Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 20150209

Many states are willing to raise their own taxes. Wyoming and maryland raise their own taxes to pay for their infrastructure. Is it big country. If a structure is a really big topic and that is funded differently. Host these are a lot of issues that congress have to wrestle with. They have to fund the highway and there is legislation percolating out there. Sfx summer of hawkins might be open to this idea of raising the gas tax. Guest i do not think that raising the gas tax is going to happen. The president is not in favor of raising the taxes and Public Opinion polls showed that the American Public is against that. I think what president obama goes wrong and his Transportation Plan is to increase federal spending in the centralization of a lot of infrastructure. I think we often let the 50 states be the laboratory of democracy and infrastructure. Say governments can raise their own gas tax whenever they want. They can do more innovative reforms, such as moving to a privatization of the restructure. I think we need to let the 50 states go their own way with the airports, and the highways, and that transit. Host what would that do competitively though . You would have one state that sends best friends sing spends significantly more than another state. What is that mean for trunking companies that have to use these highways . Guest there is a good argument there. A lot of the money goes for example to mass transit. In my view there is no real role for the federal government and mass transit. State and city governments can and should raise their own money for the mass transit system. I think with the federal government gets involved you get a lot of inefficiency and crossover runs. Host could there be some sort of user fee . Guest for mass transit . Host yes. Guest im strongly in favor of that. Eisenhower signed this back into law in 1966 saying that gas tax would pay for highway funding. That is a good system. Unfortunately over time, we have steadily moved away from that. President obama would move even further away from that from a user funded system by taxing corporations to fund our highways which is really the wrong way to go. Host stick with the specifics of this with what the president proposed. 478 billion for the of the sharks are. 238 billion from gas tax and other revenue. And creates Infrastructure Investment bank. Robert fontes, what do you make of his recommendations . Will work will it work . Guest in terms of finding the money to pay for it and in terms of getting agreements that congress and throughout washington, it is tough to say. Theres a lot of money to spend. By decoupling the funding, this is a something that creates a lot of wrinkles. I do not think the public wants to deal with it right now. Finding the money to invest in infrastructure has been the big challenge. Something like the gas tax is a political nonstarter right now. We cant keep kicking the can down the road. Theres a trust fund that is starting to run a negative balance. All 100 senators are going to feel it. There has to be something. They are running out of budgets. They need to get something injected in trust fund. A goes to show that this is a whole system where the user has not really paid for the system for a long time. All of it is heavily subsidized. Highways transit, aviation. Having a different conversation about transportation infrastructure really, what do we need to invest in by nesting that in our larger economic goals . As a conversation we need to have. Once you put that vision behind it, we could see a very good conversation. Guest i think that we could agree that congress has been irresponsible with the Highway Trust Fund. The tax revenues are around 40 billion a year. Is a giant gap that makes it more difficult for congress to pay over. President obama has been irresponsible for proposing a financial Corporate Tax increase. Is not going anywhere in congress. Instead of proposing a real solution, he is claiming in his budget that you want to raise 258 billion dollars from attacks and multinational corporations. Theres not a chance that a Republican Congress would agree with that. Then, we are stuck with that was what to do with the giant gap in the Highway Trust Fund. We disagree on the solution. I would cut the federal spending down to the level of the gas tax revenue. What i think president obama missed the chance here to propose a real solution. Host if the spending was cut down to what the revenue brings in, what would be the result in your opinion . Guest i think all the states would lose on this because they have money appropriated for them that they make longterm decisions on. These are not profits of they can just turn on and turn off. It takes planning and construction. What is went to happen to the Public Transportation is that it will start slowing down the payments to the states. There might be a Silver Lining here and that they are starting to look very carefully and the stuff of they are doing and really prioritizing the types of decisions they have to make right now as opposed to the things that maybe board more aspirational. Host we are just coming out of this recession and starting to recover. Having it an economic would it have an Economic Impact on states . Guest i do not. States know how much money they need to spend on highway and transit than the federal government. Theres a lot of problems with the federal Government Spending the money. The a lot more efficiency when the total government ends. States like texas have historically been cheated by the federal Highway Trust Fund. Host let us get our viewers involved in this conversation. Mark in georgia. Caller good morning. I was watching a video of a man from an institute talking to the epa. They were talking about taxes from the infrastructure to build these hoses houses for the illegal immigrants. They were going to hijack it for transit and stuff like indeed choi and different cities what they call future cities. I have the video and i will put on youtube if you do not know about it. Please answer and tells about that. Thank you. Host do you know anything about this . Guest i do not know. I think there is a larger conversation happening in this country about the roles of cities. The role that infrastructure plays to make anything productive in a sustainable environment for these areas. We have a couple of hesitation conversations around sustainability and things that they are tried to push. By putting all this together and putting mayors in the driver seat, it really changes. As chris was saying, what theyre looking for something very specific. They have the polls on what cities need and the emphasis on sustainability and economic health. It is a very different conversation than what is happening in washington. Host heres a 20 a tweet from one of our viewers. In terms of overall infrastructure, u. S. Rice 25th. Along with the declining education, new companies will not moved to the u. S. To invest. Guest she is implying that we ought to have a better infrastructure and i agree. We have to have the best infrastructure the world. Their differences in opinion on how to get there. I think some of the best infrastructure in the world has been privatized. For example, the best seaports in the airports in the world have been privatized in places like britain. One of the problems in the United States and my view is that a lot of our infrastructure is government owned. Rc parts are government owned. Our airports i government owns. I think that is a mistake. Host what about privatization . Guest there is absolutely a role for the private sector in the infrastructure. We have taken this bicameral approach to this we have private sector infrastructure here and private Public Sector infrastructure there. We are seeing this makes between the private and the public in the nonprofit sectors where their code listing he is. In a lot of cases, it is going to be with the private sector. So much infrastructures already owns by the private sector. Started to inject some of those new ideas and new installations innovations. Host we are talking about the nations infrastructure that president obama is proposing. 478 billion on highways bridges, and mass transit. This is the budget that he released last week in 2016. What is your take on this . The phone number is on the screen. We have a democratic caller. Caller im sorry of sort of online with your first caller. Once the money comes through and they start the projects, then comes the epa. Then comes the environmentalists. How does this project affect the spotted owl . How does this roadway affect the migratory path of termites . It is going to become a boondoggle. It is good to be held up in the courts for years. The lawyers are going to get rich. The money is going to run out and we are going to basically be in the same position that we are on today. Host go ahead. Guest i think they caller expresses the skepticism of the efficiency of our government. I think part of the solution is to decentralize the funding of our infrastructure. Let the states compete with each other over this infrastructure. If one state if they have environmental regulations are too stringents, they can go to other states. They can learn from each other. I think that is the way to solve this problem. Host what you think of this . Guest i think this is sort of a red herring. The real challenge that we have is that we are not creating projects that have state support. If you have projects that people really want to invest in and theres alignment between the public and the private sector, these projects get through without any problems. We have to do is figure out projects that matter to these cities and metropolitan areas. A lot of this will just become the overall process. Host next is fred, a republican caller. Caller what happened to the editor 50 billion that 850 billion stimulus package . I thought i was supposed to go to infrastructure. Somehow, that has all disappeared. I like to know where it went. Guest the stimulus package had a lot and there for tax cuts. Does the biggest share. Infrastructure was the secondlargest share. The campaign was such a long time ago. It is not a cool and green recovery. Infrastructure was a big piece of that. When it came time to injecting money into these projects, it became clear that all we had was shot already and we had to put this money to work really quickly. We had to keep from losing american jobs. A lot of these projects were rehab and maintenance stuff that we had to do. There is pothole refilling. Because we do not have a good sense of Overall Investment needs, some of the big projects that folks were hoping to get out of this had to be tabled because they werent ready to go. Were just able to invest in the immediate shortterm and put americans back to work. Host wiser not adequate assessment of what needs to be done . Guest every state has her own assessments. 20 years ago, you could go to in a metropolitan area and they would not have idea. They were not really connected with their economic trajectory. I think things have changed now. They need to know what kind of projects they need to enhance those economies. We not have a good sense of how to get it done. Guest i think the caller is raising the issue of the stimulus. Theres an interesting issue here mrs. That theres too much focus on the shortterm job creation. The focus instead should be on longterm efficiency. Is the piece of infrastructure needed . Which is the most efficient level of government to fund it . That is the most important than any form of shortterm stimulus. Host hi, glenn. Your question or your comment about the nations infrastructure. Caller i have a quick comment from about what the general men from the Brookings Institute said. People want to use the context of the government. We do not need the government to invest in anything other than the military and think theyre absolutely needed. The off ramps is not where the funding for the whole federated highway system ends. That is a question for the gentlemen from the Cato Institute. Thank you. Guest the interesting thing about the interstate highway system and the 50,000 miles of it. It is virtually all owned by state governments. I think this is something for people to remember. If you bar complaining about potholes and bridges falling down on the interstate, state governments own those highways. They are the group that are ultimately responsible. Currently, federal highway spending goes to a broader array of highways. 160,000 miles of highways. I think that is a mistake. I think one way to reform would be to start narrowing the types of highways that federal funding goes to. I think we are to go back to the original idea of just using federal funding for the interstate highway system and not these broader, other secondary highways that are certainly not mass transit. Host how much money we talking about that the federal government gives to states for the infrastructure needs . Guest for highways, i think about 50 billion or Something Like that. That is used for a lot of different hesitation purposes. Host did the states get that equally . Guest if they come to an agreement. It is based on the loose concept of donors and donees. The states want to get back as much money as they feel like they are conjure booting to the Highway Trust Fund. Because we have injected so much federal funds revenue into the trust fund of the last years the stimulus and then through these bailouts of the government had to do, we have completely blown that system apart. Stay second tribute a lot to the general fund are now losing big like california or new york. We still have the system that rewards states that contribute more to the trust fund. We have to rethink the entire system. Host is that being proposed on capitol hill . Guest absolutely not. Is off the table. It is not being talked about. Guest something that i find very curious is the federal Highway Trust Fund does not misallocated between the states. Some states are winners and some are losers. It is odd that some loser states do not complain more. For example, florida and texas for a long time consistently ive given a higher share a gas tax money than they have got back in spending. A lot of florida and texas politicians do not complain more. We might see more of that in future. Host tony, you are on the air. Caller i have a question for you. Im right outside of moorestown. Is about 100 million that is funded by senior groups. They added six lights. You have to go through them all to get to the Shopping Center on the other side of 25 ee and go through to lights to do that. It is toward the end of the mall. You have to come out gnome is commit suicide because one lane crosses another way. You need to let sue that. Is just amazing. They close the hotels in the rvs in the gas station. They added two more gas stations. It makes no sense. The two lights of their limited to there are six lights and its place. It becomes a very dangerous what they have done. Host all right, chris edwards. Guest the caller is discussing the and efficiency or inefficiency of his local government. Im in norfolk, virginia. They seem to do wasteful things like changing the sidewalks and that sort of stuff. I think the solution here is more transparency by local governments. It is often very difficult to find how local governments are spending their infrastructure money. A few years ago in my neighborhood in northern virginia, they read paves some streets in our neighborhood but not some others here i tried to call complain, but i cannot get an answer. There is no transparency. And i think that is a solution for the local infrastructure. Host is that not an argument for federal guidelines to have the federal government step in . Guest i think it would be even more confusing with levels of federal government involved. I think the same thing with government. No one knows who is responsible. Guest i think they are starting to change. Leveraging is a great example. There is money coming in from the state. They are tried to do something if her in northern virginia. Theyve tried to make sure that those investments are measured. Having much more transparency and how they choose these projects and have them compared to one another. You try to invest limited resources, you have to get the best bang for your buck. Those kinds of things have to be measured against other projects. We can make those decisions and with the limited resources. We are focused on Congestion Relief and mobility. By shifting transportation and making it more about economic growth, we can access Economic Opportunity as opposed to moving things around and change in the types of projects. Host well go back to tennessee. Don, a republican. Caller i have two questions. We voted against the highway. A lost election twice. Still, they decide theyre going to put that highway through. If you lose it, why should you put it through . It took 15 years to put a five mile road through because the epa and Animal Rights are fighting over rattlesnakes or snow worm that they were trying to say. They do not want to cut the writ. It took 15 years to buy build a five mile stretch of highway. If you vote against something they still do it. Host i will have you go first Robert Fontes. Guest i think states like tennessee are starting to reevaluate the role of their Transportation System. Look, you have governors that comment every four to eight years. They bring a whole new set of state transportation officials. A lot of things change and projects. They may look good it years ago they may not look good to the current administration. All these stooges that are happening are starting to gave states a better look at what Transportation System they are trying to build and their own economic growth. Guest to the callers first point about spending when people didnt like it, one of the reasons is that federal money is involved. When i lived in virginia local politicians push for a new streetcar line. As someone who lives in the area, i did not think it made any sense. One of the reasons why local officials want to go ahead is because federal money was dangling out there and it but they ought to grab the federal money. If you take the federal money out of the equation, you get more efficient decisions. Host dana on twitter is ask you about that. Do states have these the money for only roads or can they use it for mass transit . Guest the money is highly flexible. States are pretty much able to use it for almost any transportation purpose. The federal government targets it. There are restrictions for a lot of this money. Host Richmond Virginia richmond, virginia, james. Caller im glad you got me on. I appreciate cspan. I have a question for chris. Is not exactly question, it is more of a comment. It was the states to handle it. He needs to take a look at virginia around richmond and look at our road systems. We do not have a circular highway around richmond. We would not accept federal fund s. The highway coming around by five miles. We just started a new project going down to store phot. Thus theto suffolk. I think the federal government may have is good at hand is a local politicians. That is my comment. Guest i think that politicians always have a trouble making decisions that every level. Theyre always compromised in certain ways. I do think that state politicians who can balance the pain of additional taxes to the benefits of the additional spending on infrastructure is the way to go. Virginia has been interesting because theyve been very interesting and innovative and finance. For example, northern virginia, the capital beltway was why didnt widened for 14 miles. That was mainly privately funded system that came in on time and under budget. It has been very successful. Down around the north folk area there has been private investment in bridges and highways. I think virginia is actually a leader on a lot of and frustration infrastructure. Host we are joined by robert fuentes. He is a senior fellow for the policy program. Our discussion this morning as part of our your money series that we do here on mondays. Are taking a look at how your tax dollars are being spent. President obama requesting from congress 478 billion to refund our highways, bridges, and mass transit. How do we know what republicans will oppose and their own budget and where they coming in on Infrastructure Spending . Guest i think it is long the lines that chris was talking about. It is time to get the programs to live within the means of the revenues coming in. Because we have had this dedicated firewall system, americans were paying a lot. Were driving more and more. Wes still had so much revenue. We had that firewall. Is being siphoned off into other areas of the domestic budget. Now, it is completely flipped because americas driving less. When they are driving, their driving much more fuel efficient cars. We are shines a it in with general funds. This is big conflict going on now about how you fix a program that has been so separated from the rest of the budget conversation. How do you make these discretionary decisions every year based on the revenues that are coming in . Not just for the gas tax revenue. If this is important, how do you choose it . We have to do the things after did to get a program that we need. Host what you think about the things are falcons are talking about what they plan on doing . Guest for example, we have a bill proposed by senator rand paul and republican Barbara Boxer that would help to it would put this voluntary additional tax on corporate earnings that would then be used to fill in the gap on the Highway Trust Fund. This some by there is some bipartisan legislation. I do not know what the republicans will propose. I know that they are not going to go in the direction of the obama proposal. Host tim, a democratic caller. Caller first, i would like to comment on some transparency that never seems to evolve. We always have people from the Cato Institute the hudson institute, and all these other think tanks. I would like to know exactly who these guys are. What do they do . How much money do they pay . It seems when i grew up, Dwight Eisenhower did a bang up job of transportation. All we need to do is follow his formula and get rid of these paid shills. Host chris edwards, care to respond . Guest the Cato Institute has been around since the 1970s. We do not get any federal funding or corporate money. In a lot of ways, we are the Model Institution that has been around the 1920s. Independent think tanks are important to get involved in the discussion in washington. You do need an independent voice. Guest we do not take federal money for any of this work either. Our metropolitan policy program really works local funds. At this time there are challenging discussions here in washington. We think that the city is in the states and the metro areas are doing the hard work. Theyre creating the innovation that eventually will make a difference here washington. Right now, the ballgame sees to be outside the subway. Host trish in seattle. Caller good morning. I would just like to comment on chriss idea of privatization on developing the infrastructure. Here in seattle, we have the project going on a mercer street. It is not going to be called the leader boulevard because that is the access from the i5 talents at amazon and microsoft and all the other burgeoning tech developments. Biotech is down there and as well. I thought it was interesting that why as taxpayers are we paying for these roadways in traffic disruption to get all those people to amazon and microsoft, etc. . What am i getting out of that . Host i thought you were done. Sorry about that. Guest the caller seems to be complaining that the local government is responding to increased demand for automobile traffic because of a blooming local economy. I thought that would be an example of what the local government doing what is good for the economy. It is using commute for people to work for these very important companies. Host russ, independent color. Caller my comment is along these lines. For the xl pipeline, they keep talking about how many jobs it is going to create. Yet, we know it is controversial. Can we take that money and put it into infrastructure that we know has to be done with the roads . If they keep arguing about jobs we can create many jobs. We can create more jobs working on roads instead of putting it in a pipeline that is very controversial. It is to me that restoring our infrastructure and restoring our bridges and roads is a necessity. Host robert points as, you agree Robert Fontes do you think the keystone headline is an Infrastructure Project . Guest it is private money going on. It is not going to be shifted to the roads or anything that the caller is think about. As a the focus on jobs and the right one. If researcher puts a lot of american story. About 11 of the American Workforce is directly involved in occupations and infrastructure. Is not about the guys cutting the hair. His about the guys doing the work. We emphasize a lot of construction jobs. These shortterm jobs will also pick kind of a cliche. Most of these jobs are in operation. These are longterm. They actually pay very well at the lower end of the scale. A lower quintile job pays better than jobs in other sectors. It is very connected in the workforce conversation. Asked me better than just giving the guy shovel and doing a shortterm project. His about longterm employment in this country. Host when he does mention that the keystone xl pipeline will go back and the house for a vote and then go to the president s desks where it the president said he will be veto it. It is the third veto over all. Go ahead. Guest one of the interesting things of the caller raises that if research is not a government thing. Is put in place by the private sector. It all the cell phone towers and the internet pipes and electric utilities and electricity transmission towers. All that stuff is privately provided. We think about if policy, we should also be thinking about how we can reduce barriers to private sector investment. Host sterling, democratic caller. Youre on the air. Caller my problem is i work in 40 years of construction. I worked in jersey, delhi were delaware, virginia. It is ridiculous. I work my last five years down in philly. That was freaking 10 years ago. The rate was 61 an hour. When i worked in delaware years ago, the rate down there was 16 an hour. I couldnt understand. I was in my own business and i thought it was crazy to pay someone 61 an hour. If im making 61 an hour imagine what the corporation is making. I do not understand why the rates are so different. When you go to new jersey or new york, youre talking almost 100,000 100 and our. Guest is a big country in every state has rules and regulations. But some things like insurance costs in your state or higher. In other states, it is much less. The caller is exactly right. What we talked about earlier, we were like about getting much more transparency and what goes into the contracts. What are we spending on these projects before we start to make these decisions . It started transparency. Host is there a priority list of infrastructure needs in this country down to a specific need of this bridge versus this bridge . Guest not really. The president has an economical to sell exports in five years. That is exactly Economic Strategy we need. Couple that with the infrastructure to export. Insight ports and trains that i should serve the federal government. We just cannot really have a National Play clock. Is driven by the larger economical strategy. I think well start to see better products. Guest i would differ a little on that one. Is been a huge success for the economy since freight rail is deregulated back in 1980. I do not think we need a washington plan for great rail. The private Rail Companies are doing an awesome job by themselves. I think we should go in that sort of direction. Like seaports, they should be privatized and compete with each other. Baltimore can compete with norfolk. I think that is a good thing. Some the best people in the world like in hong kong are private and selffunded. I think that is the way to go. Host david, independent color. Caller i was just wondering how the gas tax is allotted to the different projects . Does that go into a general fund . A or tens years ago, it was close to a billion dollars with the Oil Companies in the gas tax and everything. I met a trillion, not a building a billion. Why is nothing going towards transportation . Guest the federal gas tax is 18. 4 cents per gallon. About 80 of it goes the highways. 20 of it goes to mass transit. And other words, the city buses and rails. That is the basic 80 for highways and 20 for mass transit. Crocs halifax, pennsylvania. Caller our governor tom corbett just substantially raised the gas tax. I was wondering what percentage actually goes towards the improvement of the infrastructure. I was also curious. Here a few years ago, we had a tractortrailer truck driver smashed the bridge and burn a bridge up. I understand that we, the taxpayers of pennsylvania, helped bail that Insurance Company out. I was serious about this. That infrastructure goes to bailout infrastructure companies. Just like we bail out wall street and we bail out the oil business. As my question. Guest every state has their own rules. It is not just gas taxes in most states. There are all kinds of different fees that go into the chance to taste and budget. There was lots of feeds. All kinds of things. Each state allocates it in their own way. With the accident their philly and how they dealt with the Insurance Company, i it assure you that is a lot different money and im not particularly familiar. Host twitter wants to know that if the private sector wants it invest in infrastructure, do not inc. You not think that they should pay for the upkeep instead of taxpayers . Guest definitely. In virginia, taxpayers came in and helped finance the widening of the beltway. Those companies not only finance or mainly finance and build a highway, they will be responsible for the maintenance for decades to come. I think robert has written his study that it is a good way to their trade is the same coming i think robert has written his study that is a good way to do it. At the same something amtrak uses some of the freight rails. Mainly, the freight Rail Companies build their own infrastructure. Host well hear from glen next. A republican in tallahassee, florida. Caller thanks for cspan. I just wanted to know what is the impact of this bacon act on the cost of Infrastructure Construction in the country . Would it be a good idea for us to just do away with that law . Guest i do not think so. We are checked to make sure that workers are getting i committed to work on some of these projects. Is this a matter of public policy. Is a nice connection between money being spent on the policy level to get the goals and objectives that we want to achieve. Is a split between the federal government and local government and where the money is coming from. We have got to really make sure that the workers getting paid for these projects are getting paid adequately. Guest there is a law that basically says that if you are building a transportation project like a highway project with federal money then you must pay essentially union wages are often higher. It has been some study a Congressional Study a few years ago that pushes up the wage costs of federal funded highway projects are about 20 . If was up to me, i would repeal the davisbacon law. I think construction workers out of the played paid in the market system when everyone elses. I think i would reduce the cost and that would be better for everybody. Host jim in oxford, maine. A republican. Caller the previous caller asked the same questions i was going to bring up the davisbacon act. If it is federally funded theyre going to say much more than if it statefunded. I guess a mix more sense for the states to do it themselves. The other question i have is that i do not know if this law still in effect. I know that many years ago back in the 70s when they were building route for 95 massachusetts, after that was built, it was brandnew. They were going to lose the federal government money. Every year for many years, they repaint that road over and over again and never start stop repaving it until they have a big budgets in boston. Guest i do not know about the 495 project. Cold weather is pretty bad for private infrastructure. Yet the maintainer over and over again. It is interesting other jobs fees food through the other conversation going on now trying to link if the structure to different kinds of outcomes. We do a lot of spending through lowcost bidding. Come to a contractor, you bid low, you get the money. By time to link it to other areas, which are to make sure that others are going to come with the spending. Suzy crosscountry tried to put people back to work. So, trying to make things like Public Transit come in. If you are a public contractor and want to build and something of the area, you got a come in and put people to work. You going to give them additional skills produce a get credit for that and that is was starting to happen. Host one last phone call. Yvonne in michigan. Go ahead. Caller Governor Snyder wants to raise our income tax. I mean, sales taxes 8 . It is for the roads in the school. Then he wants . 54 on a user tax on the. He wants . 24 for the gas tax. . 24 on the gas tax. Will the government on top of that raise more taxes . Guest michigan is a state where the population is not growing very much. I understand why fastgrowing Southern States want to raise my money. It is surprising in a state that has a fairly stagnant population would want to raise so much money for infrastructure. Under last callers point, his theme is that the federal government and jacks and a lot of inefficiency into state highway spending. With the big dig two thirds federally funding, the federal money was one of the reasons it ended up costing far more than it was