American Job Creation and Infrastructure Forum

Good morning and welcome. My name is Bill Burns and I am the President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

I want to thank my friend and colleague, David Rothkopf, for chairing today’s forum and for his initiative and vision in launching this effort. I also want to thank Bernard Schwartz for his support and generosity to Carnegie over many years. Bernard’s life story is as American as it gets. And his perpetual optimism reveals America and Americans at their best. It is precisely that spirit which fuels America’s constant renewal. And it is precisely the spirit which we hope will animate today’s conversation.

Here at Carnegie, we are more likely to host events about the “missile gap” than the “infrastructure gap,” more likely to talk about development deficits abroad than those at home. But we know that what transpires within America’s borders is inextricably linked to what the United States can do beyond them. Today’s event is not just about the decay of the hearts, lungs, and arteries that keep the American economy going. It’s not just about the fraying of America’s political fabric. It’s also about the future of American leadership and America’s capacity to help realize Andrew Carnegie’s vision of a more peaceful and prosperous world.

Simply put, there is an inescapable connection between strong American leadership abroad and a strong and vibrant American economy at home. The more American businesses can sell abroad, the more they can hire at home. Since 95% of the world’s consumers live outside the United States and more than 5,500 jobs are created here at home for every billion dollars of goods and services we export, we have a deep stake in opening markets, strengthening the economic rules of the road, ensuring a level playing field for U.S. companies, attracting foreign investment, and advocating on behalf of U.S. businesses. This is why economic statecraft and commercial advocacy are at the core of what today’s diplomats do. It is why agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership reached earlier this week hold so much promise for American prosperity. And it is why in today’s world, as Secretary Kerry often says, “foreign policy is economic policy.”

But that is only half the story. Unless we renew our economic and political foundations at home, it does not matter how open and accessible international markets are to American goods and services. It is hard to mobilize coalitions abroad when we can’t mobilize them at home. And it is hard to encourage partners to invest in their people and ports if we fail to do the same.

Today’s forum is an opportunity to address these issues thoughtfully, to hear from experts, policymakers, and political leaders trying to do more than just admire the problem, and to produce some practical ideas that will produce practical results.

I am deeply grateful to all of our speakers and discussants for taking the time to be here today… deeply grateful to members of the audience here and in the overflow room for their active participation… and deeply grateful to David and my colleagues at Carnegie for making today’s event a success.

So please join me in welcoming our forum chair, David Rothkopf, who will introduce this morning’s distinguished keynote speaker.

Thank you all very much.       

Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel discussed American job creation and infrastructure.

Rahm Emanuel

Rahm Emanuel is the mayor of the city of Chicago, serving the city since 2011. He previously served as White House chief of staff to U.S. President Barack Obama.

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We have come to a moment not unlike that at which America stood at the end of World War II–at the end of one era and the beginning of another. In that moment, Dwight Eisenhower and America’s other business and government leaders undertook a massive program of infrastructure investment than enabled a half century of national growth, job creation, and enhanced security. In so doing, he built on a U.S. tradition of investment and long term wealth creation in infrastructure that dates back to the earliest days of the republic, from the Eerie Canal through America’s railways to the Grand Cooley Dam.

In recent decades, however, we have failed to maintain that infrastructure and today America’s aging highways, bridges, ports, airports, air traffic control system, power grid, rail, and other systems are not only not up to the challenges we face but they are a liability. The first panel reviewed the depth of America’s infrastructure crisis, the political and economic missteps that depend the problem, and the challenges standing in the way of recovering. They also examined how infrastructure investment leads to lasting job creation and enhanced investment flows. Notably however, this was not an effort in belaboring defects in our system but rather in identifying the areas where work can get done and produce maximum overall benefits for American workers and for the U.S. economic as a whole.

Featured Panelists

Edward Luce

Edward Luce is the chief commentator and columnist at the Financial Times.

Edward G. Rendell

Edward G. Rendell is the former governor of Pennsylvania and a distinguished scholar at the Brookings Institution.

Carl Bernstein

Carl Bernstein shared a Pulitzer Prize with Bob Woodward for his coverage Watergate for the Washington Post. His most recent book is A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Jeff Madrick

Jeff Madrick is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and director of its Bernard L. Schwartz Rediscovering Government Initiative.

Mark Warner

Mark Warner is the senior U.S. senator from Virginia. He is the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance's Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth Subcommittee.

Bernard L. Schwartz

Bernard L. Schwartz is the chairman and CEO of BLS Investments, LLC, a private investment firm, and manager of the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation.

Heidi Crebo-Rediker

Heidi Crebo-Rediker is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former chief economist at the U.S. Department of State.

Full List of Discussants

Robert Atkinson, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Deborah Gordon, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Robert D. Hormats, Kissinger & Associates
Rosabeth M. Kanter, Harvard Business School
David Livingston, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Will Marshall, Progressive Policy Institute
Robert Puentes, Brookings Institution
Michael Sargent, Heritage Foundation
Damon Silvers, AFL-CIO
Scott Smith, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Felicia Wong, Roosevelt Institute

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Just as President Eisenhower and the greatest generation ensured economic growth for generations through modernization, the conditions are ripe for us to make investments today that our children and grandchildren will continue to reap for decades to come as well. Panelists from across the political spectrum worked together to outline a blueprint for the sort of economic incentives, technological innovations, and government and business perspectives that, if seized upon through strong policies, will create a lodestone for American competitiveness and economic prosperity.

A special focus of this panel was on how shifting our perspectives on financing can reframe the issue and make big results much more achievable—whether that entails creating a capital budget for the United States or simply examining how private sector investors can be drawn to each major infrastructure opportunity to help reduce government’s share of the burden and provide the architecture for self-liquidating investments.

Featured Panelists

Robert Atkinson

Robert Atkinson is the founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Robert D. Hormats

Robert D. Hormats is the vice chairman of Kissinger and Associates and former undersecretary for economic, business, and agricultural affairs at the U.S. Department of State.

Will Marshall

Will Marshall is the president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute. 

Rosabeth M. Kanter

Rosabeth M. Kanter is the Ernest L. Arbuckle professor at Harvard Business School and chair and director of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative.

Neera Tanden

Neera Tanden is the president of the Center for American Progress and the Center for American Progress Action Fund

Felicia Wong

Felicia Wong is the president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute.

Full List of Discussants

Carl Bernstein
Deborah Gordon, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Edward Luce, Financial Times
David Livingston, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Jeff Madrick, Century Foundation
Robert Puentes, Brookings Institution
Heidi Crebo-Rediker, Council on Foreign Relations
Edward G. Rendell, Brookings Institution
Michael Sargent, Heritage Foundation
Bernard L. Schwartz, BLS Investments, LLC
Damon Silvers, AFL-CIO
Scott Smith, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

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Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke about American job creation and infrastructure.

Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren is the senior U.S. senator from Massachusetts. She is the ranking member of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs’ Subcommittee on Economic Policy.

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Vice President Joseph Biden spoke about American job creation and infrastructure. He was introduced by Bernard L. Schwartz.

Vice President Joe Biden

Vice President Joe Biden is the 47^th Vice President of the United States of America.

Bernard L. Schwartz

Bernard L. Schwartz is the chairman and CEO of BLS Investments, LLC, a private investment firm, and manager of the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation.

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The day’s final panel was an exercise in putting their infrastructure solutions into practice in the current political climate. Our panelists demonstrated how to advance a comprehensive bipartisan infrastructure initiative through Washington’s myriad difficult obstacles. Drawing on the conclusions of the first two panels, the discussion looked at how once the private sector is factored in, financing opportunities are assessed, federal, state and local roles are clarified, that it may be that as little as $80 billion in federal government spending over seven to eight years could be the key to unleashing $1.5 trillion dollars in needed infrastructure investment activity across America in that same time period.

In short, this panel sought to provide a roadmap to finally achieving the progress that has been stalled for so many years in this area—practical advice and action items for motivated public and private sector leaders.

Featured Panelists

Chris Coons

Chris Coons is the junior U.S. senator from Delaware. He is the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Financial Services and General Service Subcommittee.

Jonathan Cowan

Jonathan Cowan is the president of Third Way.

John Delaney

John Delaney is the congressman representing Maryland’s 6th District. He serves on the Joint Economic Committee.

Deborah Gordon

Deborah Gordon is the director of the Energy and Climate Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Damon Silvers

Damon Silvers is the director of policy and special counsel for the AFL-CIO.

Scott Smith

Scott Smith is a resident fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Institute of Politics. He previously served as mayor of Mesa, Arizona and as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Full List of Discussants

Robert Atkinson, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Carl Bernstein
Robert D. Hormats, Kissinger & Associates
David Livingston, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Edward Luce, Financial Times
Jeff Madrick, Century Foundation
Will Marshall, Progressive Policy Institute
Robert Puentes, Brookings Institution
Edward G. Rendell, Brookings Institution
Michael Sargent, Heritage Foundation
Bernard L. Schwartz, BLS Investments, LLC
Felicia Wong, Roosevelt Institute