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 nation

theing us now to talk about state of infrastructure in the united states is casey dinges of the americanociety of civil engineers. good morning. can you talk about your organization and what role it plays? asce is a professional organization. it has been around since 1852. 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 and came to washington to have more of a policy influence. host: one of the things you do is keep track of federal spending when it comes to infrastructure and put out reports. your latest takes a look at gaps between what is being funded and what is being needed. what did you find? latest in our the failure to act series of economic reports. has done a number of infrastructure report cards were me great the nation's infrastructure. c'se are a lot of d's and on that report card. policymakers were asking is, what difference does that make us? felt there were some very powerful economic issues related to the infrastructure. this is the foundation of

. >> host: dave on the republican line for casey dinges. >> caller: down here in north carolina they don't even have inspectors on the job half of the time. they already pulled it and then it heats out in the center and they come along and these pot holes are patched a little and then it dries out and the steel is showing in the bridges down here. it is eating up for the concrete. >> guest: a couple issuess. one is the type of chemicals we are using to treat ice and climate road conditions. there is research going on there to use less corrosive materials. but assuming you cannot move fast enough on that side, you are people looking to put codings on the steel reinforcements in these concrete constructions. there is a lot of research going on to that issue. safety has to come first and we have to get ice off the bridges. >> host: from washington state, democrat line, janet, hello. >> caller: hello, i want to talk about whatever we need money for; roads, bridges, or whatever it might be depends on what politics since it is election time -- what party gets in. and i have seen there is a