Of sort of showing whos involved with this doesnt actually help when our paranoid theory is that a small number of people actually rule and control the world. So for me a lot of the best efforts in this space, a lot of the things that come out of things like the sunlight foundation, an organization i enormously respect, unfortunately end up contributing more to mistrust because what we get are these stories of how huge amounts of money are pouring into politics, of the sense that the politicians that we elect are bought and paid for, and that we end up with this sort of corrosive mistrust when we look at the data rather than the sort of disinfecting sunlight that we would hope for. Well, fantastic. Thank you all so much. I really appreciate you being here. And thank you for listening. Congratulations to the class of 2016. Today is your day of celebration, and youve earned it. The voices crying for peace and light because your choices will make all the difference to you and to all of us. Dont be afraid to take on cases or a new job or a new issue that really stretches your boundaries. You spent your summer abroad on real ships rather than internships, and the specter of living in your parents basement after this Graduation Day is not likely to be your greatest concern. Throughout this month watch commencement speeches to the class of 2016 in their entirety from colleges and universities around the country by business leaders, politicians, and white house officials. On cspan. Joining us now to talk about the state of roads, bridges, and other infrastructure in the United States, casey dinges from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Hes their senior managing director. Good morning. Can you talk to us about your organization and what role it plays when it comes to these transportation projects well be talking about . Sure. Asce is a professional organization. Its been around since 1852. It has 150,000 members who work in the private sector, government, research and academia. Its mostly a technical organization. But we moved out of our headquarters in new york city about 20 years ago, came to washington to have more of a policy impact. So one of the things you do is keep track of federal spending and particularly when it comes to roads and bridges and things like that. Your latest takes a look at the gaps between whats being funded and whats being needed. What did you find in this latest analysis . This is the latest in our failure to act series of economic reports. Asce over the years has done a number of infrastructure report cards where we grade the nations infrastructure. There are a lot of ds and cs on that report card. Its not a very favorable report card. Policy makers were then asking us, so what difference does that make, a c or a d . You know, why should that matter to us . So we thought that intuitively we always the felt there were some powerful Economic Issues related to the infrastructure, if you will. This is the foundation of the platform upon which you will build a modern economy. So we start doing these in 20,000 sorry, 20112012. And the latest that weve come up with is if you look at the next ten years, the upcoming ten years, 2016 to 2025, if we just continue as we are, investing at current levels, the u. S. Can expect each each family can expect to lose 3,400 per year. The u. S. Gdp will underachieve by 3. 9 trillion by the year 2025. Business sales will lapse by 7 trillion. 2. 5 million jobs are at risk by the year 2025. So this is a big economic issue for the United States. Infrastructure is always a safety issue and certainly thats the primary consideration that Civil Engineers have when they design and build these systems. But this is a profound economic issue. When you think of then conditions of roads and bridges you may think of issues like potholes or bridges that have been around for a long time and collapse on occasion. Is it just that when it comes to the current state of how our roads and bridges are, or is there more to it as far as their condition and what your talk inspires, the funding needed to fix these things . If you look at the transportation space, roads, bridges, and transit, and thats what we mean by surface transportation, we look at this issue, right now were looking at an annual funding gap of somewhere around 100 billion a year. The nation is investing about half of what it should be in the transportation area. And were not saying this is a federal issue. The feds, the states, and the local governments are all involved in this and to a greater extent youre seeing more private sector involvement in infrastructure. A number of new toll roads have been built across the country. Texas you see a lot of that. We see hot lanes. Those are high occupancy toll lanes. Publicprivate partnerships. Were seeing more of that. Going on in virginia. But as a rule of thumb were investing about 100 billion a year. We should be investing about twice that as a nation. That is a big number. People are going to say, whoa, 100 billion. But when you look at the economic consequences that we just considered here and the size of the u. S. Economy, 18 trillion is our annual gdp. So 100 billion, we should be able to figure that out. Between the levels of government and more private sector. Is it fair to say, though, that these projects generally exist on a state level and primarily should be a state problem when it comes to their funding and their execution . Not completely. The states and the local governments do have a big role in this. About half to 2 3 of all the spending on transportation occurs at that level. But that still leaves a pretty large federal role. This is a partnership, if you will. The interstate highway system, which is really one of the modern marvels of engineering in this world, in fact, i just saw David Mccullough give a speech last week in the capital where he even highlighted the interstate system, it is a partnership. And to build on the interstate highway system theres about 80 federal funding and then about a 20 funding match from the state. There are different types of roads. If you get down to the county level, over millions of miles of roadways in this country that the counties and local governments oversee. But we have an interconnected system. I mean, try to imagine the United States in this economy without an interstate highway system. Casey dinges is our guest, the American Society of engineers is who he represents. The roads, brings and transit projects. Other things as well. 2847888000. For democrats 8001. For republicans and 8002 for independents. There is someone here, george mason who writes on these topics of funding issues and heres what she said about projects, particularly Infrastructure Spending. She writes, this was back in december of 2015, she did for reason. Com that Research Shows that the political process encourages a systematic tendency to overestimate the benefit and underestimate the cost of Infrastructure Projects. It is also a mistake to assume its the role of the federal government to pay for roads and highway expansions. With very few exceptions most roads, bridges, and even highways are local projects. You mention the latter part but what about her former part as for part of the planning process . In terms of there being an overestimate, in terms of benefits, i havent heard that critique before. I think its considered on both sides of the aisle on capitol hill, the red side and the blue side. You know, these investments are always considered good for the economy. I dont know if were splitting hairs a little bit by saying theres a slight overemphasis on the benefit side versus the cost side. Were looking at this latest economic report, a 31 benefit cost analysis. Were saying right now that the current state of the infrastructures is costing each household 9 a day. Thats whats being put at risk. Were saying that if we put up 3 we can avert those economic losses. So that is a pretty big benefitcost ratio. I dont know why we wouldnt take up Something Like that and move forward. Congress passed 300 billion in Infrastructure Spending at the end of last year. Do you think thats all the money youll see as far as the federal part of it is concerned . Well, thats a fiveyear bill. So were going to be locked in unless, you know, a new administration comes in and decides to make that an immediate priority, which im not quite sure i see that happening. The 300 billion might have been the most we could expect out of this kind of politically divided congress in the past year. Its called the fast act. It doesnt move fast enough in our view or invest enough in terms of the overall good of the nation. There are some increases in that bill for surface transportation, roads, bridges, and transit. Theres some flexibility too. If states and communities need to think they do more on the transit side. There is some flexibility for that. And people need to think about that as holistically as they can. When they look at a transportation issue for a community, its not just about a road or a bridge or a hot lane. Its looking at the whole picture. People need to realize transit plays a big role in allowing roadways to function in metropolitan areas on a daily basis. What was the difference between that figure and what the administration was looking for as far as infrastructure was concerned . I think the administration had put out there 450 billion or maybe even as high as 500 billion. And again, the big question is how are you going to pay for that . This town has had a very hard time having discussions about the gas tax. The federal gas tax has not been raised since 1993. It is still at 18 cents a gallon. I will say in the last two years a lot of the states, 16 states in fact across the country have raised their gas taxes. This is red states and blue states. And theyre also starting to index the tax to inflation so that the tax will not lose purchasing power over time. We have viewers wanting to ask you questions. Well start with tim. Tim is in baltic, ohio. Republican line for our guest, casey dinges of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Go ahead. Caller yeah. Im superintendent of the water system, and in 2010 we built a watt dwraermt pla Water Treatment plant. Pretty much had to. The cost of that was 1. 3 million. But on the idea of looking at the price of it i figured that without prevailing wage we could have got that in at 700,000. So i think the prevailing wage is the biggest knock on how we get infrastructure done. Mr. Dinges. Youre hitting on a wage issue. Im sure if you had a guest from labor sitting here they would talk pretty hard on this issue. That can be an issue in more of the northern states. Thats not an issue in the Southern States and other parts of the United States. Ive heard other projects, though, in the midwest and northeast where that really wasnt an issue where the true wages that had to be paid on these projects would have been paid anyways, regardless of a prevailing wage law. Thats not always the case. Always ive heard this issue come up. Let me say, though, this is National Infrastructure week. Happy National Infrastructure week, everyone. It runs from today through may 23rd. Part of the coalition we have on this includes not only labor, aflcio, but also the u. S. Chamber of commerce, the National Association manufacturers and other Major Business groups in the United States. There is a very Broad Coalition that is supporting this issue. And if you look at all the polling across the political parties, there tends to be strong support for infrastructure. Democrats line, akron, ohio. James, hello. Go ahead. Yes. Im looking at a lot of things. Talking about infrastructure. First of all, ohio. Thats what im more familiar with. We have trouble around the country and traffic jams are terrible in virginia. Just peshterrible. All day long. But in ohio the gentleman just said about prevailing wage. We had in the beginning of president obamas term, we were supposed to do a rail system here. And everything was approved and would have created 30,000 jobs in ohio. And governor kasich came in and said we couldnt afford it and canceled that, and weve done well with jobs in ohio. But with the infrastructure, the roads, and the rail systems, all things in ohio, our unemployment would be down to pretty much nothing and prevailing wage wasnt an issue at all. It was a matter of the people that benefit the most from these roads and transportation seems to be the people that dont want to pay for it. And the poor people want to pay for it because we have terrible roads to travel on. I dont understand why and this is my question to the gentleman there. Why havent Congress Passed laws to allow us to take care of this infrastructure . It just dont make sense. They have money for wars and everything else. Thanks for the call, james. Well let our guest answer. I agree with the caller. Infrastructure should be a priority. It should be a bipartisan issue. Im looking forward to both the Major Party Nominees engaging this issue bigtime. Weve heard both of the candidates, and ill add senator sanders too, speaking a lot on this issue during the course of the campaign. You mentioned the highspeed rail thing going back to the early part of the obama administration. That was an ambitious proposal that they had. I think it was a National System but there were about ten regions, ten regions would be tied together. There just wasnt enough Political Support for that. You know, rail is part of our surface transportation list of options, if you will. If you look at the history of the United States, theres been much more of an emphasis on roads and airports in the United States than on railways. So rail and again, i would we kind of look at mass transit a little differently as part of the roads and bridges system when asce does its analysis. And railways are a separate category we graded in our 2013 infrastructure report card. The rail system across the United States, and thats really the freight rail system, when i refer to that, the grade on that actually went up from a cminus to a cplus. Between 2009 and 2013. The main reason for that is a lot of those systems are privately held. There was a Major Economic downturn in 08 and 09. And the private sector again showing its nimbleness and ability to i believe hes referring to stimulus funds. I dont know. What was accomplished . The wow we the stimulus was about 800 billion in 2009. Of that amount, only about 150 billion at the most was spent on infrastructure. So there was a miss understanding as it came together and during the initial phases was what you were hearing. And you can understand if your Main Objective is to put people to work. But people need to remember that huge chunks of that stimulus was about 250 to 300 billion. Then you had another several hundred billion in transfers that just went from the federal government to State Government where is they made decisions about that money. And it was a missed opportunity for the United States. Mark is next. Good morning, can you hear me . Yeah. Youre on. Go ahead. It seems like i always end up with you and youre a great moderator and your guest, thank you. I worked with you guys over the years. I worked construction and moved to new orleans and worked down there for a few years and one thing is not prevailing wage. I believe we need more funding but its the white whales that, you know, sometimes the governments, mainly i would say states and cities chase where as specifically the biggest white whale in u. S. History but also on a smaller scale a did a Research Project of my own last summer. Looking at two separate projects. One was the river bridge in maine which was built in just about a year and it was a cost of about 64 million. For a huge undertaking. And it has an observatory. Its just like the guide wires. I forget the specific type of bridge. Anyway, exhibit b is a bridge in boston that they built at grade level which was just basically like across the river and it ended up costing 56 million and the long and short of it is this 56 million bridge had a drawbridge to nowhere and the case in maine was a very efficient use of funds where as the one in boston, the Alfred Street bridge to me just seemed ridiculous. Mark. Mark thank you. There are 600,000 bridges in the United States so im not sure about the exact bridge. 10 of the bridges of that 600,000, so 60,000 are structurally deficient so those are bridges with physical problems and need to be inspected every year and not just every two years. Doesnt mean theyre going to fall. No, but the bridges could have Weight Restrictions posted on them so certain trucks wobt be able to use them. Certain lanes can be closed down. We see that here in washington and an iconic bridge. Memorial bridge. The outer lanes may be shutdown. The grade on bridges actually went up but engineers keep a close eye on these things so Something Like a bridge collapse as shocking as that is and people do remember the minneapolis bridge collapse its highly unusual for Something Like that to happen. Bridges get closed or posted for Weight Restrictions and that has an economic impact. Trucks have to do work arounds and it takes closer to get there. Its almost imper acceptable whats going on but if you see that rippling throughout the economy thats