politics. and the incredible openness that's starting to happen provides this amazing fodder for conspiracy theorists on both the left and the right. one of the projects that i love to teach is this visualization called they rule. and it looks at the interlocking directorships ever different fortune 500 corporations and different non-profit organizations and the whole rhetoric of this is if you just look you can find the secret people who actually rule the world. and you see this journalism all the time. you know, sort of extreme sources like breitbart. when i teach this of course i then swing over and show where i show up on the map as a board member of a large foundation, the open society foundation and essentially say great, guilt by association, i am now part of the ruling elite. anyone want to go for a ride in my car? it's not a ferrari. this is not -- the transparency

of sort of showing who's involved with this doesn't 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 you've earned it. >> the voices crying for peace and light because your choices will make all the difference to you and to all of us. >> don't 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 c-span. >> 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. he's 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 we'll be talking about? >> sure. asce is a professional organization. it's been around since 1852. it has 150,000 members who work in the private sector, government, research and academia. it's 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 what's being funded

and what's 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 nation's infrastructure. there are a lot of ds and cs on that report card. it's 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, 2011-2012. and the latest that we've 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 that's 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 that's what we mean by surface transportation, we look at this issue, right now we're 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 we're 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 you're 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. public-private partnerships. we're seeing more of that. going on in virginia. but as a rule of thumb we're 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 there's 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. 284-788-8000. for democrats 8001. for republicans and 8002 for independents. there is someone here, george mason who writes on these topics of funding issues and here's 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 it's 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 haven't heard that critique before. i think it's 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 don't know if we're splitting hairs a little bit by saying there's a slight overemphasis on the benefit side versus the cost side. we're looking at this latest economic report, a 3-1 benefit cost analysis. we're saying right now that the current state of the infrastructures is costing each household $9 a day. that's what's being put at risk. we're saying that if we put up $3 we can avert those economic losses. so that is a pretty big benefit-cost ratio. i don't know why we wouldn't take up something like that and move forward. >> congress passed $300 billion in infrastructure spending at the end of last year. do you think that's all the money you'll see as far as the federal part of it is concerned? >> well, that's a five-year bill. so we're going to be locked in unless, you know, a new

administration comes in and decides to make that an immediate priority, which i'm 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. it's called the fast act. it doesn't 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. there's 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, it's not just about a road or a bridge or a hot lane. it's 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 they're 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. we'll 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. i'm 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. >> you're hitting on a wage issue. i'm 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. that's not an issue in the southern states and other parts of the united states. i've heard other projects, though, in the midwest and northeast where that really wasn't 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. that's not always the case. always i've 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, afl-cio, 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. i'm looking at a lot of things. talking about infrastructure. first of all, ohio. that's what i'm 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 obama's 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 couldn't afford it and canceled that, and we've 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 wasn't 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 don't want to pay for it. and the poor people want to pay for it because we have terrible roads to travel on. i don't understand why -- and this is my question to the gentleman there. why haven't congress passed laws to allow us to take care of this infrastructure? it just don't make sense. they have money for wars and everything else. >> thanks for the call, james.

we'll let our guest answer. >> i agree with the caller. infrastructure should be a priority. it should be a bipartisan issue. i'm looking forward to both the major party nominees engaging this issue big-time. we've heard both of the candidates, and i'll add senator sanders too, speaking a lot on this issue during the course of the campaign. you mentioned the high-speed 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 wasn't 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, there's 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 that's really the freight rail system, when i refer to that, the grade on that actually went up from a c-minus to a c-plus. 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 he's referring to stimulus funds. i don't 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. you're on. go ahead. >> it seems like i always end up

with you and you're 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 it's 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. it's 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 i'm 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. >> doesn't mean they're 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 it's 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. it's almost imper acceptable what's going on but if you see that rippling throughout the economy that's where you get the big economic impacts in the reports. >> what do you estimate is the federal money needed for bridges to bring them up to par? >> bridges, actually the story is not that dire on bridges. the last analysis that i'm thinking about the numbers were and i'm giving you a ballpark here. we're spending about somewhere between 10 and 12 billion a year on bridges. we need to be spending about 20. very do able for the united states. >> dave on our republican line. hello. >> yes. down here in north carolina they

don't have inspectors on the job half of the time. they lap the joints over after they pulled it and it eats out in the center and they come along and it's beat right out and their steel is showing in our bridges down here where the salt has eat the concrete up. it's eating this concrete up. >> got you. a coup of issues there. one are the types of chemicals we're using to treat ice and inclimate road conditions. there's always research going on there to use less corrosive materials. but on the other hand you have engineers on the concrete and steel side looking to put

coatings on the concrete structures so there's a lot of research going on into that issue but safety does have to come first and we do have to get ice off of bridges. >> from washington state. janet, hello. >> hello. yes, i wanted to talk about whatever we need money on depends on what politician at election time, what party gets in. and there's a lot more money when the democrats are in. it seems when the republicans are in we go broke. reagan spent all the social security money and had no money. and then clinton got 120 million people job.

and we had dollars when we're done and bush junior got in and he had a war that shown have been. he lied to congress to have it and then he was sending trillions of dollars, borrowing trillions of dollars every other day for the war. >> her point is big because it's an election year. would you say that's a pair point or not? >> it is. i want to see the candidates debate this issue thoroughly. it's popped up a few times. there's been references to it. i'd love to see a debate on just this issue. but i think this issue is big enough. i'd like to see what the candidates have to say on this. back to the perception, the political perception that the caller was drawing upon.

let me point out that it was a republican eisenhower that brought us the system personally. he had seen just trying to move military equipment across the country during his military career and once he became president felt this was in the best interest of the nation. it was during the reagan presidency that the gas tax went up. one of the highway bills was enacted during his 8 year presidency. president clinton, that was the last gas tax increase we had in this country. that was only 4.3 cents. people need to remember the federal gasoline tax is 18.4 cents per gallon. only 18% is the federal gasoline

tax. that can vary and the average is around 30 or 35 cents a gallon. so when you're buying a gallon of gas the tax you're paying on it is actually relatively small per cent of the overall cost of a gallon of gas. we have been underinvesting and afraid as a nation to take on this gas tax increase. eventually we'll have to get away from the gas tax because cars will be powered by electricity or another energy source. gas won't make sense. we'll have so many users on the system that aren't paying. we'll have to move to the vehicle miles travelled approach and you're charged for the actual number of miles you drive. how are we going to keep track of that? there's a lot of electronics in cars now so it's much easier for us to keep track of that information. we'll just have to get to a comfort level as citizens with

our governmental agencies knowing that information. >> driving is not only done by the citizens but businesses and trucking industries. >> i think people do it because they have to. picking up stuff at the port where it came in and delivering it to a shipment point in the united states i think trucks won't be dissuaded. the american truckers associations were supporting a gas increase. >> good morning. i had a couple of questions. i'd like to know about to the first earmarked for the shovel ready projects and also i just

toured the united states for two months and 20 miles at a time orange barrels and i, just a hand full of times i see people working there. they block the roads off to make it look like something is being done and nothing is being done. i talked to other truckers on the road and they told me that they see that a lot. i'd like to know what's going on with that. >> two things. the orange cones, well, sometimes they have to set up a safety zone to work and it can take awhile so you might have just driven by at the wrong time. it's certainly disruptive for the driving public and don't see maintenance happening in this country and keep that in mind.

you mention 817 billion. that's what the entire stimulus package. that is around the total cost. a third of that was tax cuts. a third transferred payments to the states. 150 billion max was spent on infrastructure. >> that is a careful consideration. it's going to cost more to work all night long but you're seeing in major areas that's how the work gets done is at night. >> oxford, maine, republican line. jim you're next. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> i have a question. is the law still in effect that the states don't spend all the money they're alotted if they

lose it the next year. >> if the states don't spend the alotted money they get do they lose it for the next year? >> that is the case. >> they repave that every year just to save the money so they din lose their money for the next year. >> okay. we juan to be careful to not have proverse incentives. we don't want to encourage a situation where governments would let something just fall into complete disrepair so that the feds would step in with putting up 80% of the money for a brand new project but the locals are still coming up with a 20% match. so it's not like it's free money. you want to be careful that you

don't create reverse incentives for projects unnecessary or low priorities aaddressed of high priorities. >> the federal money is it front loaded to them or do they complete their projects and bill the federal government for what they have done? >> we're in the low 40s. that's the 18 cents a gallon people are paying and there's a complex formula that distributes that every year and it's based on how many miles of interstate. and also paid for by the he highway trust fund and that goes

to the states too for transit projects and there's also flexibility that states can have to move money from the highway side into transit projects so i'm forgetting how the money is distributed whether it's on a monthly basis or quarterly basis from washington. >> our guest is someone talking about money for transit proje s projects. >> they offered it to the states for the highways and they could guarentee they would last 50 years or 100 years and we were told that they rejected this offer because they said it would put too many people out of business but as large as texas

as is the whole country is they don't have to keep going over these roads over and over again because they could be building new once. did you know anything about that? >> i don't specifically know about that but the caller you put your finger on an interesting issue and that's research and development. that needs to happen at the federal level and it's tricky. once you have an innovation how quickly can you push something like that out into the marketpla marketplace. so if it's going to feel threatened that's understandable and there are innovations occurring in technology. it may not seem like that but it keeps getting stronger and stronger and pounds per square

inch. the strength of concrete keeps going up. new coatings going on steel. >> a couple of years ago there was a hybrid beam made out of composite materials. this was a bridge beam that was composite materials and very light weight. sometimes it takes awhile for the states to catch on. >> are americans still driving solo in their cars. less cars on the road and less wear and tear on the road. are american patterns changing as far as how they drive their

cars? >> i know in this region you see a lot of, people are very resourceful when it comes to getting to work and traveling around. so i notice in this region there is a lot of ride sharing and we have slug lines in designated locations where people can drive up and have complete strangers jump in their car and they're driving in and using an hov lane. for people around the country that aren't familiar with the traffic situations here hov lanes are here. there's just going to be more of them in the future. >> it's 13 or $14 billion underinvested and we're now going to pay the cost of having major disruptions to that system over the next couple of years. >> the president brought up the

metro system on the larger issues of infrastructure as well and talked about why he thinks there's not enough money to pay for infrastructure projects. here's what he had to say. >> the problem we have is that the republican congress is resistant to taking on this problem in a serious way and the reason is because of an i deology that says government spending is necessarily bad and i addressed this when i was in flint. that mind set and ideology has lead to us not investing in those things that we have to do together. >> we're seeing some of what the president is talking about in the house of representatives.

in the house they were able to get the transportation bill that did have increases. >> with our guest from the american society of civil engineers. john you're next. >> how are you doing? thank the lord for cspan. i want to make two or three points. when you talk about congress won't pass an infrastructure bill, can everybody say who is the democrat or republican in congress so i can know who to vote for. they say congress and when you say congress then i don't know who you're talking about.

number two, 25% increase in gasoline. gasoline used to cost almost $5 a gallon. what would be the harm in adding 25 cents to it? he just said a while agatha if you don't spend the money then the government takes it away. you're so smart in congress why don't you have sense enough to make a plan and make some laws that that won't happen? like what about the state spending money first and then the government reimburse them. >> thanks, john. >> okay. a few things there. >> i think what you're referring to is the president's last and most recent budget submital to the congress.

but tho that effect it would have meant about 25 cents a gallon. we support that. for the next few years the gas tax will serve us well in this country. in the long run we have to go to a vehicle miles travelled approach where people are charged for the number of miles they're driving regardless of how they power their cars. i hope people don't get caught up on the big brother aspect here. >> it worked out well there and people had an option. if they didn't want a transponder on their car and a lot of people in the northeast had the transponders because they're trying to get through

toll plazas. if people can get over that and look at this as a fairway to distribute this cost as opposed to the government knew i drove this year. is that something your group can get on board with? >> we'll support any method of paying for this stuff that can get enough political support in congress. we prefer the user fee approach.

some argued about it. would we support it in the end? we could. >> good morning a comment and then a question. first should -- it's my opinion that people that make a profit driving down the federal highway system should be paying more than those driving to work. the question is do you and should we be looking at repairing some of these bridges and roads in different ways? for instance the interstate came through and a lot of the bridges are needing repair. should we be looking at different scenarios for replacing bridges such as 25 year bridge a 50 year bridge,

100 year bridge, 1,000 year bridge. et cetera. >> interesting comment that if you're making a profit you should pay more. >> different trucks do pay more. >> they have more of an impact on roadways. so part of your point is addressed already but either way users should pay. whether you're traveling for pleasure or a business. i like the essence of your question because it brings up how important this roadway system is not only to our quality of life but also for business in this country and how critical the interstate and other highways have been in this country in terms of development of the economy. different bridges that's an interesting question. those are the kind of issues

that planners and engineers and public officials will get into when they're looking at either building a new bridge or replacing a bridge they'll look at issues. i haven't heard about too many requests for 25 year bridges. 50 years is usually about the minimum and in this day and age some of the signature structures going up those have lives of over 100 years. >> thank you for cspan. a quick comment and a quick question. many infrastructure projects in this country. in particular looking at the interstate transportation system was funded primarily because it was defense related. not only evacuation but planes and run ways. with that being said i wanted to get your opinion on three particular infrastructure projects. one being the keystone pipeline

because we're moving toward energy independence. i wanted to guess his position on that. also the second, little bit different related but 00 year tunnel in baltimore impacting our ability to have high speed rail in the northeast corridor and last but not least i wanted to get his opinion on the use of money to build the wall that donald trump is talking about on the southern border. >> we have 150,000 members in the society many work in the transportation space as an organization we do not take positions on specific projects. we don't say this project should be built and this one shouldn't. those have to be made at the federal level but you have a lot of different interest groups and stake holders and you need to take that into consideration. people need to think about

projects. especially with the kind of climate issues that we're dealing with in the united states. people need to think about projects being sustainable. that means they're economically justifiable. sustainability is a three legged stool and then the issue of resilience. can the project with stand the storm surge that may be hitting. if you're going to be designing in a coastal environment in this country you have to worry about sea level and storm intensity and a number of issues. you mention keystone. we don't take positions on specific projects. i'll make a general comment about pipelines. >> people should be much more concerned about the age being

addre addressed and again you mentioned the wall on the border. the candidate trump has proposed. we do not take positions on specific projects. >> as an engineer here's one more question from twitter when considering repairing infrastructure has anyone made them accessible for driverless ca cars. >> what that offers i think the main motivation for these technologies some of the other efforts going on is safety. the united states we lose over 32,000 lives a year to traffic accidents in the united states. they're related to road conditions where they're a contributing or primary factor. so 10,000 lives is a lot.