Ed Rendell

You insulate the infrastructure bank from political pressure, like the BRAC Commission, which by and large works pretty well.

But I go to too many hearings on the question of infrastructure and transportation, and nothing significant gets done. Nothing significant gets done.

The country has 66,000 structurally deficient bridges, one of which was regrettably in Minnesota.

we can afford $185 billion annual increase in infrastructure investment because of the economic and societal benefits to us.

You have dealt successfully with one of the problems, and that is over-regulation of transportation infrastructure.

You all know the impact of infrastructure spending. DOT and other experts estimate that for every billion dollars of infrastructure spending, 25,000 well-paying jobs are created.

I think one of the most important things this committee can do is start looking at some form of vehicle miles traveled tax.

I would envision 5, 10 years down the road that we wouldn't have a gas tax, we would have some other form of user fee.

The public... never heard about those. And the whole earmark process poisoned the well for transportation funding.

We can't be an exceptional country without a first-class infrastructure. And let the record show we don't have one anymore.

the long-run answer to all of our problems in my judgment is there should be a Federal capital budget.

It is not just that the Federal Government is not participating in helping us to progress, it is that the Federal Government is actually an anchor around our necks.