DC Velocity - February 2009

with the short-term conflicts, barriers, issues, and crises—financial and otherwise. Those are basically an unavoidable part of life in the real world, but behind it we need a stable platform. The league has always been about maintaining that stable platform. Those are foundation stones that have served the league well and served the transportation industry well.

QI’d guess that kind of stability is something of a rarity among industry associations?

AYes. Over the past 100 years, an awful lot of associations have come and gone. That’s probably in part because they have a tendency to evolve around narrow bands of interest, narrow issues. Transportation is anything but narrow.

That said, I like to tell people that we are in a single lane and we try to stay within the lane markers on this road, so we are not really engaging in health-care policy issues, corporate tax law issues, and that type of stuff. We stay with transportation.

are we going to pay for it? How are we going to work that into the legislative agenda for this Congress and for the new administration?

It is sort of like buying a car. You can say “I want a new automobile.”

Well, sure. But if you had to sit down and design the automobile and the drive train, we would all be sort of stammering. When you have individuals like Jim Oberstar dealing with your key issue, it is a good thing because, in point of fact, he is going to be designing this and doing QBecause of their capability to the engineering on the drive train to challenge your analysis and takeus forward.

positions on certain matters? It also helps that we are not going ASure. The easiest job that a lob- to have to convince this new admin-byist has is to approach a mem- istration that infrastructure is an ber or staff aide and say, “This is what urgent matter. It is in the paper every we would like.” Well, they already day. The Obama team is sending know that. So the job gets a whole lot clear, unambiguous signals that more difficult for us and, in reality, infrastructure investment is at or for them because the next question is, near the top of their agenda for kick-Well how are we going to do it? How starting this economy.

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House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee]. What can I say? He’s a pro. He knows the business of transportation as well as or better than anyone in the country.

QNot having to educate key legislators on the importance of freight transportation to our economy must make your job a lot easier? AIt makes my job so much easier, and it makes it so much more difficult.

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QBeyond what we’ve already discussed, what are the league’s key objectives in the short term?

AAs I said at the outset, Job One for us and for everybody else right now is a robust economic recovery. I don’t want to mislead you or the executives reading this. We don’t hold the keys to that lockbox, but we are not naïve politically or practically. The state of the economy and the role of the federal government in relighting the pilot light cannot be overstated. It controlled the agenda in the last days of the outgoing administration, and it will control the agenda for the incoming administration and 111th Congress. Every other matter or subject or issue will take a back seat to that.

Assuming we can collectively get this machine re-lubricated and working again, the next item on our agenda would be the next surface transportation bill. Internally, we no longer—and perhaps never really did—refer to it as the “reauthorization” of the surface transportation bill. We really see this as a new start, a start-over. We think of this in terms of a truly comprehensive policy shift in Washington. We’ve got some great leadership in place all ready to lead that effort. Jim Oberstar [chairman of the

Head in the right direction.

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