speakers include jennifer keen with her book, world war i, the american soldier experience. the path to war, how the first world war created modern america. retired colonel, and his book over there. america in the great war. and the recipient of this year's kole be award, david barren and his book, waging war, the clash between presidents and congress, 1776 to isis. watch the 2017 colby military writers symposium, saturday at noon eastern on cspan 2's book tv. now, a panel discussion on president trump's $1 trillion infrastructure plan. how that proposal can be funded and what the federal government can learn from the states. speakers include representatives from manufacturing and transportation sectors as well

as ak deem area. this 40 minute event was part of a policy conference in washington, d.c. this took place in april. >> okay, everyone will take your seats, please. i'd like to introduce our next section, which focuses on infrastructure policy. you know, when you look back to the causes of the great economic boom since between the 1980s and the financial crisis, there are a lot of parents, you know, every success has a lot of parents, but you know, you cannot understate the amount of infrastructure that was built in the '80s and the amount ty added and the contribution of that infrastructure to the boom. during that period of time. you know the benefits of getting ahead of our infrastructure

needs. the challenge today is that so much of our infrastructure lies i ha had the opportunity to serve with dr. getty's on a transportation commission. a 12-person commission. we spent three years struggling t the experts have forfoten more than identify known, so i'm pleased to have them here. first of all, the our moderator will be robin, who's the vp of innovation infrastructure and hr policy at the national association of manufacturer, and prior to her work at the

association, she served adds counselor to the assistant secretary. we have tom armstrong, doer of carolina coil. dr. rick getties, the professor and director of the cornell program and he worked with us on our new brief. the first time in the modern era is cde -- on your table, introducing at this.

>> okay, great. >> this is live, all right. >> sure. >> we'll share. great to be on this panel. we're very excited. this is a great time to be -- this is a great time to talk about infrastructure. ced take iing a leadership role. as you know, they have outlined the goal to invest $1 trillion into infrastructure. and beyond that, the details, still in the works. and i think this is a good time to ask our panelists and i'll

ask rick to take this one. how do you see this big effort coming together and part two of the question is do you see a ground swell of support? >> sure, yeah. thanks. how do i see it coming together. i guess with a lot of ainge wan nashing of teeth probably to the extent they're able to bring it together chl together. i see the ground swell of support. my years of infrastructure, there's always been the problem of getting the public's attention. you didn't need the bridge to collapse with schoolbuses on it to get people's attention, focused on infrastructure. there's renewed public awareness and interest in the importance of infrastructure.

i think the focus on transportati transportation, airports, awareness of broader infrastructure like our drink l water in our part of the country are updated. i'm excited to see this awareness that's been brought about by the a.m. to agree on was the need to focus on the nation's infrastructure. civil engineers, it's going to be funded. i want to make a decision dilg tings here, where ever he is he's going to come out with a

hatchet. public private partnerships they don't provide funding. to come from the state, my hat is off with mileage based user fees or m buffs, a fee where you pay for the use of the road, not per gallon of gasoline. you can experiment with more tolls, which are we are doing in the country, with say hot lanes, people may be aware of the northern virginia side. which is very interesting. or some sort of dedicateded tax revenue. there's only those two buckets. you have to dedicate broader tax money to infrastructure. once you have the funding in place, then you can bring in pvps because what the pvps need

is the private sector participation, that's the key is having -- source, so i don't want to talk too long, but i'll note that i think we have living the middle of an amazing sort of laboratory of federalism type era and the states are really i think rising to the occasion in that there's a whole diversity of responses. some are raising their state level gas tax, some like oregon, california. others are raising toll. others are dedicating money to what they call availability payments p 3s for performance based projects, so i think bring ing in really clear performance standards through a contract that has enforceable both carrots and sticks built into the contract is the way forward. i'm hoping that both sides of

the aisle fingering crossing, can come together at this time for some sort of a major bill, but i hope it would also focus on operation and maintenance of existing stuff. we're very lucky in this country that we've had decades of unprecedented b mobility. the extensive system of state roads, local streets we have. we've had this for decades and now, it's old. now, our b job to raise the money and do the operation and maintenance that we have and not really focus on building new shiny things. i'm hoping we can come together for that, rob ben. >> that's a glaet sasz m. rob, ooimt going to actually turn this one to you next. if you can get your perspective on how you might see a whole $1 trillion infrastructure effort come together and what are some of the pieces that would come into play.

it's a challenge talk iing abou the trillion dollars. engineers that says we have a $4 trillion deficit now. it comes out every year. gets a lot of attention. it makes a lot of sense for folks. i think it makes people's heads spin. >> what does that mean? how do you get a trillion dollar sns. >> the challenge we have now at the federal level is that we're not specific. it's a very abstract conversation about infrastructure in general. that really isn't. there's transportation. water. energy. there's all kinds of different things and it matters not just because of milwaukee transportation. because each of these sectors are designed and governed in financed and delivered very, very differently. when you talk about a trillion dollars, ipg there's an

expectation that number's so big, only the federal government can deal with it. not states and local. it has to be a big, national thing. when you think about infrastructure, even in areas like transportation and water, only about 27%, 30% of that money actually comes from the federal government. so as rick was saying, there's a reinvention of federalism, it's a changing in how the federal state, local governments and the private sector work together at the same time we're having this trillion dollar conversation. it's not just roads and potholes and public transit. it probably includes all kinds of things. real estate and public buildings and social infrastructure. once you start adding in all these buildings, i can see how you can get to a trillion dollars. now the private sector had a big role in that.

>> thanks, rob, the nam is the nation's largest industrial trade association, we have over 13,000 members. the it's exciting to have tom here, who's a member of the nam. his company has belonged to our association since 1939. one thing we do is really try to tell the story of man fufacture and why infrastructure is so important to manufacturers. your company relies on infrastructure. you sell to traditional markets. what are some of your challenges you face? >> i'm feeling very good about our challenges now because our south carolina legislation is facing a billion dollar deficit in infrastructure.

when they're talk iing about trillions, i feel good about the number not being that large. as the people get more and more skills needed in the jobs, the skill levels of an educational infrastructure need to be there. energy is a big one for us. if you're a user of energy, you're loving it. we talk about ageing infrastructure and the life cycle of infrastructure, back in september last year, there was a breakdown in alabama in the colonial pipeline. that caused the entire state of north carolina and significant

portions of south carolina and virginia to go dry at the gas pump for about three days. now, if our infrastructure is stretched that thinly in those areas, we've got a real problem of deferred maintenance and overtaking to make that a better situation. had that been in natural gas, our business would have been entirely shut down u for that entire period because that availability of natural gas would not have been b there for our operations. >> we have a lot of interesting conversations here in washington about the role of the federal government. but more over, states are very important partners when it comes to not just developing infrastructure, but dlifing the assets.

states have been wildly successful in passing initiatives to increase sales tax or gas tax to fund infrastructure initiatives. i wanted to ask rick what he sees as that appropriate balance between federal and state roles and what are some successes that the federal government can learn from the states. >> what's going on now is emp sis this, too, is really an interesting shift. in the role of the federal government via the states. president eisenhower signed the act that created the intertate highway system in 1956. if you think about that time, that was the height of the cold war.

if you look at p pictures in the 30s, it looks like our interstate highway system like it does today. we realized he couldn't move military vehicles around the united states without an attack on the lower 48. and he, that was part of the motivation, so there was really a big federal effort, partly it was movement of shipments and people partly national defense. but to knit the nation together, so there was this big increase in the federal gas tax at that ti time. a big increase to fund the construction of the interstate highway system which took decades to complete the system. to design and correct that system. what's happens sthans time, gas taxes at the time of eisenhower

were like user fees because if you think a four door ford got about the same as an oldsmobile, so if you drove a mile on the interstate, you used about the same amount of fuel, but what's happen happened, everybody's heard of a doublemy. more are driving teslas and evs. the engines that do are much, much more efficient. there's alternative fuels like hydrogen fuel cell. also, the gas taxes are not index to inflation. also, people are driving less. vmts. miles are declining. so, there's a whole bunch of reasons why the revenue into the federal highway trust fund is declining and that's de facto without the political will to really make that federal gas tax higher.

de facto deinvolving into the states, so in terms of states we should look to, the state of virginia has created its own public private partnership office. state of texas has been pretty good with innovating in terms of alternative delivery systems. the port of miami tunnel, in terms of fund, again, as an economist, i have to come back to the state of oregon. that has really tried to do the right thing which is to go through three pilot projects of switching from a per gallon fee. to a per mile fee. just like we're paying for the kilowatt hours of electricity in this room.

we should be paying per mile or kilometer of road ta we use and states that are pushing forward in that innovative funding fashion are states that we should be looking to and our hats are off. >> we had an interesting conversation in the hall about an investment made many years ago on a highway drainage. when we look back and think about the eisenhower interstate and that investment, it created enormous productivity gains for american manufacturing and industry and so, we could talk a little bit about that. >> that's part of the reason that our company is located in upstate south carolina now. is back in the late 1960s as the interstate system was develop g

developing, there was a small textile company and a small local government that found out because of the soil nature in south korea sg, you can have a density for about a family of four as your source of system, so this group of the textile company and local municipality maintain ed a federal grant to install a sewage plant. well, they were able to negotiate a federal grant that created a sewage plant four times the size of their current need. by doing that, they committed to a state-of-the-art sewage plant that was built and that's part of why the huge economic development that we've seen in upstate south carolina developed over that period from the late 60s up until you know, the recent i edition, not recent anymore, it's been over 15 years of bmw pulling into our area and

they've done interesting infrastructure as well, too, it's one of the largest landfills in our area is now supplying over 50% of the energy needs for that bmw facility that produced 411,000 vehicles last year and they're takie inine ii gas out of the landfill that's supplying the energy need for that facility. >> rob, do you want the close out this conversation, successes at the state level and what we've seen and how to maybe imemploy those tactics as we approach a large infrastructure initiative? >> i think it's really more b about taking those le sops. because as we're reinvepting federalism, there was this feeling that kind of appeared, the federal government on top, but bringing money down on st e states, on legalities and that might have been the case some years aerks swrus not the case anymore. the states really have taken the

lead role a lot of hand wringing about how things are getting done. in these state houses, where the governors are getting things done. as states were taking their cue cues for washington for a number of years, it seems to be reverse. the states are the ones leading. washington is being npr -- tryig to get the government out of places where they're hindering things from happening on the local level. rick was talking about toll, may have made since in 1956.

those are come frg the local level level on the way up. thank you for that. we touched on funding in this part of the conversation. one of the big challenge ss how to fund a large infrastructure nicinitiative. or any other infrastructure initiative that may pass congress. the highway fund is expegted to run low on funds again in 2020. is there an opportunity ahead to change the dynamic. yes, it is time to change it. the federal government is not going to come up with a huge new funding source. the highway fund revenues have

declined faster than predict ed. it has to come out of some other other program. i'm not sure that's going to fly this this case. a sustainable, fair funding source and that was a really, really important concept. this switch to net work based pricing. i would urge us to start thinking about the roads like we think about other network utilities. communications et cetera. and that requires that virtually all use of the system be priced in some way, the second step in

that process and i have a paper, actually, i'm kind of proud of with peter frampton up there at the yuft of maryland in the economics department on congestion pricing, so basica y basically, the every single traffic congestion that you encounter, if prices for allowed, we could eliminate all traffic congestion. this is done in -- there's a dual role. on the west coast, they call them road usage charges. that is to provide a sustainable equitable funding source where you use a lane mile of road, you pay for a lane mile of road, but also to help both allocate the demand and the supply.

where you add a new lane, it will be tolled. there's a lot of companies around austin, texas, where they are priced in real time to clear the market for road space. so i would hope that's the move forward. if that's challenging in the sense we're used to paying very little for access to our roads and transit. and other pieces of infrastructure that we use on a regular basis. you run a business. how do we stack up in terms of how the government, whether it be the federal, state or local

counties manage and operate infrastructure? i'm sure it's not very rational in the way you look at things. >> well, it becomes very different at the state level than at the federal level. again, south carolina, we have what's called an infrastructure banks. the difference between run uing infrastructure bank in south carolina and the federal government is south carolina can't print money to make the infrastructure bank not blaalan its budget. the amount of borrowing capacity they have is literally based on the state comptroller's ability to go into the market and raise funds knowing that they, we can't inflate our way out of that situation. it's funded as a basis by the state to the extent that the legislature will fun it, but you can't go into a deficit

situation for any ek tended period of time as a result of that so, prioritization of the products has to be very, very well defined by the group that's dolling out that to various projects. >> rob, you've done a lot of work in this area and talking about transportation trust fund, if you can talk a little bit about sort of the antiquated funding sources and maybe how we can look at investing in infrastructure in the future. >> yeah, just quickly, on the national level, the federal gasoline tax, which provides so much revenue and resources for the federal government to spend is declined, as people are driving less, so looking for a different source, i think that was a national commission. states and cities, metropolitian

areas are pulling out all the stops and everything is on the table. they're using lot of different resources. i don't know if it's a bad idea of not. a lot of people are debating. they're not waiting around for washington to act or the state legislatures to act, particularly on the city level. last november, we had a pretty big election. mostly because well, lots of different reason, there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of clashes, they we want before voters on election day asking them to raise money for all kinds of different infrastructure. water and energy, airports, all kinds of difsht things. these are very popular. 75% of these passed on election day, which is consist ept with what happened two or three years before that. it's a different conversation. there's bipartisan approaches to it. they're using lots of different

methods. different conversations happen here in washington. >> this is the last question for the panel from me. if we have time, we'll turn it over to the audience. i've been caulking about the potential for the infrastructure effort. i look back to the stimulus of the past administration. it was $787 billion. less than 10% went to infrastructure. we can say what we want about the stimulus, but that was a failure, do not achieve a greater gain for infrastructure and really deal with priorities. that are entire infrastructure system was faced with. each analyst can offer a response to this. if you caulk about a mistake or failure or lesson learned for the effort and suggest how to avoid a repeat of that same

mistake? >> so, i guess three words, bridge to nowhere. avoid problems with project election. both the last comments touched on the issue of project selection and how can you best, i think that soured the public. on not just the bridge to nowhere. had 6,307 earmarks. never forget that number. the one was the bridge to nowhere. right? and i think that soured the public on spending more money on infrastructure. for many years after that. so, if we can use more rigorous benefit cost analysis of projects with clear transparent criteria, clear discount rates, everything you need to do good solid benefit costs analysis and try as best you can to remove the politics from it, which may be state infrastructure banks

are better than doing the feds, they think i think we can slowly restore trust, so in terms of mistakes, we can talk about the recovery act spending later or during q and a, but that is going to be key is having it really be driven by economics and not by politics. to restoring trust and infrastructure spending. >> tom. >> i prefer to look at successes rather than failures and one of the recent successes we had in south carolina is they were looking at doing a major deepening of the port of charleston and one of f the complaints of the local neighborhoods, well, that will, if we have more activity in the port of charleston, that's going to send a whole lot more trucks through a high-end neighborhood that was a suburb of charleston. and the way the state port authority solved that problem was they actually put in a port that's in my neighborhood that's in greer, south carolina, in upstate that's a rail facility

and we have day-to-day both way rail facility activity between the upstate port, which is called the inland port and the port of charleston, and that allows faster, cheaper and direct access to the port of charleston and also takes over 400 tractor trailers a day off that portion of interstate 26 going between upstate south carolina and the port of charleston. >> bob. >> i agree that we missed an opportunity in the stimulus to really invest in infrastructure. there was the same kind of climate then that there is now and there seems to be bipartisan support. there's a big understanding that we need to invest. but because we are averaging jobs, we had to get the money out quickly then turned it around shovel ready projects and became a household term. then again, it made sense at the time but looking back, it's hard to feel like we didn't miss an opportunity to invest in those long-term projects that were not just what we needed to get done and i think we did do that.

the mundane stuff had to be done, but we missed an opportunity to invest in those projects that are truly going to position the u.s. economy for something else in the future. really grow the economy the economy and not just put people back to work in the short-term. which, again, it's hard to forget just how important that was at the time, but we actually could have done both. >> i think we did miss an opportunity then. >> thank you. now to the audience. >> thank you. i have a question. i'm from new york, i'm a veteran in the commercial real estate industry and a member of the ced, piem paul has kin, and the demographic and the younger population, what we've noticed in working in a global company is the fact that there's been a

very strong demand for urban lifestyle, which clearly creates the need for public transportation in order to sustain a strong urban lifestyle. one of the three most important ingredients is clearly public transportation. and this is occurring not just in large cities like new york, but also in what were at one time 18-hour cities like in austin, texas, so the congestion and so forth people are moving in all the time. i know you've discussed a great deal about highways and so forth and roads. i was wondering if you could touch upon do you think that the public transportation on the municipal level, local levels, does it all have to come from the local level? can there are participation on the federal level and do you think there could be some sort of public/private partnership along those lines because clearly i think this trend for

urban lifestyle, it appears as though it's going to -- the demand is going to continue. >> so i can go first? because it's exciting the thank you, really good. i do want to say something that's very interesting in this and tell me when to stop. every since the second world war, if you look a vehicle miles traveled in the united states and usdot calculates this, since the second world war the trend line went up and up through recessions and downturns and slow downs. this relatively said it din crease until about 2005 or 2006, and then it slowly dmts have slowly decreased. and there's still debate in my policy area about why that is. but one they're i have that younger people are different. maybe you were the same way. when you were 16 the first thing you wanted to do do was get your license go out drive around and

probably drink beer. but the younger people, one theory, is that they're expected through their electronic devices all the time and that's the way they sort of interact and they don't feel the need to get their driver's license as early and do all the driving. and i think your point is exactly right about them being more urbanized and more willing to live in an urban development. they have less concerns about pricesy than maybe you and i do. so on the public transportation issue i'm going to go out an a limb and make a prediction. i'm going to say that the familiar -- i've come to the conclusion that families are actually pretty bad car owners, that we're bad at buying cars, negotiating when we buy, we're bad at doing the operation, maintenance, getting the oil changed at the right time and we're bad at settling vehicles when it's time do that. and we would be better off not to own cars. and that the family of the -- but a big company, like hertz, you know, budget, they're good

at this, right. and so the family of the future, i think, if you think of a combination of a driverless vehicle, an electric vehicle, and uber, right, you'll just pay a monthly fee and you'll hit your app and you'll say i want to go to work and i'll be in my driveway at 7:00 apple and a car that might have some other people in it it will be an electric vehicle will come to your house rg you'll do work, you'll be connected through the internet in that vehicle, it will take to you work, it will drop everybody else roughly in the same place to the city, everybody will get out, the thing will go recharge. so i'm not opt toe mystic about public transportation changing fundamentally, i think it's going to change through a technological revolution that we are already seeing in transportation that is almost mind boggling. and i think if you combine those, maybe some of the business people here can think about the business model for that, but would you have like a monthly fee that would be standard, luxury, economy, and

you don't own a vehicle. and that's the way we're going to get around in the future, and i that fits in i think with the urbanize zation. so that's my kind of future riftic answer but maybe others know more about public transit. >> rob. >> yes think there what you're saying is certainly happening, certainly in big cities it's certainly happening in new york, chicago, washington, a couple places. but 30% of the jobs be in metropolitan areas of the united states aren't accessible by public transit within 90 minutes. so we mapped all these out and we gave everybody 90 minutes to get to work, 30% of the jobs are accessible, 70 percent are not. it's not going to cover everybody even in places that are smaller. but there's a recognition how important it is and there are massive movements that are starting to happen. and those reverenda that i mentioned that went on on election day, the vast majority of the money that was raised was for public transit, whun 20 billion plus in los angeles, 50

billion in seattle, i mean giant, giant numbers. these are places that are investing in these modes because they recognize it's importance to the economic future of these places. so it's as rick was saying it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing now happening because we have all the new technologies and i'm not so sure young people care necessarily if they're taking the bus or transit or uber or lyft, they're just trying to get to where they're going. in new york it's going to be transit because that's what works. but it's a big country and there's lots of different experiments that are happening all around. >> i think we have time for one more question. the woman, yeah, someone in the back and then someone in the front here. >> thank you. my name is monica doorhi and i'm vice president risk i work for long time with bank with robert zoel lick almost seven years. and we invested all over the world in infrastructure. these days, we have in parallel the world bank spring meetings

but there's an international banking convenient and my job i work for long, long time replenish meant of funds and i'm currently one of about 200 billion. some of them will go to dot, hopefully, but it's also worldwide. so the fight for the funds is fantastic. and the perks associated very, very interesting. and also the competition, we also work with federal reserve, barbara is here but i work with the federal reserve on worldwide infrastructure financing, advising. thank you. just wanted to mention. >> was there one more question?

>> there's one in the back. >> let's finish that one off. >> yes, i'm charlie clark, reporter with government executive. a few years ago -- charlie clark, reporter with "government executive". a few years ago there was a structure to do a bank and i was wondering if you could comment on whether that should get revived. >> a lot of people in my sector of public policy have great operation for thetive feeya office within usdot, transportation, inknow facing, financing -- no, infrastructure, financing innovation act is the name of the act that created the office and anyone where a laptop can go and google today's rate and find out what the rate is. that is a well-respected office that does project prior tie zation for projects written. law, national, and regional significance so it can't be replace a guardrail it will has to be something like the bridge

replacement in my neck of the woods, and they provide low-cost loans. so, and i have to say, i want to give a shout out to secretary anthony fox who i think quietly in the last years of the second term of the obama administration did a lot within usdot to bring together these different groups that are facilitating public/private partnerships, facilitating credit support for economically beneficial projects of national and regional significance. and i won't go -- i won't go into the gory details of what's happening at usdot, but i think a lot of us say if you're going to create a national infrastructure bank, try to work with what we already have. because we already have a very good team within usdot and we should work withtive feeya, we should work with knees on other groups, office the innovative program delivery, doing a very good job with that u.n. under one umbrella now and think about how we can integrate existing

facilities particularly within usdot that are doing a great job and if we want to expand that, we can talk about how you might do that later, we should do so. >> i think our panel's about toto get the hook. just to piggyback, build america bureau, you should google that, that's the structure that are was created to how's financial programs. thank you, steve, again for having this conversation at ced this year and we're turning it over to the next group. >> this is the one thing i've learned about infrastructure vur to remember all these really long names with acronyms and they did a great job of remembering all of that. let's give them a big round of applause. [ applause ] tonight on y span 3, economists and former senator phil graham talks about economic policy at a senate budget committee hearing. then a senate hearing on the endangered spees sees act. and deputy secretary of state