mr. paniati, i want to talk about what mr. chao was just asking you. you said through the efficient implementation of the recovery projects, fhwa has the key role in protecting families from foreclosure. it has energized working people of all sizes and is the lifeline for americans who worked in construction and been hard hit by the recession. on page 4, every new project, there is a signal for states to advertise contracts and for contractors to begin hiring workers and ordering asphalt and concrete. i have read all of your presentations and it was a little light on providing information in that area. do you have any information on new contracts, what new people were hired? that was part of the focus of the recovery, not just to the companies that have major contracts, people on overtime, it was to give new people an opportunity to come in? >> all the money is being used on new projects. >> that is not what i asked you. my question is not about new projects, but the projects which i understand were said, are new contractors coming in? are new people g

mr. paniati's. in the early going, we are putting emphasis on getting our funds obligated because as chairman oberstar pointed out, we have an obligation deadline with 50% of the funds to over 300, about 297 grantees needed to be obligated by september 1, or those funds are lapsed into other grantees. we are collecting jobs data from our grantees. we will be doing a more robust collection once we know that we're over that obligation hurtle. >> at f. r. a it's a slightly more different animal because it is what our only grantees and track. so i guess to some extent at this point it makes our job a little easier but yes, in fact, we have regular reporting from amtrak as part of our oversight we do verify these numbers. >> from the federal aviation administration, we are using a metric number that i gave you today and provided in my testimony are based on a metric of the national economic council as a divisor. and once the grants are reported and underway, we will collect the data and have accurate, bu

mr. paniati or the fha somehow they cannot get their budgets under way. i will now turn mr.rogoff to the proposal, the 18 months which you so ably were a good soldier on. i have a particular concern with fda. we have a measure which congress has twice passed legislation to direct the fda first three initially change the law then we pass legislation to direct fda how they are scored into which projects go and never e merge and we feel strongly house and senate the measures are not being followed. two questions since the president is proposing a status quo continuation of the bush era policies across the board for 18 months, what will we do about the cost effectiveness? and then i hear bizarre rumblings from the secretary that someone has a bright idea for some new cost effectiveness measure that would be applied to all transit and highway projects whenever that might be they could not explain that concerns me because we have never managed to get rid of tease of and get the fta to follow the law with the existing process in the agency now we're hearing that is the one policy c

mr. paniati, this is what i was talking about. this is the flash drive. those computer device, about the size of my thumb, just fits into your computer. and i won't bore anybody by calling it up on the screen, but this is what it produces. this is what the state of minnesota uses in the field. the county engineer gathers information, interested on his computer, sin cit sends it intoe state dot instantaneously and then they send that information each month into u.s. dot, federal highway, to us. here it is, pages and pages, documentation, projects and construction, construction status, projects and planning, and their location, county, state, county state highway 10. and what's underway at the time. so when i hear complaints that there is such a burden of paperwork, i just want to repeat it. i have no patience for those who have been given hundreds of millions of dollars, hundred% federal funding to put people to work and complaint about paperwork. baloney. its electronic work, and if that's burdensome, then those complainers need to get a number to show in

mr. paniati, i've got a couple of questions for you. i wonder if you are familiar with the $20 million in the highway trust fund for training, for use in training for apprenticeship programs because of the concern congress had that the construction industry and burdened with some of the highest unemployment in the country. also why has not been replenished with new people. perhaps some of these people are aging out and it is to say the change journeymen and meanwhile not in about 25 years has there been a program of its kind in there was in the 1970's when the industry itself was found by the courts to have discriminated and i hasten to add that as of the condition of the industry today, but at that point it was recognized that what was needed was not only so-called affirmative-action programs for training and there was management labor with government also a party to funding. 25 years that has not been the case so you've got a construction industry that is a largely white male industry. where the reason not because of the old problems