mr. puentes and mr. edwards for their thoughtful testimony. it was a terrific constitution. >> thank you. one last question i have is just how maintenance fits in with this. i always think about when we do these ribbon cuttings for a new transit project or a new bridge, and when you fix a pothole there's not usually a bunch of people celebrating. and so, or you fix a gusset under a bridge, how do you think the road maintenance and the bridge maintenance fits into all this, mr. poole and then mr. relationship dell? >> two answers to that. one is that a growing number of state dots are having great success with contracting, competitively contracting for highway maintenance. is one of the pie -- virginia is one of the pioneers, texas, florida. and so that's a way in which you can often get more value, more maintenance per dollar spent than doing it with state employees. but the other is a point that i made briefly, and you may have been out of the room when this came up, is that if you do long-term infrastructure ppps where the company, the entit

mr. puentes, you want to comment further on that? >> thank you, senator. i think that members here that we have to be careful about this net infrastructure bank that is not a silver bullet or address all the changes and all things the governor highlighted in the beginning, but we see when you look around the world and see what the needs are in the united states, and there is an omission right now. we don't is a way to make decisions on projects truly of national significance so what i'd like to see is some kind of entity that's focused on delivering those economicals that we have as a country, so the president's goal is to double exports in five years, the far reaching, ambitious goal, connected to the global economy we have right now, and infrastructure banks then actualize some of those goals. there's major freight projects with that in and around the united states ports so that we're not investing in projects that are -- areas competing with one another. freight moves across the country. the country is very, very large, and freight moves from los angele

mr. poole has advised both democratic and republican administrations. we also have robert puentess the programs metropolitan infrastructure initiative. he is an expert on transportation and infrastructure urban planning, growth management, suburban issues and housing. chris edwards is the director of tax policy and studies at the cato institute. he's an expert on federal and state tax and budget issues. mr. edwards served as a senior economist with the joint economic committee. i think if we all look back at american history, we know how important infrastructure investment has been to this nation. we connect the east and west coast by rail and 1869 which ushered in the second industrial revolution. we began building the intrastate highway system in the 1950's. we did it with a democratic congress i would note and republican president. and we are now in a state of need for infrastructure to be i know that coming from the state of minnesota we are in the middle of a summer day actually with an anniversary coming up a few weeks from now. a bridge collapse in the middle of the state.