because it is -- it is not so exclusively as grover would suggest. in pennsylvania we had 39 transit systems. some of the marin counties with many people. . .

and r.p.o.'s. rural planning organizations and they sat with the d.o.t. representatives in each state, not federal and they determine how to spend the transportation dollars in their own districts. so there is state control and regional and local control of how those federal dollars get spent. >> governor, i'll give you to last word. >> >> they do come back with some restriction. they are minor and good first steps. they don't not exist. they have been there for 30-40

years. we need roads, more roads, good roads and brings. -- bridges. you have a problem with free riders. the government talked about all the -- mass transit. set buses aside. those can clearly be done privately. >> absolutely not. you can't have a bus system in a small county privately unsubsidized. it only works if there is a profit. we can take washington out of boston and amtrak and make a profit on it. there is no profit in mississippi to rone train system. -- run a train system. >> the challenge you have is that people in the past have gone to voters and said if you raise taxes, we'll build roads and roads were not built. sometimes environmentalists held things up. remember the first conversation obama had, he said we're going

cut through the red tape. the democrats in congress said not a chance. thinker constituency is not the people who want to drive to work but the people who are the environmentalist groups. so they said no. until you get those guys out of the room making it impossible to build roads at a reasonable cost, at a reasonable time, you're going to have a hard time convincing people that you're really interested in roads. until you tell the guys that want to do subways that is an interesting project but it is not the roads that the constituents are talking about. if the onion poll is correct, there will be lots of support for that. when you take roads and you entangle it in other spending programs or you alou governor warner or tim cain to raise taxes in the name of roads and

spend it on everything else and then you wonder why taxpayers don't trust you when you come back for the 57th time -- charlie brown, trust me, i'll hold the football. put roads forward. break the unholy alliances that the road builders have built with other spending interests and with all the guys that put all of these rules and restrictions on how you build roadses and what you can do, then you have a different project line. let's have roads built rather than the other. i tend to think we win that faster, better, at the state level but i'm willing to work with you guys at the federal level. don't walk into your room carrying on your back the political interests of a dozen other groups and wondering why that slows you down. >> governor norm quist, please

stay here -- norquist, thank you. thank you for your attention. it has been a good time. thanks. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> we're going to get started with the second portion of our program. i would ask you all to "first take" your seat -- take your seats and get started.

noo thank you. well, i'm just going to introduce our moderator for the second portion of our program. and our moderator is national journal correspondent tom johnson. prior to working at m.j., fawn worked for the "wall street journal." i'll go ahead and turn it over to you. >> i ask dwroverpb please take your -- ask everyone to please take your seats. >> can you all hear me? i will talk while you're getting your coffee. now we're going to talk about details. i cover transportation for "national journal" and i've been involved in and watched the various ins and outs of what has

been going on in congress, which got really interesting in the summer. we have a panel with a wide variety of perspectives on the transportation debate. i'm going give you a brief opener and then we'll talk. we are taking agrees the audience. i believe you all have cars that you can -- cards that our folks are collecting and giving them to me or giving me some sort of electronic device to ask them. also we're tweeting this. the hash tag is pound m.j. debate if you have any of these and want to send questions that way. and if we get really friendly, i'll just call on you. without further ado, let's talk about who we have here. immediately on my right is jim coon. he spent 23 years on capitol hill and has seen a lot.

so those of you who never think it is going to change, it always does. he also worked for the air transport association and the boeing company. one of the things i asked the panelists to talk about is how the debate is affecting them. jim is writing the bill and wants to see more of his family. next to him is tom jenson who is the vice president for transportation policy at u.p.s. in the business of centering things around, that puts him in the middle of a whole variety of transportation issues. in his prior career, he also worked on the hill for former representative stuart mckinney of connecticut. next to him, we have ron kirby. represents 18 washington area

local governments and it is the planning organization for the washington region. he says his customers are people of the american metropolitan region. and any one of you who tried to drive in today will probably attest to that. last, we have john, the president of the small business legislative council which he has been doing since 1985 and has advocated on a variety of small business-related issues for most of his career. he has worked for other small

business trade associations. so let's get right down to it. the thing that i would say at the outset is that we are in a brave new world in congress. some might even call it a discontent new world. the public certainly is having a little bit of difficulty with how the lawmakers are behaving. one of the things that has come out of that is new austere budgeting guidelines from the house republicans. i think that depending on your point of view, some will say that is a welcome change. there are a lot of people i talked to who would agree with that but it has been causing consternation in the transportation world. there is a reauthorization that is more than two years overdue to. i was talking to piece and expressing the -- pete and expressing the -- for the first time ever we have the constituent groups all on the same page. labor, analysts saying that we want to get something done with

reauthorizes infrastructure investment and we're still having trouble on capitol hill. that said, we all know the house and senate is working. the house has outlined a six-year bill, the only problem i think they have with it is it cuts infrastructure spending by about 1/3. that is going to be a problem going forward. they are ready to talk about it. the senate has a two-year bill that is attempting to adom date the budgetry constraints and that also is causing a few people including mr. mica to be a little worried because he would rather see a longer bill. the good news is that members on capitol hill seem to be in a deal-making mode. the evidence of this last night, welcome even see that the senate passed a short-term extension reauthorizing both the service

transportation mechanic nism, the gas tax and the f.a.a. that is a difference from what we were seeing earlier this year when there were some fights over various things. we have six months now come one a long-term deal. from my perspective, i think the real disagreements are going to be about how much money and how long it will be. as always. there are a lot of other details. sandra coburn has brought up a few of them like bike paths. my sense is those with all be work out. this has become a question of how much the top line that you can swallow. and so i'm asking all of our panelists here to tell us what we can do. how do we solve it? if you want to give us a quick overview of where you think the debate can go, where you are and what you would like to do.

the rest of you down the line, what i would like to hear is specific ideas of how -- even if we can't get the whole enchilada this time, the whole investment structure can be improved. >> glad to be here this morning. fawn did a great job outlining where we are headed. where we are going. we do have six months at least now that the senate has passed an extension. unfortunately we have been really good at passing extensions for a number of years both in the service side and more so on the aviation side where we have had actually 22 extensions. nothing to be proud of but nonetheless better than shutting programs down. the only terminology that i would change with respect to

what fawn had mentioned is people talk about cutting spending and i think our view was that we were trying to stop the borrowing that has been going on for years now, you know, the gas tax is bringing in about $35 billion a year and we are spending $50 billion a year. it is really unsustainable when you have to continue to borrow $15 billion every single year to maintain our bridges and roads around the country. there is no doubt that chairman mica, republicans, democrats are committed to a viable transportation program. we started out in january and the committee traveled around the country to almost seemed like every state in the country and had listening sessions and hearings in a bipartisan basis.

and heard from folks around the country. when the chairman came back, he put basically a draft bill together that would -- that incorporated what he had heard around the country, and so it was really, instead of a washington out, it was a coming back to wash is what we tried to put together. some of the main things that we heard are that the project delivery process takes completely too long. that was really one of the main things we heard in almost every location that we went to. on average it takes about 15 years for a major construction project to get completed in this country from conception to completion. that's just totally unacceptable. and so there is a lot of common ground, i think, to find ways to reduce that process and i think that will save a lot of money over the years.

there is a growing, and freevepb the republican leadership in the house, i think that folks believe that we should have a viable program but we should do it without continuing to borrow money and we are looking at every option along with the leadership across the swath of committees in both the house and the senate to come up with revenues that will meet the needs that we have out there. so i think that is very encouraging. i don't think thatnologist the house, nor the senate, for that matter really want to wait six months to get to a long-term bill, so we're going work as hard as we possibly can over the next few months to find the revenue that we need to meet the demands that we have. that's very encouraging, i think, more so than where we were a few months ago and i hope we can get there. it is going to be a really

difficult task. obviously increasing the gas tax is off the table. it is not the time to do that right now, but there are options right now and if we can make them work, we're going try to do that so i'm encouraged by that. there is a lot of things we can do in terms of the financing and the programs and giving states more flexibility and getting us to where we need to go. we have always at least chairman mica's view of a transportation bill is a mument mod -- is a multimodel type of legislation with water and ports that we need to dredge to meet demand demand. we have bottlenecks around the country. rail, everything we can do to make this work. i think tevpk president had some

suggestions in his jobs bill that we can incorporate into what we have. i think there is not a lot of support, per se, for a national infrastructure bank. i think that there is -- we're looking at right now how we can leverage more at the state level, 33, i think, states around the country have infrastructure banks. if we can make that work, we would prefer to do it that way and really get the bureaucracy and the decision making out of washington and down to the states where those people have their own individual needs so we're looking at that. and many other things. so, like i say, i think there is light at the end of the tunnel here and we're working hard to make it happen. >> well, that is good news, i think, for all of us. i can hear applause around here. tom, do you want to talk a little bit about what you would like to see? what you're hoping for? >> i'm not really sure where to

start. the beauty of u.p.s. is we have got issues as it relates to the service transportation network, the highways and the railroads and the ports and the aviation and it all matters. it doesn't matter independently but it all matters from an independent grate intermodal system. we don't do that in this country. everyone knows that. outlining the problem is easy. it is the solutions which is difficult and phone calls last week said why does u.p.s. call? if you leave the building here in the first five minutes, you can see a little brown truck. we have about 90,000 commercial vehicles in the united states and move about 15.5 million packages a day and we have 330 million people in the united states. many rely on mass transit to get to work.

we think building roads is important. think about this. whether it is an overnight letter or freight or some huge industrial come opponent on an ocean vessel that u.b.s. is moving. we don't own that thing. it starts with a shipper and a company and those folks want their widgets. to the extent that we can't move the volume, the freight, through the pipeline, we become redoesn'tant. -- we dun dant. -- redundant. if you take every u.p.s. vehicle today on the road and he or she is late five minutes and you annualize that, that costs u.p.s. about $100 million. even a company our size who pays their fair share of tax, that's real fun. -- money.

we do -- it sounds good to say it is about economic competitiveness. we believe that. we're not just worried about the united states economy but economies around the world and how they are interrelated. what do we do? i wish i had the magic bullet or the sound bite answer, we think it is a number of things but we need to focus on the revenue. there is a lot of things and what chairman mica suggested. that are really good stuff streamline programs. deliver projects quicker. if we don't get more revenue, i hate to quote bill maher, but i must. it is pay me now or pay me later. it is. we prefer to do that. as a major highway user, we're still a believer in the gas tax, warts and all. we also believe there needs to be some more productivity

considered. there are probably lanes in this country, freight lanes where we could we could move larger commercial vehicles safely and efficiently that will help get other vehicles off the road. i think moving forward, the challenge for jim and the smart, dedicated folks on the hill that want this to happen of course is to get there on the money side. but kicking the can and punting, we are not in favor of that whatsoever. because that situation, in our opinion will get worse. we drove 3 billion miles last year. just little brown trucked a other vehicles related to the u.p.s. family. again, we care about all modes. to the extent we can move in that direction and make it an intermodal approach, that is fantastic. down the road, the gas takes probably will become antiquated and i hate to say it, there might be miles traveled or some

kind of mechanism. we're here to try to move in that direction. the solution is revenue. not building less. not maintaining. we see it and we operate all over the world. we are struggling here. it is a very frustrating situation. i hope that muddies the waters even more. >> my understand is that max baucus is on the hunt. probably to the extent that you're talking about is unlikely, at least this year but have i a feeling we're going continue on this theme with ron. if you can touch on how state and local governments are involved and also the private sector since this is something that is a topic of great interest. >> ok. thank you. i'm the staff to the metropolitan planning organization.

our board is made up of state and local officials. state department of transportation, metro. there is where they get together. and we're looking at highway and transit operations and maintenance and new capacity for the entire metropolitan area. what i want to focus on a little bit is what is the federal role here as opposed to all of the other players, state, local and private. when we look at our total budget and expenditures, the federal government pays about 20% of the total of our transportation system. the rest is state and local transit fares and about 7% or 8% is now private tolls and development fees. so there is a blend of funding sources there and the federal government is only 20%. so why do we need to the federal government? what is its particular role? i think what we need to focus on

in the next six months or year, i think we have the opportunity to rethink and reformulate and refocus the federal role and restructure the federal program so that it does deliver the things that the federal government is most responsible for. i think that is one of our biggest challenges. the program has grown up over time and has all sorts of funding categories. seven saying we need to consolidate these categories. i think it is more than that. it needs to be done in a way that we can say this money is being spent. this federal money is being spent to achieve this federal purpose. that's why the federal government is involved. i think if we can get that structure done, we'll be in a stronger position then to argue for more money. i think the structure comes first. there are four basic categories of federal involvement. if we organize around these, it

is not too big a shift from where we are now, it would be much easier to reframe the program, get it funded and administer it. the first category is safety and repair of our major roads and transit systems. if we have a major safety incident, the bridge in minnesota, the transit rail, the first place we go is the federal government to come help us out. therefore, the federal government has an interesting in being involved proactively in making sure those things don't happen. i think the modal formula programs are not too bad in that regard if they are focused on safety. i think can be very effective. what i want to do as i go through these four categories, though, is just give you examples of major programs we have in this region that are very important to us that we

haven't been able to get out of the existing transportation structure. we have gone outside that structure for special federal funding. in the case of repair, we have secured $1.5 billion federal funding over so years, matched 50% by our states to restore our metro rail system to good repair. tds not in the transit program but we needed that to get on top of that problem, which was a very serious problem in this region and for everybody who comes to this region from around the country, that is an objective that i think needs to be worked into the basic federal program for all transit agencies. the second new one is high value investments. we need a modal approach to this. i think the tiger program. maybe we can get the new program

into a more multimodal structure. there is a critical federal role here for major facilities. we had to rebuild that a number of years ago. it cut through three states. it carries a lot of traffic within this region but it carries a lot of thru-traffic. it is a critical link in the entire northeast corridor. clear case for a federal role. we ended up with 100% federal funding to rebuild that bridge. we were able to pull that off and get it rebuilt and you'll see a very nice structure out there now and i was involved right from the beginning of the thinking about that all the way through. i can give you a lot of war stories about what it took to get that done. so those are the two major categories. the third category, which is near and dear to my heart is

metropolitan mobility. i think we need to focus on metropolitan areas in the federal program. i think we consolidate a loft small categories we have now and put them into a metropolitan package, formula allocation by urbanized area population. the way the transit program is right now, and what is the objective here? well, i want to read from the planning regulations that have i to follow every day. promote consistency between state and local planned growth and economic development. that has to be done at a metropolitan level. it needs state and local governments working together. states don't do land use. local governments do land use, but states do transportation. you have got to get them working together to get that linkage and that is a lot of what we focus on at the metropolitan planning organization. another category that is in our planning requirements says

promote efficient system management and operations. and we have been working very hard since 9/11 to put in place a stronger incident management program in this region that is run by the three state departments of transportation and metro. we have a new organization up and running now watching the system regionally identifying problem areas and alerting the agencies to coordinate and alert the public. similarly, we could not fund out of the existing program. i guess at that time it was called an earmark. i'm not sure we use that term anymore. we got that going with earmark and finally went back into the basic programs to get it funded on an ongoing basis. getting that money was a real struggle and one of our state officials when we went to him and said this is a terrific program, let us tell you how great it is, he said you don't have to tell me.

i understand the value of it. the problem is it is new and we don't have a category for new so where are we going to find the money? it is a matter of rattling around all of these program categories and trying to draw money out for something that everybody agreed was important. the fourth and final area is the research development and demonstration. i think this is a very important role for the federal government. one particular area we benefit enormously from, i'll give kudos to is the value pricing program that the highway administration rups, they have been pushing us, to talk about pricing and the roadway system. something we're not eager to get out front on. with lots of federal help, we're looking at new roads and existing roads and we have only toll facilities under construction. i think that is where a lot of our new infrastructure is going

to be funded and i think we have had an enormous amount of help looking at the new technology that is now available. when i remember mentioning the idea of technology belt way to get more capacity, i was dragged up on the evening news and the commentator said where are you going to put the toll booths and i said there won't be any toll booths and i said why not? the level of understanding that people were not understanding we are now building toll roads on the capital belt way and there will not be any toll booths. technology has enabled us to do things that we could not do. i see that as a very important federal role. >> thanks. i think this illustrates the real depths of the kinds of issues that even one region can impose on members of congress who have to deal with a whole

bunch of regions. i want to move to john now. we heard from the big company. perhaps now -- >> a very good lead-in from the point you're making now. my group is made up of both the small businesses that construct the roads and also all the small businesses that use the roads and use the other infrastructures and we bring a perspective from all of those. first, you talk to any small business in america and i guarantee nine out of 10 are going to use two words all the time. perpt certainty. and -- perpt certainty. probably as close as we can get to perpt. -- permanent. if you're going to collect the money from us, spend the money from us.

know where we're going. let's get there. use the money for us. a side dividend to this is if you talk to any small business and talk about what is going on, what is going to be best for us is not short-term stuff. it is the long term. i want to know if i'm a small business employer or employee, i want to know i'm going to have a job not for three months but i'm going to have a job for two years or three years, then i'm going to have the confidence to bring this economy back. whether you're construction or small business or the user of small business, both you and your employees, that's what you want. you want to know there is going to be jobs there. >> going to your point just a moment ago. you can look at a region. i'll use one example. one industry. a florist. what would a florist think about? i guarantee what would come to your mind is delivery.

they have to deliver in their local community. they have to get the bouquet to a location. that's their concern. in that region, i want my trucks to get around. as we all know while you see a lot of those brown trucks and some of that other color, the multicolored thing, there are a lot of other vehicles that are the small business vehicles on those roads and we got to -- they have to deal with it too and their feeling is i've got to get around all of those other trucks. it is like a delivery, but you know what? if i'm a florist in iowa, i need to worry about something else because guess what? most of the domestic flowers are grown in california. they are not grown outside the florist's backyard. most of the flowers come into the miami airport and are trucked around the world. around the nation. if i'm a florist in iowa, i got

to not only worry about the roads, i got to worry about the airport, i need to get those things done. so we need to accomplish it. you can't just look at your little part. it is all integrated both from the structures. it is a national issue and we have got to do deal with it as a national issue. that's why we got the federal government involved in it. we want the certainty. we want to deal with it as a national issue. the last point, fawn broke -- brought this up. she used the word deal maker. this is my 34th year representing small business in washington. i can guarantee you for the better part of two decades, i found compromises. compromises that were win-wins for everybody. there are 300 millionnologist this country. i know all of them -- million folks in this country, not all

of them agree with me. what are the ones that work for the environmentalists whether i agree with them or not. the ones that work for me at small business. i want small government. i don't want a lot of tax, but the reality is i have a national problem. i need a national solution. we have got to get back to the point where we allow our legislatures, our president of the united states, cut him some slack. let him find the solution. he is going to work it without the senate if you give him some room to work it out. we need to get back to that. [applause] >> this one, one quick clarification just from your remarks. am i to assume from what you were saying about certainty and long-term that your members and the people that you represent would be willing to pay a little bit more if they knew it was certain and long-term? >> we're going to have to -- i think the issues have been addressed. if you're going to have to get

it done, you're going to have to pay for it. our folks are familiar with the gas tax. if we go beyond that in other ways they are going to say what does that mean? everybody thinks about that a little bit. we know we're going to get this. this has to be a priority. we have to sort out those priorities. that was good debate before. what is our priority? let's get it funded in the proper way that it needs to be funded. >> i have a few of my own questions and we have people who have submitted -- i might wait a few minutes. i think jim will probably have something to say about this. also, ron. one of the things that john mica has been pushing a lot is public/private partnerships and i think the thinking is that with more private sector investment, the government doesn't need to be spending as much, which is helpful in a situation where the government

doesn't have a lot of money to be spending. if you can talk a little bit about what you think -- where you think that can be streamlined and also if that is something -- it sounds to me like a lot of the kinds of issues that you guys are talking about in the house bill are not particularly -- they are not the kinds of things that are going to inflame somebody over on the senate. i'm curious what your experience is on that. if you could tell me one mistake they make when thinking about public and private partnerships and then one success story. >> i think we want to try to create an atmosphere to allow private sector financing in some of these projects. a lot of times people will suggest that, you know, public /private partnerships in highways is technology. that is partially true.

is tolling. yeah, obviously there is some -- there are funds available out there. i mean, the private sector tells us they have money they are willing to invest. you just have to make the terms of the agreement worth it for them. so, again, it is -- it is a process where we're trying to find every avenue of resources to finance strong multimodal transportation systems. we're looking at that and we think it is a good idea. >> is multimodal key to that, do you think? >> i think yeah ks whenever there is an opportunity in any mode to get private sebt of dollars in there obstacle only helps the situation. >> ron, do you have examples of how this works? >> that was the mistake to say

potentially that public/private partnerships can do a lot more than they really can in the -- they are not going to deal with your basic maintenance and operation of the roadways and things like that. there are some very important areas where these can be very powerful. we have a public/private partnership on the belt way now building new lanes. what i want to point out to you is a success story. if you go one station north on the red line here, you will see the metro station. that was an initiative of the private sector, land developers, a lot of abandoned old warehousing around this area. they came to us. they came to the district. they came to the federal government and said if you build a new metro station, we'll pay 1/3 of the costs because of the land value benefit to us. it was one of those rare cases where everybody said right on. it was just the best thing and met all of the goals that everybody had.

the ratio end up a little bit different at the end. but that project from the time it was conceived to the time it was open was less than five years. it wasn't controversial but that funding blend was just critical. i think is we made a mistake, we didn't get a big enough share out of the private sector. they did very, very well. >> they are very good at negotiating. >> right. that is another thing to watch out for. they tend to be pretty good negotiators. however, everybody is just delighted with the outcome and this area, if you walk up first street to new york avenue, has been totally transforled by that station. that is a great success story. >> the issue came up in the first in the debate about, you know, whether this is a good deal or bad deal. governor rendell said i wonder if pennsylvania would love to have that $12 billion back? i'm sure they would.

where would it go? chicago? the chicago skyway. where did that money go? back into the road? no, went into the general fund. indiana, toll road. great success? i don't know. ask the people in indiana who use the money now. where did that money go? into the toll road? no. went into other transportation projects in the state. in indiana, tolls are going through the roof. you ask the users out there and it is a different story. maybe it goes back to the issue that if the money is dedicated into the infrastructure, that works. if it is bled off for other purposes, good government purposes, that is another story. user financed, user paid system. >> i wrote about this earlier this year for "national journal." one of the things i believe is from your staff that we were talking about that the real problem in public/private partnerships can be that you

have big investors dealing in with local governments and they are very sophisticated. what mr. mica is trying to do on his staff is coming up with ways to equalize that balance a little bit and the other point i would make is the only -- only 24 states and the district of columbia have used public/ private partnerships. we still have -- it works in some places and not in others. moving on to a more political question, i'll leave this open to whoever wants to tackle it from our audience, the earlier debate, grover norquist was targeting government waste and fraud and abuse what happened this questioner wants to know is are transportation investments being held hostage to that broader argument about how government is wasting our money? jim? do you want to --

>> i'm sorry. i think, i mean, that is a little deep there i think. i think there is a perception out there that the highway program over the years has gotten away from its core purpose. and while some would argue out there that just for an example, bike paths or sidewalks or that kind of thing, that gets a lot of play. there are some who believe that we shouldn't fund those. there are obviously those who believe that we should. so the question is should we? and to what extent? and who is going to make the decision? so it all comes back to my earlier comments about reforming the program and getting it back to where it needs to be and focusing on the things that we

need to do so we do have a national program, but at the same time, you know, not have a one size fits all type of a deal. >> maybe i can rephrase this question more to take out the hostage part of it. does the overall conversation about the role of government generally and the -- the waste in it, does that help your policy making or do you feel like it is totally separate? >> i'm not so much focused on waste as i am on process and targeting the dollars to the things that we really need. so if some people call it waste. some people call it -- you know. the debate years ago, or at least up until this past year was earmarks and some people

called that waste. other members called it their bread and butter. it is all in the eye of the beholder. i think the bottom line is with our task is to create a program that would -- to get it back to its original intent and that is to maintain our interstate system and maintain our roads and bridges and around the country and maintain our transportation system and so that's what we're focused on. >> anybody else weigh in on this? not going to touch it. there is a couple of -- i guess we'll continue on the broader issues in congress. a question about the progress of the transportation bill. does it depend on the results of the super committee? this is for jim, i think, mainly. >> i think obviously the super committee has an enormous task in front of them. i think they need to find $1.2,

$1.4 trillion over a 10-year period, which is a herculean task. i obviously from my vantage point believe that we need to move a long-term six-year bill sooner rather than later. and that's our goal. that's what we're working towards. >> i've been hearing that as well. at least from the main folks who are negotiating the transportation bill in congress, they don't seem to think this super committee is going to get in the way of the conversations you guys are having now. >> they can't take any money out of transportation. we need money. they can't cut us any further than has already been done. so the question is, you know, where are we going to find money? >> lucky you. the question have i and i think this is mainly for our business folks on the panel. have i noticed over the last, i don't know, year or so that i

spent a lot of time covering this. every now and then you get a group that will come in and they will talk about traffic congestion, which is something that all of us experience and all of us are frustrated by. in the case of any business person, it actually affects your bottom line. i'm curious as to why that argument doesn't seem to be making as much head way on capitol hill in this terms of pushing people to actually move forward. is that because it is something that we all experience and don't believe the government can fix it or that it takes too long or that is there some other reason? or maybe people just need to get together more and talk about traffic congestion or maybe i just hate traffic. john? >> from the small business user standpoint, by definition, we're diverse. we're not there where you can focus on the construction side or the public official side or

whatever where you're all together, you know how the deliver the message. small businesses are all over the place. traffic congestion is my problem for me today. it is hard for me to relate it and combine it with other people. i'm putting somebody on the road at 4:00 a.m. so they can get to a destination because they want to beat the traffic and they are pulling out. you can't get service after 2:00 p.m. because have i o get my people back to where they want to go. it is my problem at that point. it is hard to connect all of those dots and have the same kind of attention to that. that is my theory. you don't tie t all together the same way you might tie it together with construction or the public seblingtor. >> is -- sector. >> is it something you talk about among your group, for example, if you were to support this project -- >> if you get a group of small businesses together or associations, associations of

small businesses and you get the coast of those associations together, which is my board and you start and say traffic congestion then you'll have one hour of discussion. in my industry, this is our problem. here is somebody else with a different problem. you realize you all have the same problem whether you're a florist or an air-conditioning contractor or a rep. driving through the country. it is only when that happens that you begin to have that kind of -- oh, we have all got to get together. >> an interesting phenomenon in the last couple of years. u.p.s., -- we had people come to us and say you're really good at moving our stuff. help us understand how we can move it better more than that, they are saying what can we do about the situation? it has never been on the top of

our priority list from a public policy perspective. what am i suggesting? there are some stake hold rs that care about that matter. i think that matters. they will talk to their state and federal officials. when the usual suspects show up, whom are all here and we go and talk to folks. >> welcome, by the way. >> we know what your jeopardy is. i think it is -- agenda is. i think it is the non-stake holders. i would suggest that chairman michigan ica and might bes of congress -- mica and members -- that is moving forward. customers are coming and saying help us navigate how we can move thele on this. if we're not building roads and putting more people out there, it is more stuff through the pipeline. we know what the answer is. we're slowing down.

>> thank you. >> two more questions. one of them, i think, jim, this is probably best for you. former speaker newt gingrich and john boehner said we should pay for increased with revenue from new oil and gas drilling rights. do you agree? and you can decline to answer. >> i agree with speaker boehner. good answer. >> well done, sir. >> and this is another question. those of us watching ourselves get older, baby boomers are retiring. is there an interest inarding what will be increased demand for transit services? this is directed to anybody. ron? >> that is a real growing need in our region. it is the fastest growing

component of metro's budget. i think we need a blend of supplies and some real improvements in how we deliver those services. there is an important federal role in meeting those needs. it is a very important demand. >> talk about nontraditional stake holders. so we're just about ready to wrap up but i would just like to give everyone a chance to have the last wood. what do you want? what do you hope? what do you fear? how is that? we'll just go right down the line. >> well, i think what i hope or what chairman mica hopes or house leadership hopes is that we can move a long-term transportation bill. in coming months. i can assure you that there are efforts ongoing where we won't leave any stone unturned.

to try and find adequate resources to fund our programs. we're going to have significant reforms. we talked to the senate. i think the bottom line is as they say, if the will is there, the way is there. i think that -- i'm hopeful, now i'm optimistic. it is really going to be a tough challenge but i think there is enough people looking at it now and hopefully we'll get a bill soon. >> tom? >> again, we think increasing the number of voices in the debate, this whole -- it has got to become a larger, broader more excitable group about let's rebuild america. let's do the right thing for our economic competitiveness. i hate to say it. one thing will spur action. if there is catastrophic failure somewhere, there will be action. that is a bad route to go. not to offend anybody but if

congress does two things well, right? what are they? nothing and overreact. right? [laughter] so, you know, and not to offend anyone. the overreaction would bring this to the forefront of the debate but this has got ripple effects for the rest of the economy. i know folks are trying and i know folks on the hill are trying but to bring a broader group together to say this really matters for the country moving forward, that's our concern. it will happen but it will happen over time and time on one hand doesn't help us because the problem exacerbates itself. >> i guess the thing i feel is most important is we rearticulate the purpose in a federal program so we can go out on the street and explain to somebody in a convincing manner and helping the house and senate in that regard, very important because the program is too

complicated. too many categories. too hard to use. when you have the initiative, too hard to go back in there and find places to fund things. we need more revenue. i think there are a number of ways of doing that. the gas tax, would be nice to increase it. there are a lot of investments that we can tap with some of these creative funding packages. toll imp ng. the -- tolling. a substantial portion is cominging from developers who are going to redevelop around the station. that is the kind of funding package we need to be looking for. >> john? last word. >> long-term certainty. get it done and just, you know, do it together. get it done. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. all of you.

>> thank you. >> on behalf of national journal i would like to thank the american public transportation association and the american road and transportation builders association, governor rendell, grover norquist and you, our audience. we hope to see you at another national journal event. coming up next week, we have the global economy swrent timothy geithner. thank you. . .