today brac's programs help about 80% of this country's 150 million people. it runs 38,000 schools, a major university and is everything from a large bank to the country's largest producer of seeds. >> so every business that we have gone into has something to do with poor people's needs. >> reporter: the one business brac is not in is garment making. but abed says it too is a vital avenue out of poverty especially for rural women. >> it's created about four million jobs, for than three million for women. so it is very critical... >> reporter: he says now brac will be monitoring improvements that have been promised since the rana plaza disaster. >> we are looking at opportunities as to what will be the more effective role that we could play. there is certainly more awareness everywhere that we need to do something very quickly, otherwise bangladesh might lose a lot of business. >> reporter: in june, the u.s. government, citing safety and workers rights concerns, suspended trade preferences for some bangladeshi exports, which will raise their price. the move do

bank from political pressure like the brac commission which by and large works pretty well. philadelphia's been the unfortunate negative recipient of a lot of brac so i know it works pretty rell well. [laughter] you insulate it, and you have those decisions made on a cost benefit analysis. he's absolutely right. the northeast corpser the is the first be project -- corridor is the first project we should try. then maybe we examine california to oregon and see if that would make money, and then we examine the midwest and see be that would make money. everyone knows if the seller makes money as a stand-alone, you know high-speed rail would make money. >> all right, one last answer here. >> and we need to think differently about the partnerships. the japanese examples are great because it's not just the rail line, it's real estate deals. and be tokyo train station, three million passengers a day, whatever it is, that's also a real estate deal also owned by the railroad companies. we've got to get beyond just thinking about these as individual infrastructure

remember, we have a current brac in place. that continues to cost our nation dollars in the defense budget. i want to remind folks, too, that this same language passed in this year's national defense authorization act by a vote of 315-108 on june 14, and it says this, it says, that we want to make sure that we're making the right decisions in the context of what's going on around us. we have an existing brac that will not save a penny until 2018. the original cost savings estimate on that brac were $21 million. today the cost of that brac is estimated at $35 billion. and the nation won't break even until 2018. in fact, in this year's president's budget, the estimated cost to that brac is $450 million. now, we wouldn't want to proceed with another brac, with potential cost savings somewhere in the future while we're still paying for the additional brac, especially in light of the budgetary needs that are before us with our nation's defense budget, with the sequester going on, with those reductions. and with the uncertainty surr

fazle abed is founder of the bangladesh rural affairs committee, or brac, the world's largest antipoverty organization. >> there is certainly more awareness everywhere that we need to do something very quickly, otherwise bangladesh might lose a lot of business. so that is there among the industry owners. the government is certainly under pressure. >> for its part, the government says it will train 400 new inspectors. it has just 18, over-seeing 5,000 factories, in homes, in rapidly built high-rises like rana plaza. commerce minister ghulam quader says the industry grew much faster than the capacity to regulate it. and he admits, it didn't really want to regulate much. >> government thought that this is a sector which needs to have some sort of protection, especially -- >> the government favored the manufacturers. >> manufacturers in a way that, yes, so that's why we try to restrict labor union activities. government wanted to see the peaceful development of the sector. >> he says unions will now be allowed a greater voice to help monitor safety, something brac's abed has urged. >> only a