is under way in the iron ore mining country in my district with the 

Mesabi Nuggets that will soon be coming on line producing foundry-, and minimill-, and electric art furnace-capable product that 

will be moving through the Sault. 

And SR Steel, which is under construction now, but building a 

steel mill on the Mesabi Range and exporting slabs, the only way 

that project is economically viable is that we can rail the slabs to 

the Duluth Superior port and put them on board ship for moving 

to lower lake steel mills or in some cases for export abroad. 

So there is—that benefit-cost ratio is wrong. The project needs to 

move forward, and we will have to have a more extensive conversation about that. 

Ms. DARCY. We will, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. You are undertaking the inspection of 820 levees 

across the country. What is the status of that inspection work, and 

what will be the intended benefits to safety and to flood protection, 

to navigation? 

Ms. DARCY. We are conducting inspections with ARRA dollars. 

We are inspecting 820 levees. We hope that the outcome of that, 

will be to allow us to determine which of those levees are in the 

position or are providing the level of safety in which they were 

originally designed, or the level of safety that was anticipated by 

71 

those being protected by the levees. So we hope with this money 

we have accelerated the levee inspection program, which was authorized in the Water Resources Development Act of 2007. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, we would like to have periodic reports on 

progress being made and the showing of the geographic distribution of those levees so that all the Members can understand what 

work is being done and how it affects their districts or States. You also said that you have awarded $1.2 billion to small business. What determination do you use for small business? 

Ms. DARCY. We use the—— 

Mr. OBERSTAR. The SBA. 

Ms. DARCY. —SBA definition of a small business. We have been 

successful in our small business development. Nearly 74 percent of 

our contracts—— 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Give me some examples of small businesses in 

Corps of Engineers work. 

Ms. DARCY. An example would be at a reservoir, for example, if 

we were going to be doing multiple things at a reservoir, whether 

it is a stretch of bank stabilization or some kind of upgrade, a 

small business contractor who does, let us say, riprap could possibly qualify as a small business. 

Nearly 20 percent of those small business owners are womenowned businesses. Between 15 and 20 percent are disadvantaged 

businesses. We have been, I think, pretty lucky. And because of the 

size and scope of some of our projects, our contracts are not huge; 

they are not multimillion-dollar contracts, they are smaller, and 

they go to smaller projects as well. We have some what are called 

our CAP projects, which are our smaller restoration projects, which 

sort of lend themselves really well to small businesses. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Was it a limitation or was it a benefit for the 

Corps of Engineers that the authorizing language prohibited or 

took off limits on new starts? 

Ms. DARCY. Well, because we have a backlog of projects—— 

Mr. OBERSTAR. A huge backlog. 

Ms. DARCY. Right. In a way I think it was of benefit, especially 

because of all the deferred maintenance we have had to address. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. A huge, huge backlog of things that need to be 

done. 

Mr. Fernandez, I love EDA. I was present at its creation. 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. The EDA loves you, Mr. Chairman, 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I was present at its creation in 1965. I still have 

my green pen, one of several that Lyndon Johnson used to sign the 

bill into law, and a photo of him handing it to me. That is mounted 

in my office. You are welcome to come and inspect. 

I think EDA does a superb job, and you have moved out quickly 

and vigorously to implement the meager funds that were leftover 

scraps from the table, in my view. We had a much more robust figure for EDA when the recovery bill left our Committee, but by the 

time it got to the floor, to conference, to the Senate, and all other 

hands in it, it got narrowed down. 

But you have a two-for-one with EDA. You provide the funds to 

do the industrial part, and then you get the business that comes 

in to locate in that facility. So you have the construction jobs, and 

then you have the long-term private-sector jobs in that facility. 

72 

You have some examples for us of such success stories? 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Well, you know, in some cases, Mr. Chairman, 

I would say it is even more than a two-for-one. For example, as 

part of the Recovery Act, we funded a number of incubators 

throughout the country, and in those instances not only do you 

have the benefit of the immediate construction jobs, but then you 

have multiple businesses created that grow and create jobs, graduate from those facilities, and continue to become an engine of 

growth. 

So I believe in my testimony we referenced 37 million investments in business incubation. One specific example I can give you 

is in my home State. For the record, these decisions were made before I was confirmed. But in Anderson, Indiana, there is the facility 

called the Flagship Center, which was originally funded by EDA, 

I believe, in 19—I am sorry, in 2003, and as part of the Recovery 

Act, we funded an expansion of that facility. And that is a good example where in the original funding of the project, a company 

called Bright Automotive was started within that incubator. Now 

that has expanded and become a very strong force in helping the 

community recover from the downturn in the auto industry. There 

are a number of projects like that where the multipliers go well beyond the short-term job creation. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Those are great success stories. I was fascinated 

with the Bright Automotive. I was not aware of that company until 

I saw this reference in an earlier EDA report. 

You also put funding into regional innovation centers and trade 

promotion. You do have an example in Alaska, construction of an 

expansion to an existing dock. 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Right. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. How is that going to promote trade? 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Well, it is going to expand their capacity for exports. They have a facility there, but with the additional expansion 

of about an 8-acre site, they will have more capacity to move product. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And in green jobs you make a reference to a 

LEED-certified facility in New Mexico. Explain a little more about 

what that project will do. 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Sure, I can do that. The facility there in New 

Mexico that is being built as part of this Recovery Act investment 

is for—they do—that operation does a lot of small business microlending and other kind of technical assistance. So they will continue to do work in that field as part of the ability to do more in 

this building. They are a headquarters facilities for the organization. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. You have success stories within success stories. 

The funds through EDA went out very quickly because of those 

local development agencies. The EDR, the Economic Development 

Representatives, are out on the ground with communities, guiding 

them, helping them get their projects ready. So they had the design 

and the engineering. They are ready to go. They just needed the 

funding for it. 

And then you have the follow-on success story, the facilities, the 

businesses or enterprises that come into those projects. This is an 

opportunity to tell the good things that are happening with the ReVerDate Aug 31 2005 14:46 Jul 20, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00170 Fmt 6602 Sfmt 6602 P:\DOCS\55031.0 KAYLA
73 

covery Act, and I want to complete the record to provide us further 

details on that. 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Sure. Mr. Chairman, as I noted in my testimony 

earlier, the Committee has a full listing of all of our 68 projects 

with the project descriptions and the benefit of the individual 

projects as well. And I think there is a treasure trove of success 

stories that go on. And because I think other panelists had mentioned earlier that the reporting on Recovery Act job creation is incredibly conservative, and so I think it is fair to say that you will 

see, then, larger benefits from these projects in terms of job creation than what is going to be reported. 

For example, in Montana we funded a revolving loan fund that 

is part of the timber industry, and it is a response to some of the 

changes that have been going on, and they developed their own 

cluster to respond to changes in their marketplace. Under the reporting requirements we report that one job was created. Well, the 

EDA put in $2.7 million. That was matched by the State of Montana. One hundred percent of those—or 93 percent of those funds 

have been disbursed to the supplier network, et cetera, that are 

part of that cluster. And I think it is fair to assume that more than 

one, job is accounted for as part of those 4 actually,almost $5 million in investments. But the way the Recovery Act reporting is constructed, in other words, one, job created as part of the administration that fund. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. It is an underreporting, and the reason I am 

probing is there is a story behind the story. 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Yeah. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And other States can learn from that experience. 

I think that is a remarkable—I noted this particularly because we 

have a similar problem in Minnesota, the timber and wood products industry. When the housing market died, the contractors don’t 

need corrugated strandboard, they don’t need particleboard, they 

don’t need dimensional lumber. They are not building homes. So 

two companies in my district just went out of business altogether, 

and several in Canada as well. Those companies carrying OSB, 

trucking companies, through my district to the South and Southwest, that dried up as well. But if you have an idea here of capital 

for businesses to do technical assistance for borrowers, intermediaries as you describe it, to develop loan packages or other assistance for companies, they are longer-term jobs that are going to 

result from this. 

Mr. FERNANDEZ. Absolutely. 

If I could, Mr. Chairman, so much of the discussion today has focused on infrastructure, appropriately. And infrastructure that has 

been described has been, you know, focused primarily in transportation, what we might consider more traditional infrastructure. But 

in terms of the Economic Development Administration and the 

work we are trying to do to drive innovation and business creation, 

we like to include in our definition of infrastructure certainly incubators, business facilities that can help start-up companies, proofof-concept labs where we can accelerate the commercialization research coming out of our universities or out of our Federal labs. 

There is an infrastructure that is essential to the innovation 

economy that we certainly play a role in and hope to continue to 

74 

play an even larger role in at the EDA. I include in that infrastructure-critical issue that we have to address today, and that is access 

to capital. Particularly when you look at the deployment of earlystage funding or seed capital, there is a huge lack of availability 

of funds. When we look at how those funds typically get disbursed 

across the country, there is a tremendous magnet that drives a lot 

of the innovation to areas like Boston, Silicon Valley. As I travel 

around the country there are pockets all over America where you 

have tremendous innovation, you have strong entrepreneurs, but 

you have an incredibly difficult time pulling those funders to bring 

that early-stage capital into the heartland or into other parts of the 

country. 

So we think there is an opportunity with the EDA through our 

revolving loan funds and some of our other intermediary agencies 

that we support to help address that critical infrastructure need, 

if you will, to be able to spur the kind of sustainable, innovationbased economic development that I know we all want. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for that answer and for the work on 

this very important aspect of job creation and sustainability. 

Mr. Rajk—is that how you pronounce it? 

Mr. RAJK. Mr. Chairman, it is Rajk. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Rajk? 

Mr. RAJK. Yes, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. What is the origin of your name? 

Mr. RAJK. Slovak. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Slovak. I am Slovenian. We pronounce it Rajk. 

Mr. RAJK. Yes, sir. The last time I was here, we had a conversation about that, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I didn’t remember that. 

Mr. RAJK. The pronunciation in the United States hasn’t changed 

since that time, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, that is too bad. Bring back the old. 

I tell you, I am not happy with the Coast Guard. I am happy 

with a lot of things the Coast Guard does. They have done a remarkable job of responding to Haiti. The Seventh District was on 

the spot. They had two cutters underway immediately and four 

later that day en route to Haiti. They set up the first air traffic 

control support for the airport after the tower was decommissioned 

by the earthquake. The Coast Guard, extraordinary work. But the 

Coast Guard has not broken ground on any one of the shore facilities you told us were needed. Why? 

Mr. RAJK. Well, sir, indeed we have started the work on a number of the projects, both in the Northwest. Coos Bay and Neah Bay, 

the mooring facilities out there have begun to work. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well—— 

Mr. RAJK. The other projects, as I indicated in my oral statement, sir, some of the projects we were depending on a particular 

contract strategy, which I believe Mr. Peck addressed, in terms of 

protest. There was a protest which we had to scrap that strategy 

and move to individual solicitation and awards. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. So you did undertake a bidding process, and 

there were protests to bid awards. Is that what is holding these 

up? 

75 

Mr. RAJK. Well, in the case of five of the short projects, yes, sir, 

we had intended to use what they call a national multiaward construction contract, the longer-term, regionalized-type contract activity that would allow us to issue task orders with a certain set of 

contractors participating in only those particular contract vehicles. 

Each of those five were protested to the GAO. The GAO in December upheld that protest. Fortunately we had already begun to pursue separately, in anticipation of the protest being upheld, and we 

have since gone out and now we have solicited for, I think, two of 

the five projects that were originally supposed to have been done 

under that particular venue. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Is there something in the contracting procedures 

that the Coast Guard followed that can be changed for the future 

to avoid this type of situation? 

Mr. RAJK. Mr. Chairman, possibly there is. I don’t recall all the 

specifics of the nature of the protest itself. Maybe at another time 

we could get back to staff on that, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Also, of the $98 million for the acquisition, con- struction and improvements account, $10 million was designated 

for the high-endurance cutter engineering changes. Is work under 

way on that now? We have no—previous to this hearing we had no 

accounting for that work. 

Mr. RAJK. Yes, sir. A number of those contracts for those shiprepair installation projects have began. I believe four of the seventh 

contracts have began. Some of the work has not yet begun. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. What is the reason for the delay? What has been 

the problem there? 

Mr. RAJK. An example might be one of them we were replacing 

refrigeration systems on eight of the cutters, and the manufacturer, 

when they came on board to begin the installation, they recognized 

that there had to be some additional work prepared on board the 

vessel, which delayed some of the work; had to go back, redescribe, 

make sure that the engineering and technical aspects of the work 

could be done with their unit, which was subsequently overcome, 

and the work was gone on. 

As I indicated in my opening statement, for example, Hamilton, 

which you may have been aware of was one of the cutters on scene 

in Haiti, had that work done on it. But it was deferred or delayed 

until some of those other technical issues could be dealt with on 

board the ship. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. The stimulus program is people working quickly 

on projects that were needed on, in the case of the Coast Guard, 

shoreside facilities, vessel work that needed to be done, and it is 

surprising that the contracting was not properly or carefully 

thought through. Contractors were not engaged appropriately. 

There are some lessons learned for the future? 

Mr. RAJK. Well, I think, sir, as the others have stated, there are 

always lessons to learn in this. I think part of it is—I think part 

of it is one of the lessons I think we learned is just in terms of 

bringing the right people together regularly to have the conversation. For example, I meet every Monday morning, 8:30, with the 

entire team, including the procurement folks, with the legislative 

folks, the technical folks to talk through these particular issues to 

stay on top of it. 

76 

I think in terms of the procurement process, we have learned 

that maybe to be a little more nimble, a little more responsive to 

the opportunities. Oftentimes, as you are probably aware, some of 

the nature of our—the colors of money, as I put it. You know, we 

are used to using multiyear monies. While this was multiyear 

money, it wasn’t as long as some of the improvement projects that 

we normally undertake with the multiyear money, for example, the 

5-year money. So we have learned to be a little more responsive to 

that, sir. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, that is instructive and important to know. 

We have passed legislation that changed through the House—it 

hasn’t passed the Senate yet—to change the contracting procedures 

for the Coast Guard on those longer-term projects, and I think that 

legislation will deal with the problems encountered in the Deepwater program. But I am very strongly advocating a follow-on stimulus to the current program. And we have passed legislation 

through the House. I hope the Senate acts on it. But to be credible 

we have to be able to show that the government agencies are putting the funds to work as intended and creating the jobs as expected. So in your weekly review, raise that with your associates. 

Mr. RAJK. I will do that, sir. Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Carper, you said 45 percent of Amtrak contracts awarded to small businesses. 

Mr. CARPER. Yes, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Who are the small businesses, and what is the 

type of work that they are doing? 

Mr. CARPER. Well, I can’t get into a great deal of detail, but I can give you an example. They start from maybe a $1,000 contract, 

a painting contract in the Tampa train station. Many of the contacts are in our stations around the country that would lend themselves very well to small businesses. I can give you much more detail on that, Mr. Chairman, in the future. 

I also think that as our contracts are being let into this construction season, there are going to be lots of opportunities for small 

businesses as subcontractors on some of our larger contracts. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, we give you credit for a great deal of track 

work, ties that are being—80,000 contract—concrete ties are going 

to be replacing wooden ties, 16 Amfleet cars, 21 Superliners, 15 locomotives. I gave you all that credit at the outside of that hearing, 

so what is the status of that work? 

Mr. CARPER. Well, the work is ongoing. I think we have turned, 

I believe, 15 cars out, with 20 in the queue, and we are very confident that we will have our 80 cars and the locomotives out by 

2011. 

As I stated in my remarks, this is 10 train sets that we can put 

out on the system. On some of our trains on the Northeast Corridor, we are turning people away, so this will be very good, it will 

be put to very good use. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Where is that rehabilitation work being done? 

Mr. CARPER. It is being done in our facility right up the way here 

in Bear, Delaware, and also Beech Grove, Indiana. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, the work ahead of Amtrak is enormous. You 

have been underfunded for at least 8 previous years. There are 2 

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77 

sented with a bankruptcy budget for Amtrak where they—Bush 

OMB—said, it is our intention to put Amtrak out of business, 

break it up and sell its parts. Congress said, no. By very strong 

majorities and bipartisan votes, we restored Amtrak funding, but 

only, as I said at the time, enough to keep Amtrak’s nose above 

water. 

Now we have an Amtrak authorization bill that passed in 2008. 

We have the $8 billion in high-speed rail funds the President advocated for the stimulus. We have full-year authorization at $5-plus 

billion. I suspect we will sustain that for as long as this administration is in office. And now you can begin getting your rolling 

stock in good shape, your track in good shape, switches that need 

replacement, catenaries in the Northeast Corridor that need to be 

replaced—some of those are 100 years old—and the restoration of 

your passenger cars as well as locomotives. 

So tell the folks, this is it, this is their moment to shine, to 

show—we said for all these years, just give Amtrak the money, and 

they will be able to rehabilitate the cars, put the track in good 

shape, put the locomotives out, move passengers and keep the system on time. Well, this is your opportunity to do it. 

Mr. CARPER. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are also on 

track to bring our stations into a state of good repair and to adhere 

to the Americans with Disabilities Act in the next 5 years. 

As you mentioned, yes, our nose is above the water line, and we 

are coming out. It is an exciting time for Amtrak. I think one of 

the most telling things that I have seen coming out, to slip a little 

bit into the lessons learned and looking forward, is putting together 

a fleet plan that really gives some teeth to planning for the future. 

And if we talk about job creation, the establishment of a domestic 

railcar industry would be very difficult to do without some good 

planning on our part. This is aside from anything that might happen with high-speed rail. This is just our own fleet of existing cars 

that range from the age of 60 years old to 20 years old. 

I think it is a testament—and you have been here and watched 

it over the years and, frankly, decades—that our staff has been 

able to keep these cars operating in revenue service for that long. 

But with good work of good staff, and some of whom are sitting behind me, there has been a team put together that has responded 

to the challenges or to the opportunities. We see the value of being 

transparent with Congress and the FRA and our great partners in 

FRA and DOT and our stakeholders; reaching out to vendors ahead 

of time to ensure more minority contractors and contracts; and to 

more closely monitor projects and costs so reprogramming can be 

done in a timely manner. So I think—no, I know—you are seeing 

great changes in Amtrak. 

But from a Board standpoint, one of the things that I have seen 

in my short tenure here, 2 years, is the importance of stability and 

quality personnel in Amtrak, and that is what we have today, and 

CEO Joe Boardman, and, as I mentioned, some of the folks sitting 

behind me and the team that he has put together. It is absolutely 

critical for Amtrak to move forward and to be what this body and, 

frankly, the American public wants out of Amtrak is a rock-solid 

and also a visionary organization, and we have that now. And to 

78 

be able to sustain that is one of the things that Amtrak truly 

needs. 

We look forward to being a partner, an active partner, in the economic development component of restimulating the American economy including in railcar manufacturing. We are doing our part in 

that by putting the fleet plan so manufacturers can plan to see 

what over the next 10, 12, 14 years, or 30 or 40 years actually, is 

going to be needed just to replace the existing fleet and to take a 

modest assumption of 2 or 3 percent growth each year. To give you 

an example, over the next 14 years, we are going to need, and this 

is a conservative estimate, about $11 billion to start replacing the 

existing fleet. 

I might also add that we are also seeing and tracking the job 

numbers in investment that doesn’t show up perhaps on anyone’s 

tally sheet, and that is the investment that can come in around 

quality passenger rail, around train stations in downtown city centers. My Congressman, Congressman Hare, mentioned that. And I 

give you countless other examples of that around the country. 

Good investments in infrastructure, in transportation infrastructure, around our station will be good investments in downtown. 

Being a former mayor of a community, I understand the value of 

infill and not have to extend new sewer lines and new water lines, 

and build new highways or new roads, and take up good-quality 

farmland when you can do infill investment, commercial retail and 

residential, in downtown areas, and one of the ways to stimulate 

that is with passenger rail. We see a new day with Amtrak, and 

we thank again your support and for the many, many years you 

have been supporting us, and look forward to working with you in 

the future. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for that response and for your enthusiasm. I enjoy hearing it. America is on the threshold of a passenger rail renaissance because of the bill we passed in 2008; because of the funding that President Obama has committed in the 

high-speed rail initiative, the $8 billion; because of the funding the 

President has committed to sustain the regular annual Amtrak 

program to make the investments for the short term and the long 

term. And I want the word to go out to all Amtrak employees that 

there is a new era. Their faithfulness, dedication and years of work 

against incredible odds have paid off, and now Amtrak will have 

an opportunity to show what it can do to move people by passenger 

rail at speeds faster than the highway can take people in our society. They move greater numbers of people more efficiently. 

And the numbers that you have cited are very sobering, a huge, 

huge backlog of investment needs, but that is true in all of our infrastructure. That is true in every one of the categories represented 

at the witness table here today. 

We have underinvested in the underpinnings of our economy. 

And it was Adam Smith well over 200 years ago who said, if the 

public sector does its job well, then the private sector will be able 

to do what it does best. The public sector is providing the transportation needs, the water system support, the aviation requirements, 

the planning for economic development long term. The private sector, relying upon that and those foundations, will be able to invest 

for the long term. 

79 

So for each of the agencies represented here, thank you for the 

work you have done. Thank you for keeping faith with the Recovery Act, with the stimulus funding that Congress and the President 

have provided. Keep it going. Take the lessons learned; apply them 

for the future not only for stimulus, but for our standard regular 

programs, and we will revisit this issue in another 4 or 5 weeks. 

I will just close with one face of recovery. Last August I went to 

visit a project, I-35, Interstate 35, southern tier of my district, between North Branch and Rush City. Granite—sorry, Knife River 

Construction was doing 28 lane miles, 4 lanes, 7 miles. I went to 

the gravel pit where they were classifying aggregates, gravel and 

sand. It had been shut down 2 or 3 months earlier; now it is reopen, workers are on the job site. 

We went to the highway project itself, and the foreman called 

over one of the trucks. You have seen them, the big-belly dumpers 

on construction sites. The driver pulled over, shut the engine off, 

jumped down sobbing, and threw her arms around me and said, I 

am Joyce Fisk. Thank you for my job. Two months ago my husband 

and I had finished dinner, we sent our boys off to bed, we just 

looked at each other across the table and said, where do we go from 

here? Our health insurance ended December 31, our unemployment 

comp ran out 3 months ago, we have 2 months’ saving for our mortgage, and are we going to be able to send the boys to summer 

camp? And then we just cried and hugged each other. 

The next morning the phone rang, and Knife River called and 

said, we won the bid on I-35, report for work on Monday. And now 

if I can get my 1,200 hours in and my husband, who works for the 

same company, then our health insurance will be reinstated. We 

are paying the mortgage, we are paying taxes, and the boys went 

to summer camp. 

That is the human face of recovery. There are Joyce Fisks all 

over America and in every State who are looking to us and counting on us to make lives better; to move the projects through and 

move the funding along; to put people to work; to reestablish their 

self-worth and their identity in this society and in our economy. All 

of us have jobs. There are a couple million out there who don’t who 

are counting on us to deliver. You started that process, done it 

well, lessons to be learned. We will go forward from here. Thank 

you for your contribution. 

The Committee is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:01 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

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Æ 


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