Congressman Earl Blumenauer Energizes Federal Effort to ‘Rebuild and Renew America'

As you know, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has added her voice to make sure that we are renewing and rebuilding America, and that these elements are tied together in a way that will make a difference. Infrastructure is the most important issue that isn't yet on the front burner. There is no better place for us to have a conversation today about that than here at the Woodrow Wilson Center, at the First Annual Conference on Rebuilding and Renewing America....I think there's a synergy here if we fit this together for our domestic policy and what needs to happen around the world. We are, at core, talking about saving the planet.

Think back to about 100 years ago, when there were people setting forth across the country to come together for President Roosevelt's conference, the first-ever convening of the nation's governors, the cabinet, the Supreme Court, lots of certified smart people, and some of the alphabet soup that is represented here in this distinguished audience. Reflecting on our tradition, history is on our side. For most of the first 200 years of our country, we were planning and thinking and developing a vision. Some milestones stand out: Postmaster General Franklin's postal roads, the Northwest Ordinance of 1789, the Gallatin Plan, Roosevelt's National Conference, FDR's planning efforts, through Eisenhower signing the National Defense Highway Act.

But the problem is that by the time we were celebrating our bicentennial, those planning efforts and the investments were starting to run out of gas. By 1976, we had less than half of the percentage of our gross domestic product invested in infrastructure that we had before we started the interstate highway system in 1956. Today, we are investing less than two-thirds of that original percent of the gross domestic product, falling far behind our international competitors.

Part of our challenge is how we're all going to be able to drive this point home. That analogy that we've all heard about the frog in the pan of water: If the water is slowly brought to a boil, the frog is unaware of the change in temperature until it's too late, and he's cooked. We've been in this slow, steady decline, and some of the professions, businesses, and organizations that are here in this room have been part of an effort to hold it together, to patch it, to stretch the resources. The majority of our population, while they're cranky about the symptoms, really doesn't know how far we've fallen behind and what that means for the average American consumer.

I'm frustrated that the political issue of the last ten days was the goofy, bipartisan idea for a gas tax holiday. It's counterproductive in so many ways; it sends the wrong signals at a time when it is important for us all to work together to get this story straight.

We need to be honest with the American public: we, in fact, need to invest more money in our infrastructure. Not just borrowing more money or selling off a few assets here and there-we need more money in the overall system. Absolutely, there is a role for creative finance, for innovative partnerships, for stretching resources, but at core, we need more money and we need to send the right pricing signals.

With that said, more money alone is not going to be sufficient. How we spend, who pays, and when, are critical. There is money wasted right now by people stuck in traffic, maybe on their way to ride a stationary bike at a health club. The problem we're facing is that the wrong people are spending money on the wrong things at the wrong time-the costs of congestion, the problems of water, the misallocation of energy, the waste upfront versus the investment in research and conservation. The estimates I've heard are that, in 2005, $710 per person was wasted in the cost of traffic congestion, not talking about the damage to automobiles from roadways that are not adequately maintained.

There will be people who will complain about a penny or a nickel additional gas tax, but those are the same people that will walk into the mini-mart where they pump their gas and buy bottled water for four to six times as much as gasoline. Bottled water is 240-10,000 times more expensive than tap water. It's been estimated that a San Francisco resident buying that bottle of Evian could get 1,000 gallons of tap water.

There are other simple directives that would make a difference. If one-tenth of us had areas where we could conveniently walk to destinations and have the incentive to do so, we would save over $5.5 billion a year of heart-related medical costs alone. I have been working for years on repetitive flood loss in the Flood Insurance Program. Being able to spend a few hundred million dollars strategically upfront and make modest adjustments in that policy will save billions of dollars year after year after year.

If we stop putting people in the flame zone, in areas that we know are subject to repeated wildfires, we will reduce the cost of fighting fires dramatically. Forty percent of the Forest Service budget is for fighting fires. If we had our act together, those fires maybe wouldn't have started in the first place, or they would have burned out without incident.

There are simple imperatives that will make a difference. Bikes and streetcars, walkable communities, completing the street grid, street trees for shade-these are things that are extraordinarily job-intensive in terms of the things that we do, but have multiple benefits over time. They add value.

...We've introduced HB 5976, with over 20 bipartisan co-sponsors, which would put in place an effort to create that commission for an infrastructure plan for this century-not just transportation, but sewer and water, the electrical grid, and broadband. We need a big, comprehensive picture so that people know what the challenge is and what their role is. We need to change the value proposition, because we can squeeze more value out of what we're doing if we're able to break down some of these silos, if we're able to realign what the federal partnership looks like and focus on helping people rebuild and renew their communities.

Right this minute, there are people down the street in the Department of Transportation who are cranking away on cost-effectiveness formulas that have no relationship to the way that any transit agency in America operates. It's goofy. It has the effect of chewing up staff time there, it's forcing people in communities around the country to jump through hoops, and it stretches out the decision-making process in ways that are disastrous. Everybody is aware of the terrible tax of unnecessary delay. The inflationary rate for infrastructure was more than 40 percent over the last three years, and every indication is that it is going up even more rapidly. If we squeeze more time and unnecessary delay out of this process, it is like a bonus to enable us to get on with work.

I would like us to think about ways to break that mold. I've been arguing for years for rail to Dulles. We're ultimately going to get it. My argument six years ago was, "Let's start building rail from Dulles into town." Because we knew what that first dozen miles would look like, right? If we had started that, it would have focused the mind for the people around Tyson's to get their act together or we'd pass them. Think of the savings if we'd started that six years ago. We can do that across the board in a way that is not partisan, not political, and has nothing to do with geographic or ideological difference. It puts America to work and gets the job done-changing the value proposition.

When we do that, it will be easier for people to step up and pay an extra nickel for a gallon of gas or to share some of the vast amount of money that will be available when we turn the page on a new administration and a new Congress. One thing Clinton, Obama, and McCain agree on is that we're going to have some form of carbon-constrained economy, a cap-and-trade system that's going to create billions of dollars, $50-200 billion a year, a portion of which can be used to offset the cost of rebuilding and renewing America. We haven't begun to scratch the surface of our ingenuity to put this together.

I've never seen a community that failed to implement a vision and a plan for lack of money when they had a consensus. In fact, we see at the local level over three-quarters of the local initiatives-for transportation, for water, for open space, for parks-pass, even though they use the less-than-totally-popular sales tax or local property tax.

We can do this if we are willing to be able to get our act together with a vision, and we hope that this legislation will be a small start. If we are able to translate what is represented here with the planners and transit and architects and business and the environmental community, with the help of the honest brokers and the press and the philanthropic community, we can build a coalition that can translate this story. I am hopeful that we don't just have the Second Annual Conference on Rebuilding and Renewing America. With your help, we can make sure that every community brings together the coalition that is represented here for an honest discussion about where they are, what they need from the federal government, and where they're going. At least one in every congressional district, that ought to be our goal.

I am hopeful that we will have a Second Annual Conference on Rebuilding and Renewing America, but maybe we can resolve that we're going to have an infrastructure summit here in Washington, D.C. this fall where we invite the major presidential candidates and have a discussion about their views on rebuilding and renewing America, what they'll do about it, how they'll pay for it, their leadership, and their vision. Doing that before the election is the most important information that we can give to Americans on this critical issue that is not yet on the radar screen, but that we can make so with your help.

This is not, at the end of the day, just about infrastructure. This is about how we strengthen every community. It is going to be the key to a sustainable and robust economy, at a time when we haven't seen the bottom of the current difficulties. If you believe the science, it's about saving the planet, which, in and of itself, ought to be a worthy goal.

Last, but by no means least, it will be a prescription to heal the too-often toxic politics you see here in Washington, D.C. This is something that people can get behind to make our communities more livable and our families safer, healthier, and more economically secure.