Thank you for coming. Welcome to infrastructure week. We have been looking forward to this awhile. Infrastructure was a thing that all pundits after the election when we were in this fractured state after the 2016 election, will democrats and republicans be able to Work Together on anything, people said infrastructure. Why . Democrats like spending money and donald trump likes having things built, sees himself as a builder. We were supposed to get something. We havent gotten something yet, and well, policy always proves more complicated in practice than in promise. And thats the complexity of this, why we assembled the excellent panel we have today. Anybody that follows stuff about transportation infrastructure, the way cities work follows nicole. Senior fellow, contributing editor and columnist at new york post. Nick lawyer is of heritage foundation, focuses on energy, environment, regulatory issues. A Deputy Director of the thomas rowe institute for Economic Policy studies. Finally, Heritage Action tim chapman. He is the executive director t t Heritage Action, polling on the issue of infrastructure and transportation. Thank you, panelists. I want to start off and ask in general, do we need a 2 trillion infrastructure bill, and if so, what specifically should be in it . Thank you, tim. I want to thank you for having us here today. The answer to do we need a trillion dollar infrastructure billion or 2 trillion infrastructure bill is no. The answer to do we need an infrastructure bill is yes. But the problem is when we focus on big numbers, we dont get to the goal. We saw this with the obama era stimulus where this was billed as a nearly trillion dollar infrastructure bill, obama used the word transformative when he rolled this out in early 2009, but many of the projects in the bill never came to fruition. If you think about a High Speed Rail Network where president obama said at the time were going to build a backbone of a new transportation across the country, but the marquise project of the High Speed Rail Network, high speed rail spine up and down california, they have built barely anything now in more than a decade since this was announced. So to get to real infrastructure, the last thing we need is to put the number first. The first thing we should be doing is having all 50 states and major regional areas in each state put together a realistic list of what are the immediate infrastructure needs that are achievable within the next decade. Then, how much do the infrastructure needs cost. Then we arrive at a number thats more realistic than a trillion dollars or 2 trillion, then the hard part is executing the projects. Were good at announcing projects, making press releases and conferences, but were not good at getting them done. You remember the seinfeld joke, it is easy to make the car reservation, take the car reservation, it is harder to have the car there waiting for you once you go to retrieve your reservation. And were the same way with our Infrastructure Projects. It is the execution that will matter in the end. To build off nicoles point, when you think about what president obama said when he passed that stimulus package and projects didnt come to fruition, he said shovel ready jobs werent as shovel ready as they initially anticipated. A big part of that was the regulatory obstacles that we face when Building Infrastructure. Think of one single project like the Keystone Pipeline. If you look back to when transcanada announced they would expand their keystone system with xl down to the gulf coast, barack obama hadnt announced joe biden as his running mate yet. If you had a child at the time they submitted that application to the state department, that child would enter middle school this september. Thats just one pipeline project. If you expand that to all of the Infrastructure Projects that we have, whether it is traditional Infrastructure Projects and highways and bridges, if it is energy Infrastructure Projects, even renewable Infrastructure Projects are all facing the systemic regulatory problems, whether it is labor regulations, environmental regulations, outright changes in zoning laws, these things adversely impact the ability to actually build things and to get the projects that we want here to meet the consumers needs. I agree with both my fellow panelists. Let me answer from a different perspective. The question is whether we need a 2 trillion infrastructure package depends who you ask. We asked a lot of people. We have done significant amount of polling this year at Heritage Action. The backdrop to what were trying to do in the polling project is were looking at the Political Coalition that brought trump into power in 2016. That coalition we see as suburban republicans, grass roots conservatives, and working class americans. And working class americans were new to the coalition, came in because they liked a lot of things trump was saying, specifically on issues like infrastructure. So we have done almost 500,000 in polling this years to look at the dish areas. We polled nationally, in battleground states, blue collar districts, suburban districts. What you see is overwhelmingly theres an appetite for Infrastructure Program when the Infrastructure Program is described as roads and bridges, not talking about mass transit, but roads and bridges, overwhelmingly popular. That probably doesnt surprise a lot of people. If you look at within the republican base, registered republicans, you ask them simple question, do you support a trillion dollar federal Spending Program for roads and bridges, the answer is 78 support that within the republican party. So the point here, and then the numbers go up when you start looking into those blue collar districts and competitive districts, so you understand why members of congress on the republican side and we wonder why conservatives are excited to sign onto an infrastructure bill, it is because their constituents are. Look, the numbers go down when you talk about do you support the bill if it gets sweetheart deals to labor unions or if there are contracts theres corruption and things like that, numbers fall through the bottom, so there is a way to fight back against some of the massive bloated federal bills. But my point is that this is a politically salient issue that will come if trump is reelected, will be one of the first things they try to do. Conservatives have to figure out how to be part of shaping this because if we dont shape it, if you let the administration shape it and let them work with democrats to cut the deal, it will end up looking a lot different than we would like it to look. And thats the importance of the panel, too, what were talking about today, what does that end up looking like. When people say they support an infrastructure bill, three people have three things in mind. When nancy pelosi was asked, she said it is about jobs jobs jobs. She said something about economic efficiency, throws in saving the planet. Donald trump when he talked about it in the state of the union, he said we will build gleeming new roads and bridges and roadways and waterways. It is trumpian. When you poll people, you ask me about infrastructure, i think maybe youre going to fill some potholes. Maybe youre going to add a lane or sidewalk. Dont we mean 13 different things. Should Congress Sort of pick something and focus on it . Is this something for states to decide . Nicole, what would you do if somebody said where should infrastructure money go . I think thats the first question, what is infrastructure. The reason we see some big numbers, the engineers come out every three years with a big report that we have a 3 trillion infrastructure deficit, but that is based on an overly broad definition of infrastructure. So the first thing we need to do in coming up with a number, do we need a trillion, two trillion, pulling numbers out of the air, what is the role of the federal government in paying for infrastructure. Thats the number we should be thinking about. Most infrastructure is private sector infrastructure or it is local and state infrastructure. If we think about pipelines, think about electricity, if we think about water, these are all things that are paid for through peoples utilities, whether private sector, if you have a private sector Electric Company or through municipal water bill, except for in extraordinary circumstances, a poor town, they pay for themselves. You pay for the electricity bill, that covers the cost of paying for the electricity. Capital plant and all of the employees. Theres no need for government involvement except with some regulatory issues. Same thing with an oil pipeline, gas pipeline. If it does not pay for itself, theres probably something wrong with it. We should listen to the market signal theres not enough demand for the project, cost of building the project are too high and so forth. Much of the rest of our infrastructure, local potholes, local road and bridge maintenance are state and local issues. Three out of four infrastructure dollars are spent at the state and local level. There are some ideas about making more highways into toll highways. We can talk about that later and some of the positives and negatives of that, but the infrastructure that doesnt pay for itself is in general your Larger Network road projects where there is a federal role, larger mass transit projects, and gateway tunnel, for example. Dam projects to protect against Flood Control because theres no efficient mechanism to get everyone to pay for their share of the dam, so these are things were talking about. It is a much smaller universe than the broad utilities part of it. I think a big problem is that four of the four dollars arent going to those types of projects. Generally, right now we have an Infrastructure Spending system that incentivizes the siphoning of federal resources to go to projects that are state and local in nature. Its kind of like when you go out to eat with a group of your friends. If you go out to eat with a group of your friends and you split the bill among ten people, your buddy who gets a side salad is ordering a cowboy ribeye and slinging back cocktails because he can spread the cost with nine other people. Thats what you get with massive Infrastructure Spending packages. You are spreading the costs among the millions of taxpayers and then you get wasteful projects or projects that are simply local or state in nature. And you have things like spending on bike paths and recreational trails. Thats not to denigrate those projects. I love biking and recreational trails. I think the people who derive the most value are the ones that should be paying for them. So, tim, let me ask you, does your polling go granular as what the priorities are, whether its new versus maintaining, roads versus bike trails, et cetera . Yeah, we listed im not going to remember the exact numbers right now, but we listed different categories of Infrastructure Spending. Roads and bridges, mass transit, bike trails, those kinds of things. I think if republicans are going to do this right they need to begin talking now about what they are going to do in 2020 if the president is reelected. I think they actually have so shift the ground that they are debating the democrats on. Youre right. Nancy pelosi talks about this as a jobs bill. A popular political message. Thats how i would talk about it if i were her. Republicans need to take a step outside of this traditional debate, what is the federal government going to do and how much is the federal government going to spend on a big Infrastructure Program and say this is bigger than infrastructure. I would talk about this as a jobs and work program. I would recommend the president say heres what were going to do. Were not playing on the democrats turf. We are going to do an Infrastructure Program that empowers states and localities, have Public Private partnerships. But this is not just infrastructure. This is more than just roads and bridges. This is about putting this country back to work. There is a host of areas that he can dovetail into this when it comes to work and the dignity of work. This is important especially for that part of his coalition that he won. I think of you probably saw the axios piece yesterday morning that showed the flip districts that went for obama before they flipped and went for trump are doing less well in terms of the economic recovery than other districts across the country. He still needs to be making the case that he is helping the working class american. So we have all sorts of policies here at heritage we have been championing. Things like Higher Education reform where you put on par the federal subsidy that you give to people who go to fouryear liberal arts school and say if somebody is going to vocational or apprenticeship training, you should get that training. Why should working class americans be subsidizing upper class americans . Who receive federal funds to go to college free. Put that in an infrastructure bill. Put welfare reform in an infrastructure bill. Skillsbased immigration in an infrastructure bill and change the debate. Make the debate actually something that is a broader and captures the publics imagination in a way that i think the democrats cannot compete with. When they are trying to fight on Higher Education, they are going to get beat. Their interests in Higher Education are regress i have, you see what Elizabeth Warren is doing on her bailout for higher ed. You see what Bernie Sanders is doing. I would like to attack it in that way. That allows you to actually push a lot of spending down to the state and local level and but the bigness of the bill allows you to still be broad and aspirational. It seems that i have never seen republicans win a fight of who will spend more money, including to create jobs. You think it could or should be a jobs bill . It should only be a jobs bill in the sense that better infrastructure makes the private sector more productive. We think about infrastructure the wrong way when we think it should create Public Sector jobs or heavily subsidized Construction Industry jobs. Of course, its wonderful that jobs are a byproduct of Building Infrastructure and people who work Building Infrastructure, engineering infrastructure, these are important jobs, but that is not the point of the infrastructure. The point of the infrastructure is to support the private sector. Now, of course these jobs should pay whatever is necessary to attract qualified workers, but one of the issues with infrastructure bills is the state issue of prevailing wages. In new york, for example, state law says that if you are working on a public works project, the wage for a basic laborer is close to 50 an hour, but the health care and pension benefits above that that go into the hourly wage bring the cost closer to 100 an hour. And as you go up the scale of the the scale of the work, your operating engineers, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, the wages are higher. There is nothing wrong with that. These are good, solid, middle class jobs. The other side of the prevailing wage laws is the inefficient work rules that are embedded in these contracts between the Construction Contractors and the construction unions. For example, if ive got a job that requires plumbing, electricity and painting, i need three separate people to do these three separate jobs even if the work is incidental in any one of these areas, that you just need someone to hook up the plumbing. You just need someone to hook up the electricity. Its not complex skilled work. You still need three separate people on the job site. There is a lot of inflexibility in these union contracts. I remember being at the Democratic Republican Convention in 04 and getting yelled at by a union guy. He says you are not ibew, yet you are doing electricity distribution. I am a reporter, i was plugging in an extension cord. He showed me i was doing stuff that only Union Workers were allowed to do. Thats not to say we want to to throw away unions. Get rid of these jobs. Its just to say any federal infrastructure bill has to nod to the reality that we need, first of all, these contracts need to be made public. Right now the contracts between Construction Contractors and construction unions are considered private contracts that the rest of us cant see even though part of our money goes to pay for it. And once the contracts are public, we need to see a lot more efficiencies in terms of the work force productivity. So we are getting more infrastructure for every dollar we spend. Let me ask you, saying that the way infrastructure creates jobs is by supporting business, allowing more efficient shipping, commuting, that sort of thing. And that gets back to the question of, well then how should we fund it and who should be paying for it . If its creating Economic Opportunity, then the people for whom its creating Economic Opportunity ought to be paying for it, right . There are a million debates over how we fund roads. Im from new york, and most highways are tolled. Almost every bridge is tolled. You go down south and tolls are, you know, thats the least i think whats your least popular op