Janet Kavinoky, Real Investment in America

Well, good morning everybody. First of all, I have to say that Ron has covered the waterfront, so to speak. You know, there are going to be many issues over the coming years where business and labor are fighting. In fact, that's of course always why they want to put business and labor on panels like this together because it's so much more interesting to put us up here and see what happens. But in reality, we've got the same agenda for infrastructure. The chamber two years ago launched Let's Rebuild America as a way to champion the need to maintain, modernize, and expand the physical platform of the American economy: transportation, energy, telecommunications, and water infrastructure. Even before that though, we joined with labor, with the transportation, construction industry, the highway industry, public transportation in the Americans for Transportation Mobility Coalition to drive the debate and make sure that we have adequate public investment in our highway and transit infrastructure. And boy, is there never a better time to talk about this topic than right now. I'm going to spend a few minutes on transportation and then talk briefly about the other areas we work on. I'm the chamber's alleged expert on transportation. Not so much on those other issues, but what we are trying to really do is first drive infrastructure to the top of the economic agenda. Now I know that's a lofty goal. It never is. Infrastructure big word. People are going to get tired of hearing about it. Doesn't really resonate with people. But Ron really had it right. You need all of those aspects of infrastructure to make, to sell, to move, to do what we have to do in the American economy. And it's not just what we make physically in this country. The services economy in America is about 47% of our economy. And it can't do business without an adequate workforce. And it can't do business without being able to move information. So, you think about things like broadband investment and making sure that all around the country, whether you're from rural America, where I grew up in Wyoming, or you're living in the heart of Washington DC, that you can participate in that vibrant services economy. You have to make sure that employers have adequate, even better, excellent access to their employees.

You know, the concept of productivity is a really important one, something we don't talk about very often, but the chamber and our coalition did a study earlier this year. We call it the Transportation Challenge: Moving America's Economy, and we found that for every 10% increase in access to an employee pool that employer has, productivity rises 3%. So fundamentally, we're not just talking about highways. We're not just talking about rail. We're talking about the need for everyone to have access to public transportation and to address some of the nation's biggest challenges like congestion, which take people away from their families, but also contribute to pollution and drain our overall economy as well. So through Let's Rebuild America, we are driving infrastructure to the top of the agenda. Second though, we have to educate and we have to engage the grassroots and the grass tops around this country. And before I came to work at the chamber, I have to tell you, I didn't know what the grass tops was. Somebody's always coming up with a new concept to sell, right? The grass tops: the people who run businesses large and small, who run chambers large and small, who run labor unions large and small. Those are the folks that we need to engage with the members of Congress who aren't the true believers, aren't the ones who are here today participating in this event. We need them to speak out on the issue of infrastructure and how it affects their lives and their communities, how it affects economic development, how it affects their competitiveness in the US economy and in the global economy. So, we're driving that agenda. We're educating and engaging.

Then, we have to talk about how we get the infrastructure where it needs to be. The vast majority actually of the infrastructure in this country is private. Think about energy. Think about freight railroads. How about broadband? Even water systems. So we have to make sure we remove the barriers to private investment in infrastructure. And in fact, we have to remove the barriers to investment so that even if we had all the money in the world, if we can't get through the permitting and the regulatory processes, if we can't get through the legal roadblocks, if we can't somehow come together and get over not-in-my-backyard attitudes, we're not going to build what it is that we need to build. We're not going to maintain what we need to maintain. We're not going to modernize what we need to modernize. So, we have to remove barriers to private investment and to public investment. And the last thing we're doing through Let's Rebuild is having an honest dialogue about public investment in infrastructure. Finding the revenues for the public sector to do what it needs to do. I can't count anymore how many studies have been done, how many speeches have been given on the gap between the need to invest and the resources available. We all know that gap exists. And in fact, I think even talking about it is almost a moot point because there's never going to be enough money in place. That said, in spite of the fact that the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) was record level funding for highways and transit in 2005. In spite of the fact that we finally reauthorized the Water Resources Development Act that pays for locks, dams, levees, and waterway infrastructure. In spite of those facts and others, we are still falling far behind in doing what we need to modernize, maintain, and expand our infrastructure across the board.

And so the chamber thinks we have to put every funding option on the table for public investment. And every funding option includes considering, at least in the highway and transit arena, looking at increasing the user fees on fuel. That's something, you know, you don't hear the chamber talk about all that often. That's kind of what makes my job fun. But we really believe that these are investments. They return back to the economy. Standard & Poor's DRI says that for every dollar invested in infrastructure, you get $1.80 back on the highway side. Cambridge Systematics says that for every dollar invested in transit infrastructure in major cities, you get $6 back. We know that there are statistics that are true for aviation. Think about the three runways that are finally being dedicated this week. One here in Washington, one in Atlanta, and one in Seattle that are going to increase the productivity of those airports and allow more people to move and allow them to move safely. So, let's focus on having a real dialogue over the coming year and over the coming months on what we need to do in the public sector to invest, making sure we have the opportunity for the private sector to do the investment it needs to do so that it can keep people working and then get outside of Washington and educate and engage the public so that that agenda, this infrastructure agenda that is so important, not just to stimulate the economy, but to lay the foundation for our economic recovery, to make sure that we have the agenda for a strong competitive infrastructure for the future. Thank you for letting me be here today and I appreciate it.