Discussion and help move transportation and infrastructure policy forward. Thank you very much, and i look forward to our discussion. Thank you. [ applause ] go ahead and sit in the middle. And rich, if you join us on the end there. Well have some q a here. Well chat a little bit and then time to open it up to some questions from you all in the audience. Thank you both for being here. As i said at the top, a host of issues where the chamber and the aflcio, organized labor do not see eye to eye. I saw mr. Trumka and on this issue there is so much overlap and the question is raised immediately, if organized labor and the Largest Business Group in washington are on the same page, why cant this get done. Maybe ill go to you, rich, first. Whats standing in the way . Youve looked at this issue and battled over this for years. Whats in the way . Its pure politics right now. In the past this was always a bipartisan issue. There was never bickering. Everybody knew that you had to keep the country running. Its like your household. If something leaks you have to fix it. If it needs painted, you have to fix it. You have to do those things. And the country needs to be replenished so we can stay competitive. Everybody knows that, yet they cant figure out a way to get it done. Its just politics. Theres no other reason for it. They know it needs to be done. They agree it needs to be done, but it doesnt get done. I think thats what frustrates the american people, business, working people. This is an issue that needs to get done now. From the chambers perspective . I completely agree with rich on this. It needs to get done. I think one thing that Congress Fails to make a distinction on is the investment in infrastructure is a Capital Investment, not an expense. So it needs longterm funding, not monthtomonth or quartertoquarter funding. Its like running any business. You cant make investments for growth if all you can do is look forward 30, 60 or 90 days. Its a Capital Investment that we need to make in the country, not a shortterm expense. And it really does need to be five or six years so the projects can be planned, they can get done. Right now weve had 30 extensions in the last several years. Looks like were about to get another one. I know. It will either be to june or december. But again, how do you plan . Its much more expensive when you do it that way. Its no different than building your house and doing change orders instead of taking the time and scoping it out, creating a budget and then utilizing that budget over the long term. And so, some reports have shown that these extensions have increased the costs by 30 over what we could have spent to do just the little that has been done to date. But the reality is, would you agree at the chamber were looking most likely at either something at the end of the year or a twomonth patch . Do you have a preference if there is a patch how long it should be . The length of the patch from our perspective should be just long enough to allow congress to create and pass a longterm bill. Whats your take . We would agree. Id rather see june and pass a longterm bill after that. Because the more we keep kicking the can down the road, the more it keeps hurting the country and the further behind we get. Were looking at over 3 trillion right now that needs to be invested to make the country healthy again, to make it competitive again. The longer we kick the can down the road, the bigger the bill gets and the more individuals pay, like waiting in line, wasting gas, but also losing salary down the line because business becomes less competitive. When they become less competitive, workers get laid off or dont get raises that they could otherwise get. Were paying, every american is paying the price for their inaction and every business is paying the price. Do you get a sense that theres been a change in the conversation or the tone in washington right now about where this is headed . You hear senator hatch, chairman ryan at the ways and Means Committee talking about the possibility of progress. Ive interviewed secretary liu, about the tradeoff. Secretary foxx talked about it again, using corporate earnings overseas somehow that being the funding stream that gets this off the block. Ill let you both weigh in if you see Something Different today than six months or a year ago . I think theres been conversation about repatriation as the solution but it doesnt really make sense because theyre talking about a holiday. Again its a shortterm gap. We need comprehensive tax reform, not Corporate Tax reform solely. We need comprehensive tax reform. What we should be looking for for funding solutions, as rich pointed out, a user tax funding through Public Private partnerships, additional funding through federal and state programs, but we should be looking at transportationrelated revenues that are sustainable, long term, and have growth built into them. I dont disagree. Theres a number of things that can and should be done. I think we need to use the user tax. We need to look at vehicle miles traveled, a program being tried out in the west because youre coming up with electrical cars. The gas tax hasnt been increased americans dont like the idea of the government watching where their car goes. They already do if they have a cell phone in their pocket. I hate to tell them that. Look, theres a lot of ways to do it. If you say lets do it, they need to agree on a target. Lets say we need to fix the problem. Come up and be honest about that, and then define the problem. The society of Civil Engineers have already defined the breadth of the problem, the magnitude of the problem, and say were going to fix it and heres what it will take. Then come up with a Funding Sources. It can be multiple, but they must be long term so that everybody can plan, so that the states can plan, so that the Construction Companies can plan, so that everybody can plan without wasting money. We heard earlier today in the earlier panels about there have been ideas about handing this money off to the states, let the states, the folks at the local level deal with these issues because they understand their transportation problems better than anybody else. Tell me why that doesnt make sense. I think to a certain degree obviously state involvement is very key. But we have a comprehensive National Transportation network that is a huge competitive advantage. We operate businesses across all lines, so you have to have an integrated federal policy. You have to have federal involvement in order to support a national structure. Shes absolutely right. Look, you remember we were going to do high speed rail, and two states said we dont want high speed rail. If you leave it up to the states, there would be 50 different policies and railroads would go to the border i guess and end. Thats why you need federal policy. This cannot be 50 states doing 50 Different Things. It has to be a federal policy and an integrated system. How would one state do the electrical grid system . How would they do enough for ports . How would they do inland water ways . It doesnt make sense to do it on a state by state basis. It must be done as a national plan. Let me ask you another question that you get sometimes in this debate is montana cattle rancher paying my gas tax in montana, yet some of my taxes are going to help the banker in new york get on the subway and get to his job. Why is that fair . That montana farmer gets a lot of subsidies back into that state a lot of different ways. In fact, some states like texas get more subsidies than anybody else, as well as louisiana and mississippi. Its give and take. You have a national system. Youre going to create a Transportation Network thats going to benefit everybody. The products that montana cattle rancher gets could be cheaper if theyre brought there by a good rail system that delivers feed and delivers Different Things that he or she may need. So theyre going to benefit in the end by having an efficient system and having the country becoming competitive. They can also get their products to market or export those products a whole lot easier when you have an efficient system, not one in every nine bridges is about to break down. At the end of the day right now there are federal taxes that are associated with transportation. They havent been raised since 1993. Gas prices are at their lowest level. Cars are more efficient than ever. The infrastructure thats been built, a lot of it was not intended to last this long so that farmer in montana or i come from a state, oregon, where theres a tremendous amount of agricultural commerce. When those supply chains block up, those products go to waste. When the ports arent efficient, those products cant get out to 95 of the consumers in the world who are outside of the u. S. It exists now. What were saying is that upgrade the infrastructure to make it globally competitive, to enable people to sell their products more efficiently and at less cost, we need to invest. Is it hard to imagine any final solution here that doesnt include an increase in the federal gasoline tax . I think if you speak to leaders on both sides of the aisle they all know that in their heart. Its a question of who wants to put their chips on the table first. I dont see a solution that doesnt include hiking the gas tax. Its done, its there. Its available. Were another 30 days away from an expiration. If youre going to do a totally new Funding Source, its going to take a long time and well have to kick the can down the road for another two or three years before they get that Funding Source perfected. So i cant see a way of getting it done, at least a major part of it through the user. Both of you mentioned the competitive side of things, whats happening in china. For a lot of americans who may not be able to go to china and see whats happening there or in other parts of the world, tell us you obviously have to travel the world. A lot of your customers are out there. Youve been over in china as well. Whats really happening out there . Where is it you can see americas getting its lunch handed to it . So ill begin, since this is an infrastructure conference, ill begin with infrastructure. The roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, ports, run at an efficiency level that far exceed ours. If it takes us xnumber of days to get our material from the middle of the country to the coast in order to export it, it takes them less time for that time period. If you look at china, china is actually suffering from a lot of the same things that were suffering from. Theyve got a slowing domestic economy which means that theyve got pressures on employment which we do as well. Theyve got oversupply which we do as well. Our country is a place where people want to bring their businesses. There are many u. S. Companies that are bringing their businesses back onshore, manufacturing businesses, because our electricity, our power is cheaper. Our laws are clearer. We have an able and ready work force. Its that work force that has really suffered and has not gone back to work since the Global Financial crisis. Im sure you see these same statistics. While our Unemployment Rate appears to be improving, the Participation Rate hasnt improved, and so many of the people who havent been able to participate are the ones who lost their jobs in the financial crisis. So one of the things that we agree on over and over again is jobs, jobs, and jobs. And when you improve infrastructure, it attracts business. The chamber a few years ago did a transportation Performance Index which showed a Huge Positive correlation between infrastructure that works and foreign direct investments. So people coming onto u. S. Shores to make cars, to make appliances, to make tools, to manufacture. So thats where were getting our lunch handed to us is weve got the platform to really become another industrial manufacturing center. Weve got to take advantage of that by creating the platform that allows people to do that. Each year our rail, our port, our roads, our airports fall further behind and we become less competitive. You asked about china. China needed a deep water port. They didnt have one. So in four years they built a sixlane highway, 21 kilometers into the china sea. They created a port that did 14 million containers. This is in four years. And in two more years that same port will be handling 21 million containers a year. Now, thats what theyre doing. Thats the competition. And we sit around. It would take us two lifetimes to build a sixlane highway 21 kilometers into a sea and then build a port that could handle 14 million containers. Do we need that . Absolutely we need that. We have a grid system that is falling apart. We have water lines. We have a break every two minutes. Every two minutes in this country a water line breaks somewhere. Seems like all of them break here in d. C. But theyre everywhere. Its a tremendous loss of resources and efficiency. It doesnt have to happen. Theyve figured out that infrastructure creates jobs. In the United States you do an infrastructure job. For every three construction jobs that you put to work, five other jobs are created in other industries, in materials and transportation. Its a nobrainer. It is truly a nobrainer and we dont do it. Quickly, we have a short amount of time left. A question or two right here . There should be a microphone floating around. I want to ask identify yourself. Leslie blakey, coalition for americas great ways and trading. We work on freight and goods. I want to ask a provocative question because i know youve been trying to get something going here all morning. Besides needing to raise the gas tax which we do, and i know greg here, hes going to say the gas tax is paid by highway users and it really needs to be highways and when we get to our Freight System were talking mega infrastructure and important needs for prioritizing that infrastructure. So id like to ask the Business Community and the Labor Community represented here about the idea of needing dedicated funding for infrastructure and multimodal and needing to draw on a dedicated source of funding possibly coming from a business freight fee. Any possibility that the Business Community could support that . Business freight fee . A fee that would support freight infrastructure. A new dedicated source of funding for freight, for multimodal. Any thoughts on that . I will say that with respect to the comments that i made before, there are multiple sources of federal, state, private, public and user fee taxes that need to be looked at to address the whole chain of transportation needs. And so i think that to solve the problem and to create the Capital Funds that we need, we need to look across the board at a variety of different funding solutions. I agree it needs to be permanent. I agree it needs to be dedicated, and i would be willing to look at that fee and other things as well. Sort of roll a deck together so that no one segment of the economy picks up the whole tab for all of it, that its fair to everybody, that we can create jobs, we can invest and get a return. Were going to get the money back. Every person out there is going to get the money back that we put into infrastructure. On that note, i know there are more questions but we have a tight timetable with the Vice President coming up. I want to thank our guests for being here and i have a message for everyone here. We ask you not to get up at this moment because of the Vice President s arrival. Were going to be serving lunch. Youre not glued to the chairs but youre pretty mitch glued to the chairs. If you do leave, the risk is you may not be able to get back in. Lunch will be served in a moment. Thank you for being here and the Vice President will be speaking shortly and thanks again. Appreciate t. Here are a few of the book festivals well be covering. This weekend well visit maryland for live coverage of the gaithersburg festival with tom davis and martin frost as well as former Senior Adviser to president obama david axelrod. And then well close out may at book expo america, in new york city, where the Publishing Industry showcases their upcoming books. Then on first week in june, were live for the Chicago Tribune printer rolls lit fest including three hour live in Depth Program with Pulitzer Prize winning author Lawrence Wright and your phone calls. Thats this spring on cspan2s book tv. Several live events on cspan3 to tell you about. More than a handful of bills dealing with Data Security breaches are pending before congress and the House Financial Services committee will hold a hearing on the issue live at 10 00 a. M. Eastern. Then in the afternoon at 2 30 a House Foreign Affairs hearing on the recent operations to rescue child sex slaves. And at 5 00 p. M. Eastern, well have live coverage of president obama after a camp david meeting with Gulf Cooperation Council countries including bahrain kuwait oman, qatar, saudi arabia, and the united arab emirates. [ applause ] the summit on infrastructure funding and policy continues. President obama has proposed a 478 billion infrastructure bill. Current transportation funding is set to expire on may 31st. Up next, Vice President joe biden. [ applause ] welcome back everyone. Thanks again for joining us today as we kick off infrastructure week. A great discussion so far. You know, we have conferences like these all the time but i think infrastruct