Brookings both for people in the room, who are watching on cspan and i via webcast to the closing event of infrastructure week. So a lot of folks public, private, civic have been involved in designing infrastructure week and pulling it off, and to all of you from brookings, thank you. And also thank you to the foundations and corporations that really have made our work possible. The ford foundation, the [inaudible] foundation, hitachi, aig, ge, rbc, kkr and all the members of our metropolitan leadership council. They really have made our research possible. Now, the timing of this week could not be better. And i know congressman delaneys going to talk about this. There are clearly shortterm federal actions involving the gas tax and the Highway Trust Fund that are critical and really a new way of the National Government engaging. But there really are metaissues that are incoming this week informing this week. Does the United States have what it takes to build and retrofit a new generation of infrastructure for todays pressing and disruptive challenges . This is a pivotal decade because of supersized economic, social and environmental challenges facing the country. We need more jobs. We still need 7. 1 million jobs to make up the jobs we lost during the downturn, keep pace with labor dynamics, population growth. We need were the jobs better jobs because we went from 81 Million People live anything poverty and near poverty in this country in 2000 to 107 million. And we need to build communities that are resilient and sustainable in the face of economic restructuring and environmental challenges. So infrastructure can play an enormous role in addressing these super challenges both at the National Scale and, frankly, at the city and metropolitan scale which drive most of the economy if we think differently and innovate continuously. So what weve tried to do at brookings, and this really is a setup for congressman delaney, weve really tried to do four things. Weve tried to redefine infrastructure for a new era. Weve defined it, essentially, as seven sectors of infrastructure that really have all their own methods by how we design them, how we finance them, how we deliver them and how we govern them from roads and transit to trade and logistics to energy and water and so forth. Were a modern, sophisticated economy, and infrastructure means a variety of things as we all know, and we can understand that. We can basically not just come up with ideas for solutions, but actually execute them. Second, we redefined the impact of infrastructure, right . This is 14. 3 million jobs in this country. 11 percent of our jobs. And the incredible thing about the infrastructure super sector is that these are good jobs. They pay better wages than many other sectors of the economy. So when you invest in infrastructure, theyre a platform for broader growth, but the jobs in that super sector are very good. Third, weve tried to redefine what we mean by innovation for infrastructure. You cannot build 20th century infrastructure for a 21st century economy. Particularly how disresultive this economy is, particularly given the potential to use the technology, to deploy it, to apply it in ways where we get better results. And finally, and this really, i think, will get to congressman delaneys thoughts, a is were trying to redefine how we invest in infrastructure. Because at the end of the day, you need to invest for the future and, frankly, the entire system is a Public Private exercise in the United States, and its federalist in design and execution. We are not a country, like many of our competitors, that really just have a Central Government that, basically, has a National Plan and then does the bulk of the investment. We are a federal republic, and we are a Public Private enterprise. And so as we go forward today, we have some excellent innovators from around the country who are really doing the hard work of putting forth a vision for what infrastructure can look like in this decade and the next century. We really need to think differently about this and align it to what is a disruptive and pivotal moment, but also align it to how we operate as a nation and as a society. With that, i want to introduce, i think, one of the most innovative members of congress. John delaney, congressman from marylands sixth district, right . Hometown, right, washington d. C. But also someone who comes into the National Government from the private sector, ceo of a Company Listed on the new york stock exchange. This is really someone coming in not just with private sector expertise in the abstract, but with ideas that can be deployed for, again, a very different kind of moment where the National Government needs to be a stable and reliable partner, a platform, a foundation for investing in the kind of infrastructure that moves our country forward. So congressman delaney on the critical committees that really deal with so much of what were going to talk about today, thank you for coming today, looking forward to your remarks. [applause] thank you, bruce, for that very nice introduction and for all the work you do. And i want to thank everyone for being here and for your significant participation in infrastructure week. Its, obviously, a topic near and dear to my heart, and i also want to thank brookings for hosting this and for all of your contributions to this topic and, generally, your contributions to Public Policy in this country which in many ways is singular. So its great to be here, and its great to be part of a brookings event. So in my judgment, increasing the Infrastructure Investment in the United States should be our top domestic economic priority by any measure. And i say this for really three reasons. The first reason relates to some of the things that bruce touched on which is that its an incredibly important jobs program to some extent, and it particularly focuses on creating middleskilled jobs which is exactly what this country needs. If you look at the data around job creation in this country, were actually doing a pretty good job creating highskilled jobs, and were doing a very good job creating lowskilled jobs because highskilled jobs kind of directly and indirectly drive the creation of lowskilled jobs. But what were really lacking is these middleskilled jobs, the kind of jobs where people can have one job, have a decent standard of living and raise their family. Thats really where the shortage is. Thats the part of the market thats been hollowed out by the macro trends of globalization and technology. And infrastructure is such a perfect way, investing in our infrastructure is such a perfect way to create those jobs because it creates them directly through the people who actually build the infrastructure and indirectly around all the manufacturing that goes with infrastructure. Because if you think about our ability to compete in manufacturing, you realize that the kind of things you have to manufacture for infrastructure, you know, to simplify it are big and heavy. And the United States has a competitive advantage on building big and heavy things. And so itll be incredibly stimulative to our manufacturing sector. The first reason we need to invest is because it creates jobs. And i actually think this point needs to be emphasized because i come from the Financial Services industry, and people often ask me what do i think the chances of another financial crisis in the near term . I actually think that the chances of another financial crisis in the near term are almost zero. But when people ask me what are the chances of another jobs crisis where the effects of globalization and Technology Continue to accelerate and hollow out the middle class of this country at a much rapid, much more rapid rate than we anticipate . I put the chances of that at pretty high. And so to think that we dont need a, potentially, a big job ares program in this country, i think is very shortsighted. The second thing is it makes us competitive, and i care deeply about the United States ability to compete in this new global and technologyenabled world which we all know were living in. And having world class infrastructure is critically important, a as you all know, to doing that. So it creates jobs, it makes us more competitive in the long term, and it also pencils out. If you look over time, for every dollar we spend on infrastructure in this country we get almost two dollars of economic return. Its 1. 92, to be precise. So its rare from a domestic Public Policy perspective that you can do things that do all three of those things; create jobs in the short term, make you more competitive in the long term and pencil out. Which is why i think this should be our top priority. And everyone knows about the challenges we face in infrastructure, but its also a huge opportunity. I mean, the numbers are very significant. I mean, you hear numbers three trillion, four trillion, some people even say five trillion dollars of an investment we need in this country to bring our infrastructure up to a world class level. To handle an investment of that size, we have to, to some extent, deconstruct how we create infrastructure in this country and make sure we have good Public Policy initiatives around all of them. And so it seems to me the way we create infrastructure in this country falls into one of four categories. We either create infrastructure by having the government grant money to do it, so the federal money grants money, state governments provide grants, a whole variety of governments provide grants to build infrastructure. And most of that infrastructure is stuff thats really related to the common good, right . So thats the first way we build infrastructure. The second way we build infrastructure is by charging user fees, and theres a whole varian i of projects around variety of projects around this country as we all know that are really based on some sort of a user fee scenario. The third way we build infrastructure in this country is the private sector does it through good Public Private partnerships where the private sector is building the infrastructure, operating the infrastructure, and its being used by the public. And then the fourth way we create infrastructure in this country is we finance it. In other words, someone borrows money typically a local government to build something, and they have to pay it back across the long term. So if we ever want to close the 3, 4, 5 trillion gap in the Infrastructure Investment in this country, we need to be doing things in all four of those buckets, and we shouldnt think of these things as mutually exclusive. Because some people say, well, thats a good idea, but it doesnt do this. Thats the wrong answer. We need multiple tools in our tool kit if we really want to have a meaningful improvement in the infrastructure in this country and make a significant investment in the infrastructure of this country. We have to do it in a lot of different ways, because its a very complicated and sophisticated landscape. So thats the other thing i like to tell people, have an open mind. All of the tools are virtuous because we have such a big need. And so the main piece of legislation that ive been working on for the last year around this challenge really fits into that financing category. So, again, we grant money, we charge user fees, we do Public Private partnerships and finance it. What weve tried to create, for lack of a better term, is the category killer of financing. In other words, the big 800pound gorilla that will take care of a lot of the financing needs this country has in the long term. And thats what weve created with something called the partnership to build america act which was a bill that i introduced in the house of representatives almost a year ago, and it had a companion bill introduced in the senate a few months ago. And right now this bill is the most significant piece of bipartisan economic legislation in the whole of the congress. We have 31 House Republicans on the bill and 31 house democrats. And we have a half a Dozen Senate Republicans and a half a dozen senate democrats. So its completely bipartisan, and in a meaningful way. In other words, were deeply penetrating the congress, and were adding members every week. What the bill does is pretty simple. Its complicated the way it lays out, but its actually pretty simple. We launch a large scale infrastructure financing entity which is designed to be a large scale bank bond guarantor to be used by states and local governments around the country to finance any type of infrastructure. I love the way bruce framed the different categories of infrastructure. I call them the food groups of infrastructure, right . This entity allows us, allows states and local governments to use this money for transportation, for water, for energy, for communications, even for education. To think in the world that were going to live in in the next 20 or 30 years from now that we dont think of education facilities as Core Infrastructure to a competitive United States, i think, is crazy. So all of those categories are eligible for financing. The American Infrastructure Fund is capitalized up front with 50 billion that goes in day one and creates the cap aal bed capital bed for this financing entity, and it stays in there for 50 years. We believe the American Infrastructure Fund can leverage itself 1015 to 1 in the private markets. So it takes that 50 billion of capital and potentially leverages it up to 750 billion. And itll exist for 50 years, so that money can revolve up and down for 50 years, potentially financing 2 trillion of infrastructure over 50 years. And if you do the math on that, that would create three million jobs in this country which is more jobs than exist in my home state of maryland, to put itwuop perspective. So thats what the American Infrastructure Fund does. The way its capitalized is very unique. The government does not put the 50 billion into the entity. Its put in by private companies who buy bonds very cheap, nongovernmentguaranteed, longterm bonds. 50year, 1 not government guaranteed. They would never make this investment in a normal kind of free market system. But to create an incentive for them to do this, we say that for every dollar a u. S. Corporation invests in the American Infrastructure Fund, they get the right to repatriate a certain amount of their overseas earnings back to the United States tax free. We all know, and its come into sharp focus in the last couple of weeks, that weve got an International Tax law problem in this country, right . And its causing almost half of u. S. Cash to sit overseas of our largest corporations, and the cash overseas is growing at a faster rate than it is in the United States. So pretty soon u. S. Companies will have more cash overseas than they do in the United States. And theyre not bringing it back because we have a system and this system is unique in the world where we require our companies to pay tax locally where they earn the money, and then when they bring it back to the United States, they have to pay be u. S. Tax. So its effectively a double tax scheme that we have. No other country has this. What the other countries do is you pay your tax locally, and when you bring your money back to homeland, if you will, you dont have to pay any tax. Thats why this cash is accumulating overseas which is why pfizer, for example, is doing one of these tax inversions. The real driver is the fact that they have 60 billion in cash overseas. If they bring it back to the United States, theyve got to pay 20 billion in federal taxes, so they might as well use it to potentially overpay for a company. What theyre doing is creating a path for some of that money to come back taxfree. Its not a free lunch. They have to put some money in this American Infrastructure Fund. We make them buy be bonds if they want to bring it back taxfree that they would never buy, that are probably only worth 20 cents on the dollar. The good news is they get to bring back money, right . The good news for us is we get capitalized without a penny of Government Spending a massive infrastructure financing vehicle thatll be around for 50 years and make a material difference against this challenge and opportunity we have around infrastructure. And the reason this bill so bipartisan is because it brings together two pieces of Public Policy that each party has been spot on right about. We democrats im a democrat weve been advocating for an increased investment in infrastructure in this country for a long time for all the reasons weve talked about. And is weve been 100 right about that. My republican colleagues have been pointing out for some time that we need to fix this International Tax system, that its a problem. Its making us not competitive. Its reducing investments in the United States among our largest companies. And guess what . Theyve been 100 spot on right about that. And so this bill fuses together those two pieces of good Public Policy, and it as a result has garnered such significant bipartisan support. As i said, its the most significant piece of Bipartisan Legislation in the congress. Its a big id