Building America's Future

Timon Singh

In their own words, "Building America's Future (BAF) is a bipartisan coalition of elected officials dedicated to bringing about a new era of U.S. investment in infrastructure that enhances our nation's prosperity and quality of life."

As such, President Obama's State of the Union was of great interest to the foundation especially when he said that he was dedicated to "building the infrastructure of tomorrow". To get a more indepth reaction about the State of the Union, America's high-speed rail plans and the difficulties of funding infrastrucutre growth. I spoke to the coalition's president, Marcia Hale.

“"It’s a long road to be able to get these projects from the planning stages to actually having them be build and having them being used by citizens."”
-Marcia Hale

What was the reaction to President Obama's State of the Union, especially that "Americans should start working towards the infrastructure of tomorrow"? As an infrastructure-based group, surely that was quite a positive thing to hear?

We were very pleased with that, and we were pleased with the whole speech and many of the issues that he brought up. The next day - I don't know if you saw it - but he also was in Florida making a high-speed rail announcement, and he talked specifically about why there is a need for a national infrastructure bank. And so that was good news to us as well.

That's also the major infrastructure project that's been getting a lot of news, the high-speed rail network. There has been a lot of speculation from both Republicans and Democrats over whether the high-speed rail service is actually a good use of taxpayers' money or whether it's a bit of a showboat - I was wondering what your thoughts were on the project?

I think all sides agree that having a high-speed rail would be a very positive thing. Like other countries in the world these days, trying to balance our budget because of the recession is quite difficult, so it's harder to get the financing to actually build these projects where they are truly high speed and cover enough geography in the United States. So it's a long road to be able to get these projects from the planning stages to actually having them be build and having them being used by citizens.

But I don't think there's too much disagreement that it would be a good thing, and we need it to stay competitive in the world with other countries that are building truly high speed rails.

President Obama, even said that China's "not waiting to revamp its economy" and China's famously just unveiled their high speed rail system that's said to be the fastest in the world. The high speed rail services in America that have been greenlit are not on the scale of China's, which I think covers hundreds of kilometers. The one in Florida, for example, can be driven in the car in two and a half hours, so do you think the high speed rail service has been paired down and that it hasn't gone far enough and it should be accelerated? Or do you think it's at the right stage at the speed its going?

No, I think it should be accelerated, but that always comes down to a question of money and how you can get it appropriated and how you can get these projects moving faster. I don't see a huge amount of capital being put into these quickly; it's just not going to happen.

Now, in the president's budget that he put out this week, he put another billion dollars in for high speed rail but the estimates vary from 60 billion to 100 billion to get California's up and running. We're going to need some creative financing to be able to move these projects along, and we think that's one reason why something like the National Infrastructure Bank is so important.

Because these are huge projects, many of the high speed rail plans that are in planning stages cover several different states; that's very hard to get appropriations for in the way our transportation funding is done these days. So we think another way to do it is to have very large, very important geographic projects like high-speed rail done through the Infrastructure Bank. We have a long way to go before we can get the Infrastructure Bank done, but that's one of the main reasons we think it's important.

That raises another whole point about the National Infrastructure Bank. As it's multi-jurisdictional and these projects are going to be spanning several states, who really is going to be making the decisions over which projects get the go ahead considering that each state will want their own input?

Are you talking about who would make it now or who would make it if we had an Infrastructure Bank?

Both really...

Okay. That's why it's so difficult now. It's not impossible for three or four governors to come together and to announce a very large project that affects all of them, and they could come and they would work together to get funding for that, and that's not unknown. Truthfully not in transportation, but in other areas like projects that are around the Great Lakes and bridges and roads and whatever. So that happens. It's just very hard and high-speed rail is a huge amount of money.

So if we did have an Infrastructure Bank, a proposal from three or four states could come into the Bank, it would be vetted, and it would compete for funding or loans or grants, or whatever, or private equity. It could be seen as a project that benefits the country and thus it could probably get through an Infrastructure Bank board. That would be, what we would like to do is based somewhat on the European Infrastructure Bank, so it's not an unknown concept.

So you think that the need for a national service would overcome any state loyalties that certain governors might have about backing a certain project?

Well, in the long run, yes. But it would take a lot of hard work, and, quite frankly, these governors would like to see high-speed rail come through. It gets very complicated 'cause you have to find the rail lines or new property to do it on. But, yes, I think eventually they would - if they thought there were some type of appropriate funding for it, they would be for it.

Just to get back to Building America's Future's aims; one of them on your site is that the coalition aims to "increase the nation's infrastructure investment and reform national infrastructure policy." How do you propose about doing this at the moment as there seems to be an overriding feeling in American that basically the American super-project has stalled and that any money coming from the government is mainly put into repairing existing infrastructure rather than investing in anything new?

Well, that's true, but that would take me back again to the Infrastructure Bank. Why we think the Infrastructure Bank is so important is because it could take on some of these larger projects and move them faster than it will through a set of formulas and set asides for the individuals states. Just as you asked in your question, "How do you get these individual governors together to support a project when they have so much else going on?" But if you did it through the Infrastructure Bank, you could do it better with bipartisan support.

It's becoming a major issue across the country with elected officials on both sides of the aisle and part of that is because we and other groups are trying to put a spotlight on it. Governor Rendell and Governor Swarchenegger did an event yesterday in California with major headlines about how a Democrat and a Republican were coming together to try to fight for infrastructure funding.

That's quite the amazing thing at the moment; when President Obama is saying there's so much partisan politics going on in Washington, that you have a bipartisan coalition of senators and governors all coming together for the common aim of trying to get America's infrastructure on track, especially when there's so much that needs to be done. How did that come about?

Governor Rendell, Governor Schwarzenegger and Mayor Bloomberg came together because they actually all individually care about this issue so much. They actually sat down, had a conversation, and got their staffs together, and they came up with the idea that they would do this and they would put their time and resources together to try to bring lots of other elected officials to the plate and to organize people so that we could press ahead. But it was the three of them personally.

Coming back to the National Infrastructure Bank, if you will, one of the major American infrastructure projects that's been bandied around for a few years is modernizing the U.S. power grid with a Smart Grid. Now, would the finances for such a major project come from the National Infrastructure Bank if it was to be given the go ahead? Or would that come completely from federal funding?

That one - it could be a combination. It would depend on how it was built out. But a major source of that funding might come through the energy department and through the energy committees in Congress, obviously not transportation. That needs to be done and that's high on our list for things that should be done. We can't compete if we don't put that in place.

President Obama also in the State of the Union said other countries all around the world are making serious investments in clean energy and he does not accept second place for the United States of America in such a market. Do you think that America's doing enough to switch to more renewable resources, especially with President Obama saying how he supports the creation of more nuclear power plants and oil and gas development? Do you think that America's energy policy is a bit all over the place and needs to be more focused?

Well, you have probably seen a lot of it, but there's been an enormous amount of money from the Obama Administration in the stimulus project for clean energy. President Obama made comments about this just yesterday and he actually brought together ten governors, Democrats and Republicans, at the White House yesterday to talk about energy issues and how you move forward and it was very interesting.

Governor Riley of Alabama came and he is a Republican and he's done several major news networks today talking about the agreement that this bipartisan group of governors had, but that they are trying to figure out a way so that states and regions can respond to this clean energy challenge in the best way that they can - for example, some of the southern states have no ability to use wind power, where the western states do.

So they are trying to come up with ways that geographically, since we're such a huge country, that this makes sense, and in a bipartisan way. There's also a huge amount of nuclear energy in the south, and, of course, there's coal. And so they are trying very hard to come up with better clean coal technologies, and they recognize that they need to do that.

Do you think clean coal is one of those schemes that really promises more than it can actually deliver on? There are many people saying that clean coal is simply a gimmick and that America would be better to focus its energies on solar power and other forms of renewable energy.

Well, we could probably discuss that all day and not come up with a real answer because the fact of the matter is, that coal exists now in the power plants across the country. But in the south and Midwest, and part of what yesterday's meeting was, was how to use coal the most effectively.

However, we should start the transition to cleaner technologies. And, quite frankly, when President Obama brought up using nuclear power, that is obviously a very... it is a very clean way to be able to produce energy. What you have to do, though, and what America has not solved is where we put our nuclear waste, whereas many European countries have. And you're always going to need coal for the transitional period.

Marcia Hale joined Building America's Future after serving as a Managing Director for McKenna, Long and Aldridge, an international law firm in Washington, DC. Prior, Ms. Hale advised several organizations including the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. During the Clinton administration, Ms. Hale served as Assistant to the President and Director of Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House, a position she held for four years. In this capacity, she was responsible for coordinating policy initiatives and political outreach involving state and local elected officials. Ms. Hale began her Washington, DC experience as a Legislative Assistant to US Representative Butler Derrick of South Carolina and several years later was named the Washington office Director for Governor Dick Riley (D-SC). She has also held senior level positions in government and national campaigns, as well as working at both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC).