know, great passion, and isionni endorse the idea she's put forth as tremendous merit in havingems this as one part of the solution of a well constructed construct infrastructure bank could meet o tee needs of state and local sta jurisdictions across the country and rebuilding more building out new infrastructure and assisting them in getting ath reasonable flexible financing. and i believe it can be constructed in such a way as to protect the taxpayers in the united states would be providing such guarantees particularly with the collapse of, you know, or the difficulties in the bond market today. it's very expensive to goensiv forward with public infrastructure projects in thero existing commercial bond marketu without some guarantees i would

certainly recommend to the committee looking at the c comm experienceit with fi by american bonding and the unbelievable lae demand that is out there and te of work that's beent of wo accomplished. acco and as she said also, this woule provide a tool were this in place today, you know, the mayoy villaraigosa of los angeles would be moving forward with the most ambitious construction of the transit projects for a heavily congested urban area in mem memory.uld be not only tens of rhousands of people .. indirectly in construction and engineering. it would stimulate our manufacturing sector with orders for made in america unlike real and streetcars and transit and a host of things and were this to be replicated across the country i would be a tremendous benefit. so i recommend it to you on

those terms and the unique thing about los angeles in this case is the of a revenue stream so what they are looking for is a way to leverage that and complete the product more quickly rather than spending the revenue stream overtime and an infrastructure and would be unique and helpful in that matter. but i >> i can't leave without saying that this is not a solution to t the huge problems we have an infrastructure in the united states of america.ted if fwe just look at transportation, 160,000 bridges on the federal system, in need of either replaced orether of substantial repair, $60 billion backlog in our legacy transitsit system for a capital investment, you know, some 40% of the road surface is poor orpoor ofair coi air-conditioned causing accidents, wasted fuels, you know, causing, cause to the

vehicles. this investment does not come without extraordinary cost. you know, both the lost time fo those engaged in commercial movement of freight on our system, the detours, you know, that hurts american business, ir hurts our competitiveness.ust we must invest. so, we have to do more thando infrastructure bank. tha infrastructure bank will workth well with projects that are going to havewo rka r evenue sta we're not going to toll thethe n entire interstate system in thed united states of america and almost 160,000 bridges. 60e 1 we need a separate and dedicated source of revenue to undertake those projects. there's no transit system in unn world that makes money. world so if you don't have an external or additional way of paying foro the bonds, as los angeles witht its sales tax increment, whichro

is extraordinary in this the enr environment that it got passed,t then most transit systems wouldo not be able to build himself. i would redirect, direct the committee's attention to the coi need for additional taxes.nal and i will use the words taxeste or fees. because there's a huge cost in u not making these investments.. the committee has held hearings on this, andc i think the idea, which has the most from my nonscientific assessment inn-scs talking to people and members om congress, taxing loyal i the barrel for every dollar taxed, we would raise $24 billion over the term of the transportation bill. that's, you, and when you raise the tax on a barrel of oil, it't plausible that opec is going to have to eat some of it, or bp, or exxonmobil. be beo brought back $50 billionb

worth of stock in the ulast couple of years. you know, if they could notars necessary pass on the tax on aoh barrel of oil directly to theo consumers, unlike a retail tax at the pump. pup and the speculators and othersa are engaged in the market. a so the cost can be spread, butes the benefits would be phenomenal.phenonal so i would urge the committee tc continue to consider that option. the other idea would be thedebei index gas cap.gas since 1993 we have lost 40% ofle purchasing power of the federalg gas tax, gas tax has not been increased.een and if we were to index it for t future construction costinflione inflation, get estimates from cbo, and then use that tohat finance, say, 10 year bonds, we could get somewhere between 40 w and $60 billion for the highwayy trus trust funtd here and i would all

recommend that to the committeem so i recommend an infrastructure bank that i recommend other sources of funding.rceso we're going tof need everythingg we can to bring together to ca begin to rebuild our legacy systems and build out a 21stentr infrary infrastructure, the united states of america, toof r make us more competitive, more healthy, more fuel-efficient.mof thank the committee for itsitte attention to this matter. t >> thankh you, mr. defazio. the chair will not recognize mr. lipinski.from ill >> thank you, chairman neal. ranking member tiberi, membersbs of the sub committee, thank yout for the opportunity to th participate in this morningning searing. given the enormous need for infrastructure investment acros the nation i commend you for considering new ways to helpway bridge the existing gap in funding for projects that are critical to our nation'sehe proc teacher. i want to commend ms. delauro for her proposal for infrastructure bank.structurban. i know that there are manye dift

different ways to structure suck event, including questions about funding, ineligibility.lity. eligibility for which entities will be eligible to participate in the bank and what type ofthek project will be eligible. wi so i want to focus today mostlys on the eligibility, and chairman neal said it's good of a lott'sa different goovd i guess i'll put out there and a lot ofs, ideas about what may be eligible and why it would be good. so before i begin i want to emphasize that innovative proposal such as this should be viewed as potential piece of a comprehensive solution forve sou providing adequate levels of fundi funding for infrastructure projects. if this were the only step wenlp took, we would still fall fall short of the investment our inem nation needs. while infrastructure banks may s play a role in moving certain projects forward, many majorjori critical projects may never bebo able to generate the revenue needed to replace a loan.

this is a point that must be considered in structuring thectd financing mechanisms of infrastructure bank, and inderig considering the extent to whichh this bank could fulfill our need yourrastructure chairman neal says american society of civilid engineers sad that we need to invest $2.2 trillion over the next fivx years to bring the state of our countries public infrastructure up to a good condition. in order to begin addressing oug surface stripper structure infrastructure needs, the house subcommittee and highwayshways transit shared by mr. defazio have a blueprint of the surface transportation authorization act last june.uthorizati in july, jim oberstar and mr. defazio testified in front of the subcommittee regardingnd the potential mechanism ofms tot 500 billion-dollar legislation.. today we are still challenging to find a mechanism we can't agree upon. america needs us to get that

answer. the sooner the better.ette because a multiyear bill, whichi is already overdue, is the bests way to put people back to workrk quickly, while making ang long-term investment this country so badly needs.eeds. but even when we complete this bill, we will still have much work to do just on surface transportation. that's one reason why options like sailsptns of a national infrastructure bank is so important.. to finance infrastructure stater and local governments offern nee these bonds which carry withwit them higher cost because overheadhigher and risk, if then even get these. infrastructure banks provide other infrastructure developersr with debt financing options that can allow projects to be built at a lower cost.wr-cost but then needs to invest ini infrastructure spans far beyond surfac surface transportation. aviation, drinking water andand wastewater, energy and telecommunication w, infrastructure, are all areas

where infrastructure investment is needed.s we may even want to consider t infrastructure bank forks for financing projects such as acceleration of components of the next generation air ne transportation system, nexgen, our positive train control, ptc which will both increase theoul safety and efficiency. finally, as chairman of thea something on research and science education, and sciencesi and technology committee, i wanl to raise infrastructure needsin forf research.arch. the 2005 survey of science and engineering research ability of found that academic image weree $3.5 billion in needed reservations.demic leders in o adhering, i have consistently cs heard that it's gotten much worse during thiso recession. this underinvestment means we're ar spending billions of rese earcho dollars in efficiently.f but even worse, it means we'ren in danger of losing our positiot

as a worldwide leader in scienci innovation to countries such as china.in. the america competes act which were considering today on the house floor will help address el some of this issue. but certainly there will be more that needs to be done with infrastructure. so infrastructure bank and surla help with this problem, especially comes to cyber infrastructure.ture. we're at a point for advancing computing power and network these are revolutionizing datang center deals like medicine and n acknowledged. we need to be making investments that go beyond the current generation of broadband deployment and build thehe remotetructure we need to remote education, collaboration, andorn data analysis.alysis. i encourage the subcommittee toe also consider these sorts of projects as possible targets for an infrastructure bank if wetar want to be successful in an increasingly competitive global economy. ec thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning.rni. >> thank you, mr. lipinski. at this time i would like to uso

to the gentle lady from l pennsylvania for thefrom pe introduction of our next witness.t witness. >> this will be a short introduction, although i haveofk known government do for a long time so i could go on. but let me just say that i'mt i am very pleased that governor rendell is here.indel not only on the behalf ofhe h pennsylvania, he has led thealtc commonwealth on economic development and really in the fore forefront of both in the state and nationally. and really, the kind of infrastructure, and i will use that word very broadly, at least dly th ecoatnomic develop and and willm lead us to the kind of economic competitiveness we want as a state and as a nation. so he speaks they not only onlyn behalf of pennsylvania but on behalf of thef governors andrnos joint -- i'm going to make sure get the name right -- as coachis of the buildings america futureh which he is the coach and he isn a leading voice in the need to n make the kind of investment inie our infrastructure across this ountry to enable us to be the

growing international economy that we need tot be.be. so i welcome governor rendell tw the ways and means committee,co and select revenue subcommittee and look forward to his testimony. >> gentlemen, governor rendell is recognized.r renll is thank you very much, mr.re chairman, and ranking member tiberi. let me also, i would cobe remiss let me if i didn't thank you for the d' passage of house bill 4849.ill congresswoman talks abouts tk economic development. to go a. 4849 was extraordinarily etr important private activity bonds and the new market tax credit have been used to great economii in pennsylvania, and your billbl protecting it from the amt was extraordinary important. secondarily, buildingex americaa bonds we need to extend what haa been an extraordinarily successful program.ul program. >> governor, let me take credity for all th lreeet of thoses. provisions. [laughter] >> pennsylvania went to marketn in december, and so $900 million was the bond at 3.1% interest,

the lowest the commonwealth household to general obligation bonds since 1960. in part tobonds s a good debt bp part due toar the building of or program.ond it's an extraordinary programt p end on to berogram extended, toh extended out to move quickly too adopt 4849 come in my judgment.. it's a pleasure to be here today to talk about the infrastructurf bank, and we do support the conceptd that is embodied in building america's future, supports the congressman's bills it's a good framework.amewor let me say, ik. won't repeat thd questions, you purpose.ose. let me begin by saying infrastructure bank is not an panacea. byacea. congressman defazio is absolutely. it is part ofc the broader b problem. and we as a country have got to come to grips with the broader a problem. we need, in my judgment, a judga decade-long infrastructure revitalization program which will do much good for us inf

terms of the substitute need ofs transportation and all a part of her infrastructure. but more importantly, is thee single best job creators thatt this congress can do for the american people. it's also the single best thing to bolster flagging american fla manufacturing, and ladies and gentlemen, if we don't dot do s something about american manufacturing soon, there isn'tu going to be any american a manufacturing. let me give you just a few statistics from pennsylvania.ns. we were pleased to receive a letter from congressman oberstap saying pennsylvania is the second best state in the unionse in spending its a our ournsrtati transportation funds. would have got $1.2 billion inc. contract, 99.7% of the moneye me iiven to us understand this. st and you talk about small t business, and i know thisess --a committee is very interested ind small business.usiness. of the 1.2 billion, let me give ief you a brief idea of what thet impact is on small businesses. n

$993 million went to prime contractors, under contract.der 67% of that went to businessesu with less than 100 employees.lo. 238 million went to subcontractors, 87% of those contracts went to businesses weo with less than 100 employees.ha0 we have a tendency to think ofth manufacturing and constructionrt activities asio big businessines activities, they are not.. th the best remedy for small rem business, the best remedy forfo the american economy is a significant infrastructurecture revitalization repair program. and by the way, the american people ugly. building america's future took a toll and found that 90 per% ofof america's think infrastructure is important, 81% of americans are willing to pay additional taxes, if we change the way we e allocate transportation and intruc infrastructure dollars. and congressman deposit, we took a second bowl very recently.

we employed for it because we we di didn't think, we do and what to think we're cooking the books. so we employed frank lutz, and 61% of americans consistent, republican, democratic, ally,pun believe the gas tax, the federal gas tax is bad for inflation. ead a are willing to accept that. 61% of americans. let me just give you an idea of what this does for americanrican manufacturing. we did a study in pennsylvaniana of the increase in manufacturini orders. a i think congressman schwartzresn oes abobout this. in the fiutr tst 10 months of te stimulus, there were 4300 additional tons of steel ordereo in pennsylvania, a 43% increase. over the previous year wheres ye there was no stimulus. 3.5 million tons of asphalt, 844% increase in the asphalt that was ordered. r40,000 cubic yards of concretec a 50% increase in the concrete t that was ordered they do beforer

so if you want to get the hionomy going, if you want to dt something to bolster americanlsn manufacturing, let's do this. what part does the infrastructure bank but in this? a vraery important part. you can bring additional funds into the mix. private investment is waiting for a vehicle to invest in infrastructure. the infrastructure bank can be the the perfect entity to leverage private funding. the man who saved your, the s financier who say they your and sent methe a letter to get to tk tarmittee and talking about how important it is and how we can n leverage private investment.in he even believes there are foreign funds that would investe in american infrastructure, anda he is going ton france next weet to meet with several foreign funds about this very subject. secondly, we do need to we capitalize it. ey do need to spend somevernmenn government money oner infrastructure bank. the infrastructure bank can. hae tools that will help without spending one federal dollar.dla.

credit enhanced loan guarantees. those things are important.se te they will work without thethe expenditure of a single federal dollar, in most cases. not in all cases but in 95, 96, 97, 98% of the cases. i do believe as congresswoman dorset, where to capital as the bank. bak. her figure is about right. i would double that. i would to 50.50 ll the bank has up its own bonny capacity. and why do we need a bank?nque? we need it because there reallyn is no vehicle in the current transportation system for funding multistate projects arel projects of national significance. we have in the short termwe have because of arra with tiger grants that the tiger grants took into consideration funding proe projects that were multistate your pennsylvania was in on two projects that were fu funded for rail freight. they had 68 in five states involved in each of the respective projects. but if we're going to do a reali

high speed national rail system, we can do it state by state.tst because you have to have one consistent method, whether it s other forms of high speed and it ag can only be financed through and bank like this. the public will support it th because the bank will be bec transparent. it will be merit-based.t base build a project review that will because benefit announces.nd there will be experts making the judgecost-ben it. does congress was all of itswer? power? of course the. in this bill you can setallocio allocation farmers between wastewater and water, betweentwe transportation. you can set the criteria thatbak the bank must consider and ranked projects on. on. deputy congressional oversight of what the bankth does. and ranking member tiberi is absolutely right to be concerne about the lomss of federal dollars, given what's happened. but if you look at the europeanf investment bank, the returns, e the risk factor that is not present when you have thehe private sector involved, they make sure that the projects

s,vested in our good projects,gt have projects that aren't goingg to default that there are ways of doing this and ways of this protecting the federal dollars. but you can bring all of thiscan together in such a way that weat can help absolutely help, justel by a lying us to use the treasury's interest-rate as as opposed to normal interest-ratee that will help make projectsm doable that previously were not doable. that doesn't cost the federal government any money.al in fact, we actually get a ratee of return. so the banks capabilities are, think, whether they can do for us is very difficult for all ofl us to understand that it'sit's . necessary. we've got to move quickly to geo this done, but again, i reiterate what congress defazio says, let's get ogether and figuref out what a long-term way to find that theu infrastructure needs of this country. the american people would tuppor support it as congresswomanschaz schwartz has said, we are done in pennsylvania to d a greatpeni degree. and people are supporting it.is

it's one of the reasons pennsylvania, has one of thehe most robust economy, not a goode economy, but the most robust economy of any large industrial state.nd thank you. >> thank you.ust i invited congresswoman to introduce our next guest. he was busy at a leadershiphip meeting but indicated to me that he simply should be described ag a good guy. [laughter] >> mayor villaraigosa? >> thank you, chairman neal. great pronunciation by the way. ranking member tiberi, anding mb members of this subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to addressortu you today. it's even an art to be here witb america's preeminent advocates for an infrastructure investmene here in the united states. your leadership support and interest in transportation infrastructure.ucture i feel crucial to the future off our country. and you're focused on leveragino federal investment comes at jusa the right time.right im

i don't have to tell you that american cities continue to grow, and as we grow we are grw struggling with traffic congestion andstrugglin air pol. congestion burdens our economy, increases the cost of goods movement, and of ex the mental and physical health of our community.calho at the sameu time, we are facini staggering unemployment. in los angeles come a the on the is 14%.ate in the construction trade, thats number is about 35%. we believe there's a way to t address both issues head-on.esea do an innovative federal localdl partnership. now i don't have to tell you as well, in if you have visited my city, know that it is famous foi being the car capital of theth p world. this also makes is the most congested city with some of the worst air quality in thethe country. but we're doing something aboutg it. soethin we're investing carpool lanes,an sink and as traffic signals.ost most important, investing inting public transportation.

our current transit programogra includes the construction of 12 major new lines over the next 3 years. we will double our rail systemot in thate time. our overall goal is to connect the communities where we livetie with the major job centers and regions.on. these 12 projects will create 166,000 high quality construction jobs, 2800 permanent operating and0 maintenance jobs. it permanera will take 570,000 f pollutants out of the air eachtr year, save 10 million gallons of gas per year, and increased transit by 77 million. it was a care our energy futureu by reducing our deprendence on foreign oil. now, we can pursue such an su aggressive and far-reachingeachi transit program because measurec our.a measure our was approved of the overwhelmingly by 68% of the th voters on a bipartisan basis, b

among every demographic group and every part of the county. in the midst of an economic recession, we were able to makee the case that this wasn't just a is tax them it was an investment on the future, and investment on the creation of jobs and public health, moving the goods of people in the second largest city in the united states of america. measure r is a 30 or half cent transportation sales tax, butrtx it's also the third transportation sales taxs also h approved by the voters. measure r alone will generatener $40 billion in new revenue.newrn together our three local sales tax generate almost $2 billion year, money that we're investing in transportation infrastructure and the future of our region. now, we have a uniquenow, h opportunity to build our transit projects there.ects soone and ce create the jobs and capture thee environmental benefits in theenn hear future. t we want to build our transit projects in 10 years instead ofn

30. we call our accelerated rate y f plan the 30/and initiative.lanti it is 100% consistent with thesa program adopted locally and approved by our voters toccetes accelerate our transit program, excelling our transit programsis will save billions of dollars, reducing the cost from 17.5 billion, to 13 points havem been. because by accelerating these projects in the 10 year period instead of the out years, we are reducing the increased costs an construction that we project over time it would cost us.woul we also believe that we can cutl costs even further by takingt advantage of market conditions. currently because of thets unemployment rate. in thee industry because of the downmarket we are seeing that n the city, 20% reduction in bids. at the stake, it's even higher. at the metropolitan authority, t it's in the middle between us,u

it's between 20s and 30%. 27% reduction in cost because ot the downmarket. we also think we can take advantage of the public-private partnerships for design and construction. and right now we are working tog again find a funding strategy to build these projects even sooner.n s we have explored the feasibilitf of existing federal programs such as tiger grants and give ants you, but there's insufficient capacity currently to city c accommodate the 30/10 initiative.shift. we have also fought with great t initiative and unequivocally support recent proposals for establishing a national represtructure bank by representative the law andse chs dodd. i noticed you mentioned the folks have got behind it, add me to that because it is one of tht many tools that we need rightow now to make the kind ofi investment in infrastructure that will have the economic

the line. ben now, likewise weef have noted tv president fiscal year 2011 budget proposal to establish ato national infrastructure innovation finance fund designed to assist major investments ofts national regional significance, each ofn these programs would substantially expand federal lending capacity beyond theexino existence levels. le we support any approach that can provide printable funds at the same rates ofle flexible terms t the existing ticket program. tii speciao believe there's a special opportunity to infrastructure bank one i findrf to allocate new congressionalren authorized tax preferred bondsa authority for transit investment as much as they have done for schools. sc we have to do for transportatioa as well. together and expanded credit program and a target specified tax credit bond program forr t t transit investment of national significance would make 30/10 possible. are specified new tax creditecie bond program could bedi cou

administered by an infrastructure bank. now, i want to end with his.with i was state of the california state assembly, i guess now morm of those than a decade ago.. when i was speaker, it was ask s time when california had some money. but everybody came with their hand out. and i would say to the mayors, s would say to the local officials who would come to me, if it's such a great idea, how muchh money are you putting out? and what we did through thosetht exercises is that we expand and leveraged what the state was willing to do by encouraging and in incentivizing local jurisdictions to invest their own money as well.st their when you look at what we'relookh arguing here, we are not onlyare arguing with infrastructurere investment that has been made we aron the federal level, what we're saying is a template for the future at a time of f spiraling deficits and historice

debt that ranking member tiberi talk about. tiber that in those times we have got to encourage local governments to put up their own money. we have done that.. this i believe, and i'm the vice president of the u.s. conferenc. of mayors, i'm suggesting to myg colleagues, this is the template.co we know that local bonds, locals taxes are much preferable. they trust local government to a elect higher degree than they do the state or the federal government. n . encourage the locality to make these kind of investments, this kind of partnership with the federal government will only leverage the kind of resources that all of the speakers have spoken to that we need if we want to compete with china and compete with europe in terms of the kind of infrastructure investments we need to make. and so i would humbly ask you to

consider all of address this issue whether or not we need a national infrastructure bank and, as been mentioned, other tools to make these kinds of investments. you that very much. >> mr. chairman, if i could just add quickly, that is the beauty of building america bonds. the federal government guaranties a third of interest rate payments but state and local government have to put up the rest. so it is something we leverage all of the governmental funding together. >> thank you, governor. there are airports across this country right now that are expanding exponentially because of those build america bonds. it has been well-met by mayors, governors and people of a variety of political opinion. governor, let me raise this question. i think the model you have spoken to is entirely pertinent. i'm curious how you got mayor bloomberg and governor schwarzenegger negativer to form your coalition? what is it seeing at local level to cause to take this

banner up and what impact on jobs you foresee as we move forward to fund infrastructure? really emphasizing the fact that i believe you have a republican governor, independent mayor and democratic governor as well that put this coalition together? >> back at the beginning of 2008 when we formed the coalition, i was looking for other public officials who had essentially put their money where their mouth was and governor schwarzenegger negativer got a significant bond issue passed by california voters for infrastructure and mayor bloomberg has probably done more for new york city's infrastructure than the last five or six mayors before him. so we reached out to them. it was a unique coalition because of the political affiliations of the three. one independent, one republican, one democrat, and we thought, alikee2x that this is an imperative. this isn't a question of should we. the answer is we have to and so we built the coalition

and it's our long-term goal to convince the country to do just what the congressman defazio said, to make a major and significant investment in doing this. and the people, i'm not surprised at the people of los angeles, even in these difficult times, voted to increase their taxes to fund what they viewed as an important infrastructure development. the american people are way ahead of us. they're way ahead of politicians, state, local and federal. they understand the need. infrastructure is something they can touch, they can feel, they can see, they can experience. if you give someone back an hour of their life by getting them out of congestion both to and from work, what is value of that? it is significant. i think our ability to act if we act forthrightly and act courageously i think our ability to solve these problems exist the we have to be innovative and creative and certainly the infrastructure bank is a model for doing that but we can get there.

i just think it is a question whether we have the political will and i think this is easier in terms of public perception than anybody thinks. you have senator inhofe, who is certainly one of the more conservative united states senate, said before i appeared before his committee, ranking member, believes infrastructure spending is the second most important thing the federal government can spend money on behind defense. and i believe we can fashion a bipartisan coalition to invest in our country's infrastructure, to build jobs. you know the statistics better than i do, 25,000 jobs per $1 billion of infrastructure spending, even if that, 50% inflated, that is still 12,500 great-paying jobs. i know people have a tendency to poo-poo construction jobs as temporary but if we did a 10-year revitallization program, those aren't temporary jobs. they became the foundation

of the american revitalized american economy. >> mr. chairman, can i add one comment to that? the governor talked earlier on about manufacturing. one of the things that happened to this great country of ours is that we don't build things anymore. we consume. and we sent the building and our technology to other countries. in that respect this effort of kinds of jobs that can get created in addition to long-term construction jobs and revitalizing and laying a foundation for economic growth, you're looking at new technologies when you're looking at environmental infrastructure, energy infrastructure, telecommunications, water projects, a vast new vista of technological breakthroughs that, once again could put the united states on the, on the

forefront of the cutting-edge of technology. recapturing what our past history has been in this area. that creates new and different jobs. and opens it up. so you have to be, we need to be thinking quite frankly, out of the box the way in the past others have and in watching this nation grow and become economically prosperous and creating a, a middle class, of people who can sustain themselves economically for themselves and their kids into the future. today, we are looking at only short-term measures. and that is what we need short term measures and combination of what my colleagues have been talking about with regard to supplementing what already exists, with an infrastructure bank can put us on a bath to a plan for the future and once again

revitalizing a technological base, a manufacturing base. again this long-term sustainable growth. and prosperity for this country. >> thank you the gentlelady. i'm alerted we will shortly have seven votes on the floor. those would be final votes of the day. i would ask indulgence of committee as we proceed to move our questions along. mr. mayor, your experience with asking voters to raise sales tax is fairly unique and certainly courageous. reminder that element in american public life faithful to every ground breaking, faithful to every rib bonn-cutting and faithful to opposinging every expenditure. tell us how you did it. >> we went at length to go to every part of the county. as you know i represent a city of four million. the county is 10 1/2 million. we got bipartisan support for the measure. we made sure projects were

identified that people would vote on. that they represented the needs of the entire region. i think the fact, frankly that we have as much congestion as we do and air quality is where it is, people were bought into this, from for those reasons as well. then, finally, we said to them there would be some oversight how we spend the money because the concern is that, you know, we're going to tax you and then, you know, what happens, all these projects how do they get built? how do we make sure they get built? >> there is an oversight committee that will oversee how we spend this money. >> thank you, mr. compare. -- mayor. let me recognize mr. tiberi. >> thank you, mr. chairman. a question for the governor and the mayor. over the last year we've heard from -- let me back up.

we heard over the last year obviously we need more revenue with respect to transportation infrastructure and with respect to the highway trust fund. surge the last year we heard from secretary lahood and president obama that now is not the time to raise a gas tax. mr. governor, and mr. mayor. do you agree with the president and if not, why not? >> let me start out, i'm not speaking for building america's future right now because that's an issue, like many of you we're wrestling with but in my own, for my own part i think federal gas tax should be increased, number one. number two, as i said we'll submit both polls to the committee, the american people believe it is indexed for inflation. 61% of us. you can hardly get 61% of americans to agree on anything these days. 61% believe it is indexed for inflation. i'm told that would be additional 7 or eight cents at the pump now if that had been indexed for inflation.

i think public understands infrastructure spending is investments. the mayor used the term investment. i got into a little bit of a disagreement with representative pence i think on fox, about investment. the american people understand no business grows out investing in its own future growth. they understand that for this country. if this country will stay competitive, congressman, we have to invest in our future and our future growth. the thing that people understand most is investment in infrastructure because as i said, they can see it, ride on it, they experience it. it improvings their quality of life. they feel safer on it and makes us economically competitive. the answer in my judgement we ought to do it. we ought to do it. index it to inflation. congressman says we ought to bond off the index. that is not a bad idea. there are a lot of good ideas. it will take a bit of courage but the american people get it, above and beyond what we in government seem to understand.

>> mayor. >> i unequivocally support an increase in the gas tax. it is, this is something that's had bipartisan support for a generation and, if we're going to, if america's going to continue to maintain its highways and its bridges and its infrastructure, it's crucial but one thing i want to make clear here. with respect to what we are proposing locally, this actually leverages all of that. what we're saying is, that cities and counties need to, that we're creating a template that says, cities and counties need to put up their own money as well. to make all of these invests which have lay fallow for a couple of decades, to leverage them even further, so that we can catch up with china and europe and so, you know, i think it is important for us to raise

that gas tax to do a reauthorization but also to create an infrastructure bank. also to create opportunities for localities to put in their own money and leverage those efforts as well. >> and i would just add real quickly, your own surface transportation reform and policy and revenue commission stated, first of all, the mayor's right, local and state should do more. we do about 75% of the overall transportation infrastructure, state and local. that's number one. number two, all told, state, local and federal, $80 billion goes into transportation infrastructure, approximately 80 billion on yearly basis the surface transportation committee says that needs to go up to 225 billion. we're doing about 40% of what we need to do. they made specific funding recommendations. i think there were 13 or 14

specific funding recommendations, some of which would hardly cause a ripple. so the answer is, yes, we need to do that. >> thank you. >> state and federal has to do it too. >> one more question before my time runs out, governor. by the way i'm from ohio and i drive on your roads, they're very good roads. thank you very much. with respect to the stimulus bill, you mentioned it. i spoke on monday to a group of transportation engineers and construction folks in central ohio and they said to me the stimulus bills with a failure because it wasn't enough infrastructure funding. number one, do you agree with that and number two, would you think it would be wise for congress to look at unspent stimulus fund and redirect them into transportation infrastructure if you were king? >> absolutely. i think we should have doubled or tripled amount of infrastructure spending in original stimulus. interestingly, senator boxer and senator inhofe tried to run a bill in the senate to do that and it got defeated. absolutely, and secondarily

i would support that. the more we can do for infrastructure, the better it is for the country, better it is for our economy and better for manufacture manufacturing. >> i would agree. 100%. thank you, mr. chair. >> thank you, mr. tiberi. recognize the gentleman from california, mr. thompson. >> thank you, mr. chair. you thank you for all the panel members being here and i agree with much of the testimony here today. governor, i think you're right. i think we need to make these investments. i think it is important but right now is a very interesting time and the poll numbers that you, you gave us are equally as interesting. i think we would have a hard time passing a gas tax increase in the democratic delegation. i would, i would think we would have a hard time passing in pennsylvania democratic delegation. people are finally becoming aware that this debt and all the problems that coming about as a result of that, while i think one way to

deal with that is to make these investments that we need in infrastructure, i just think that these polls may not be as telling as we would like to think. i would be interested in your comments. mayor villaraigosa, good to see you. i'm interested to know if you're able to get expanded financing and the ability to leverage local dollars, your transportation numbers were impressive. what you're doing is outstanding work and i wouldn't have expected anything less from you. but how about transportation versus water infrastructure? are you thinking about using some of that new leverage funds to expand your water infrastructure? you know well the serious problems that we have with the very scarce resource and some of the problems that it is causing both economically,

from a policy perspective and a political perspective up and down our state. so i'd like to know what your thoughts are on that? >> well, first of all, thank you. with respect to, i mean i think, we're currently talking about transportation but infrastructure obviously is a much larger issue than just transportation, and water infrastructure is critical, i supported the governor's water bond package. i did. i did not because it was perfect because i didn't want to let the perfect get in the way -- >> you're from southern california and i'm from northern california. >> that's right. win of the things we're doing to address our water infrastructure needs that doesn't cost a lot of money we're engaging in a great deal of conservation. we're using the same amount of water today in l.a. than we did 31 years ago when we

had a million and a half people. i've, i've reduced the ability to water your lawns to two days a week. not very popular in southern california, but necessary. a lot of people unhappy but, what i've said is we live in a desert. there is no question that the kind of programs that we're talking about here could apply to water infrastructure, to the, the other, you know, important needs that we have and, i'm very supportive of them. >> let me say that, congressman, before you got here, congresswoman delauro menlsed her bill includes more than transportation. we think the infrastructure bank should includeobjñ more than transportation. if you have to put it somewhere under treasury. number one. number two, again the polls are very interesting and i

will get them over to you, to the chairman but, the polls are very clear that people do support additional funding but they want reform with it. they want reform with it. they want more transparency. they want more accountability. they want the cost benefit analysis. they want some discipline how we spend it. performance measures. that's why i think the bank fits perfectly into what the national mood is. we do want to spend more money. people do get infrastructure spending. i agree with you about your political analysis but i think respectfully, your colleagues are wrong. your colleagues are wrong. if we don't do the gas tax, and by the way the gas tax is just part of the puzzle. as everyone said here. if we don't do the gas tax what are we going to do? are we going to let american infrastructure slip further into disrepair? one of the points the mayor made is absolutely true, the longer we wait more expensive it gets. with the brief exception of the last year-and-a-half,

construction prices were rising in pennsylvania at 42% a year. a year. the american society of civil engineers now says we have $2.2 trillion infrastructure deficit to repair and maintain what we have now. five years ago it was 1.6 trillion. longer we wait more expensive it will get. what is our alternative? what is our alternative? give the american people some credit. i think we need to do that. they understand that if you buy a $24,000 car, it is going to run better than if you buy a $2,000 car off a used car lot. they understand you get what you pay for. infrastructure is no different. what they want to see is the funding go for the right projects, not based on political influence or clout. i say that respectfully. not based on any negotiations but based on good, cost benefit analysis in a transparent way. if we do that, they're ready to support us. i believe that with all my

heart. >> can i just add to that, congressman? the, when we first proposed measure r, the virtually the entire political establishment was opposed to it. they did not think that we could pass with a two-thirds vote a half-penny sales tax in the middle of the recession. and, we did a lot of focus groups and we figured out exactly what the governor said. they wanted to see transparency. they wanted to see oversight. they wanted to know what projects, they wanted local control so there was local component to it. they supported public/private partnerships. we said we would encourage that. so, to the extent that we worked hard to kind of figure out what do people want, because everybody generally wants infrastructure but how do they want it delivered?

we were able to sell it. in the end virtually, at least the majority of elected officials both democrat and republican supported this tax increase. >> thank you, mr. mayor. i'd like to recognize mr. blumenour with expertise and advocate on this issue is welcomed. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for the continued effort how we will focus and renew america. nothing is more important to the restore the economy, revitalize our communities and protect the planet than our efforts to rebuild and renew america. i appreciate congresswoman delauro championing focus on infrastructure bank a critical tool. and my colleague from oregon putting it in context that it is just one tool. the panel i think has laid for a case i hope we can get into every american home. we've gone 15 years without a superfund tax.

we have no mechanism for water infrastructure, similar to the highway trust fund. and the highway trust fund where we have not increased the gas tax since 1993 is in deficit for the first time in history. and it faces a $400 billion deficit between now and 2015 making mr. defazio and mr. oberstar's problem with reauthorization critical. and, on top of it, as the governor mentioned, we have a $2.3 trillion infrastructure deficit overall and is growing. today's hearing on the infrastructure bank is a critical tool to solve the infrastructure challenges. i am hopeful that there are ways that we can engage and weave this into the solution. it is a good way to stretch resources to, to have public/private partnership, but everything still hinges

on resources. we need to capitalize the bank. i would hope the subcommittee will consider new revenue sooner rather than later. i appreciate mr. thompson's notion about people attitudes right now but there is no reason we have a raise a gas tax this year or next year. as long as we establish a revenue path going forward, within the 10-year budget score, we can leverage it. we can borrow against it. we can put some in a infrastructure bank. we can take advantage of this unparalleled low interest rate environment and the best, or worst bidding climate in probably two generations. i would hope that we think about dealing with this

prospectively. make sure that it wouldn't kick in, the revenues wouldn't kick in until after the economy has bounced back. but i would hope that this committee starts exercising its role to help realize the vision that is put here. and while we are considering new revenues, new flexibilities, the infrastructure bank is a part of it, but existing bonding mechanisms that have been referenced, there is a lot of tools that can be advantaged that can stretch. and i hope, that we are able to think about how we do that, to be able to, actually save the federal government money. one of the problems is, that our budget horizon is one year. the federal government doesn't know how to calculate the value of present value accounting. so that some of the things that could happen with the

infrastructure bank, some of the achievements, mayor villaraigosa, your 3010, i am just fascinated on how much you would save the federal government because many of these projects are on the hook for 50% federal funding and if it takes 30 years, the increase in inflation, in interest, in a worse budget or a bidding climate, federal government will be on for more of a hook than required to help you jump-start 3010. i would wonder if any of the panelists would care to comment on our ability to be able to use the savings, to be able to finance the capitalized infrastructure bank or to be able to make 30-10 a reality?

>> well, the whole notion of the 30-10 initiative is that. we'll save as an example, about $4.5 billion by accelerating from 30 to 10 years alone on construction. not to mention what we could save because of the down market for construction bids. not to mention the, the more innovative public/private partnerships that could also drive down costs here. we've seen design build as an example. we've reduced costs 20 some odd percent. >> mr. mayor, the bell has gone off. i don't want to take anymore time because i know some of my other colleagues might be able to get in our 15 minnesota they will take 20 minutes. i let me say i would like to

work with you to identify these savings which i think are actually, you're conservative to see if there is some way we can root them back into be able to accomplish at least part of the capitalization. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. blumenauer. the chair believes we can accomplish our goal here if we limit our questions but i like to recognize at this time the gentleman from kentucky, mr. yarmouth. >> thank you, mr. chairman. before i ask a question i would like to briefly yield to my friend from new york. mr. crowley. >> thank you. for setting record straight, regardless of the position of our friends on the panel, just to make the record straight and for observation purposes, the last time this congress took action on a gas tax was in 2007, august 4th to be precise. motion to recommit by my colleagues on other side that would have raised the gas tax by $800 million. presently before us the house leadership has not proposed the movement on a

gas tax. just want to make that observation clear, that not a single democrat supported that motion to recommit. my colleagues on the other side proposed that back in 2007, just for purposes of clearing the record on that, thank you. >> i think, there's been a lot of discussion about the infrastructure as a job creator and an economic stimulus and so forth and whether or not the recovery act was adequate in that regard. i'm curious to hear from the governor and the mayor as to whether the costs of not making these investments was part of the public debate and if you both could maybe talk about that aspect of selling the idea of additional revenues for infrastructure, whether that's, important to do or whether it's all a positive sell? scare tactics sometimes

work. >> well you want to tread lightly on scare tactics. pennsylvania has highest number of structurally deficient bridges in the country, congressman. we're at about the 5600. when i took over as governor, we were at 6,000. i've tripled the state funding from 250 to over $750 million a year that we put in on bridges. i convinced the legislature to do accelerated bridge program to spend another half billion dollars on top of it. after one year we actually have gone up in the number of structurally deficient bridges notwithstanding all that because our bridges are so old. our bridges average what life expectancy of bridges should be in age. we're starting to make a dent in it. people do understand the cost to their lives. the biggest factor in these polls is congestion. if you can give people back time they sit in cars idling and wasting gasoline and wasting their time, if you

give them back half hour going to work and half hour coming back from work, that is an hour they can spend with their kids, there is no price tag they wouldn't pay for that. there is no price tag they wouldn't pay. it is not a question of scaring although it is very important. we had a pier that supported i-95. by accident, an inspector saw a crack in it about half the size of my hands right now. and i-95 was shut for three days. 180,000 cars a day go over that bridge. we buttressed the bridge. . . buttressed the bridge but to just repair the bridges in the city of philadelphia, for i-95 is $4.5 billion price tag. the state doesn't have the money, the city doesn't have the money. we had better get on the stick and i think people do get it. i understand the reluctance to do anything that is revenue enhancement, but people get it more than any of us think and i think california is a perfect

example of. >> congestion also drove a lot of this debate, and so did public quality, job creation but more than anything, the fact that it was war transparent and that it was locally driven probably was what got us over the threshold. we had just passed a state bonds for transportation, and a number then,herthings >> and then because of the state's budget, they use the money for the budget instead of for transportation. so there was aanspo rtloatti ofa lot of anger about, hey, we just passed that and it works. so the fact that it was local, and locally controlled, had a lot to do with the success as yd will. so i yield back now so we canw expedite the discussion. c thank you, mr. chairman.ou >> i would like to recognize the

gentle lady from pennsylvania.nc >> thank you very much. thank you, mr. chairman, for doing this hearing. m to thank congresswoman delauo delauro to for her vision of the future and always her passion for these issues. but this is what's important. ts we're all inpatient to create ip jobs, make the right kind ofighf decision in the near term, but this really is the king about the investment of the future as in well as jobs toright now.and th mnd the combination is extraelyi important. certainty to my area, my state a nation.the nat an issue i wanted to raise, i do fore a lot time for answers on this, as we do infrastructure,c my question, imy q think it is r congresswoman delauro, and i want to ask governor rendell asi well, i am concerned because we're trying to move to the infrastructure project quickly. the shovel-ready notion when weu did theic reinvestment act., we actually been said we really can't change this problem to be attentive to what many of us are concerned about.concerne a and that is issues of flooding

green and drainage, greennfrastruure infrastructure, of course light light rail. the way we build roads and bridges, and all of ourll othera infrastructure, can you do be do done at tended ton complete streets, you know, and notions of the way we built our streetse and building communities, and really reduce the concerns about flooding. my area, governor rendell knowss this, major issues in terms of both the interest in building differently, and the needi to to because not having to spende millionsrms of dollars, prepare, but also, we have a lot of state roads in our state, and not local. they are state roads. and we have a plan in philadelphia for green works to and then differently, they come in and build a road the way they did 10 years ago.bu so what about thisout this frasr infrastructure bank? would either create requirements orit incentives, or a relations between buildinga infrastructure

have about,erns we i'm not just talk about carbon emissions are, but that's a bigs issue but it is also about sustainable communities. in major concerns of us that we have together, and not to say, that's differently. we have to come back and breakn up all the asphalt and do it differently. that's my question, how can wee. weild this in?howan >> let me take or take the majority of it but i will say at you craft the infrastructure banktructure's statute, as you e statute, he has the ability toyo putu in criteria have to be tobe applied and followed in the fia wish and system. and the sustainability oftainabi things, the carbon emission things that you talk about, cngo congresswoman, those are things you can build into the criteria. because remember, there infrastructure banks will have far moremembe allocations.ve the criteria and ranking systemo important.

i know senator boxer also shares your concern, she wants to do the exact same thing. >> if i could, actually mymittei ding amittee will be holding a hearing on this very topic next month. this something that's called, it's got a horrible name, it's called context-sensitive design. they need a better name. but i call it practical design for appropriate design. language authorization bill which could provide a template for correction to the infrastructure bank, but that would be up the road in drafting map. >> we need a plan. we need to move forward on this. instead of dealing with the way in which we stovepipe all of these projects, that also addresses the issue the governor and the mayor had been talking about in getting people to accept their participation in this effort as well. we have nothing to show them at the moment that is a plan.

we can develop the criteria, the regulation. what does that mean in terms of being environmentally sound? what is the result of that? we have got to get out of our view that is done in the committee. this committee does this, this committee does that. that should not be the blueprint for moving forward in this direction. that is primarily at the core of a national infrastructure bank is about, and we can build it, design it and do what it needs to do. i would make one point to you, that we should have included additional funding for infrastructure in the economic recovery program. there wasn't the appetite to be able to do that, in order to get it passed, but as well, our short-term efforts, which we

need to do, cannot get in the way of the long-term view of how this can sustain us over the future, and if we don't utilize the criteria, new regulations, sustainability, all of that we know, a green bank, a green effort on this, then we really are not moving in the right direction. >> i look forward to working with you. this can't be a separate discussion. it has to be a part of what the federal regulations are in whether we incentivize this are required to something we have to work together on. >> these are the criteria. that is the intent. >> thank you gentlelady. a brief statement from mr. t. barry. >> thank you mr. chairman. just to set the record straight, i'm not sure what he was talking about in terms of setting the

record straight. as advocates of the gas tax increase, the motion to recommit was not-- and i hope to have more debate on that later. >> let me recognize my friend, mr. larsen. >> i want to thank chairman neal and raking member to barry. this is extraordinarily important panel. i want to commend the governor and the mayor for your participation. i wholeheartedly support the efforts of my colleagues and especially the efforts of ms. fazio as it relates to making sure we have a transportation infrastructure system that is needed now. but my colleague from connecticut has long been a proponent of what i think is game-changing collation, visionary, and if you could congresswoman delauro underscore for us again the importance and how you achieve through private sector initiatives and pensions

and greater participation in general to leverage not just government funds but to take the private sector in order to have buy-in across the country. i think in your remarks you alluded to the fact that love, american-- america has to get back to making things and a 10 year plan is the governor pointed out her bites us an opportunity not just for short-term employment but a long-term visionary employment. >> thank you and i appreciate my colleagues commented by thank you or your support of these efforts. the fact of the matter is, and governor rendell mentioned this, he spoke with the ambassador who was supportive of this effort. the ambassador not only turned new york around, but his whole experience about eating investment. he goes to france, he calls and says we have people there who want to make an investment now. much of the investment of u.s.

investors is going going to oversee infrastructure efforts. we need to bring that here. bring it home. make it profitable for them to be able to invest in u.s. enterprises, with a return on that investment. we have pension funds. calpers is ready to do this effort. you have got sovereign wealth funds and some will say are you going to privatize their infrastructure? no, we want to get the private capital into this market so that we can do to multistate projects, and do the regional projects to get us where we are going. there is money that is available. we have not been making it possible for those investments to be made in the united states and i would just say in order to do that, you need to have an independent agency, one that is under the treasury which can go to the capital market and have

projects besides these investors know they will get a return on investment and are willing to put millions of dollars into this effort so that we can grow. that is what is at the core of this effort. thank you very much. >> i thank the gentlelady for her passion and for all the effort she has put into this legislation. >> i thank the gentleman. i want to thank are distinguished panel for testimony and comments today. we now have a vote on the house floor which may take up to an hour. we will convene on conclusion of the last vote and again, if there is no substitute for the knowledge we have extended today. the committee stands in recess. [inaudible conversations]

>> interestingly enough, there was a 67-1 vote in the assembly, which shows, i hope, the potential for bipartisan appeal. the mission is to finance public infrastructure and private development. what i feel is the basis for creating jobs. my view after running and i bank for 10 years is that a national i think is not only feasible, but they must to rebuild the infrastructure our economy relies upon to compete locally. while it cannot supply our current systems of financial infrastructure, it can supplement than any most important way.

the california i think is the only general-purpose financing authority in the state of california. it has extremely broad powers. issuing revenue bonds, making loans and providing credit enhancement for a wide right of infrastructure. we had a one time that appropriation of $181 million in 1999. we do not receive annual appropriations and we have never received any other than the initial appropriation of $181 million. operations are funded solely from fees. interest rates and loan repayments. we begin operation in 1999. over the last decade we have grown from 60 billion in -- bonds issued to approximately 30 billion in debt financings this year. in total over the ten-year

period. and i would point out that less than 1% of that funding is related to the appropriation. most of the projects also received funding from additional sources, multiply the impact of the i-bank financing. working with a national infrastructure bank as a leader of the team would allow the project proponent to piece together funding for even larger regional projects. one of the things i want to point out are the similarities between our california i-bank and the proposed national i-bank. both have a five member board of directors, and i do much of this has been gone over before so i will do it quickly. both have an executive director appointed by the chief executive and confirmed by the senate. in california executive director and staff were responsible for developing the structure, the departments and employees, the

congressional proposals include commonly include detailed and sophisticated organizational structures similar to those we find in the european infrastructure bank. oath can issue debt, make loans and loan guarantees. both california chairman neal and the federal proposals require the department of objective selection criteria. and due to adversity required by the california financing model, over the last 10 years in the direct loan program, 50% of the projects were in rural areas come and 50% of the projects were in urban areas. i think the california chairman neal shows a structure that can work. there are many brought and creative financings in which we have been involved with the infrastructure state revolving fund, with 16 categories of infrastructure. i know here we're talking sort of from one to five. we were blessed with 16 and i think we probably made loans in all those categories.

and that program since 2000 we have made 95 direct loans, totaling 417.6 million. the appropriate funds have been committed to borrowers and additional financing is available because of an innovative leveraged loan program structure. we sold bonds for our own account three times to leverage the appropriation, 2004 we were rated aa. the next time we were rated aa in september 2008, during that time you will remember the sky really was falling. we were rated, we were upgraded to aa plus. is that the end of the time? okay. we have a variety of other programs -- are just going to say about the aa plus that moody's cited strong management and credit reviews and snp,

program oversight and loan screening provided by the state infrastructure bank. we have a plethora of different kinds of programs that we have developed over the years. many using programs that are available in the internal revenue code. intellectual development bonds, 48, we've issued 48 over 235. bonds, we've issued 93 for a total of 5.8 billion since there is no cap on those. we've issued a number of public agency bonds. we have leverage the energy efficiency bonds. we have issued bonds for the california insurance guaranty association, told bridge retrofit bond which for the eastbound on the bay bridge, 1.6 billion. we leveraged the clean water state revolving fund program and were working with them again. we've issued the tobacco

securitization bonds. we're currently working on and about to have the final call on a pooling program for the recovery on economic development bond that were available through arra. i would choose the in conclusion that the initial reaction to the mayor's request he spoke of this morning was that a program didn't exist for the type of assistance he was requesting. and that is exactly my point here today. a national infrastructure bank is designed to respond to just this kind of need, and many others. los angeles has a huge infrastructure and environmentally, as do many communities throughout the nation. we have the solution. thank you. >> thank you, mr. hazelroth. now would like to use to the gentleman from kentucky. >> thank you, mr. chairman. it's a great honor for me to introduce the honorable jonathan

miller, the secretary of the finance administration cabinet in the commonwealth of kentucky. pride to assume that, he was elected twice as kentucky state treasurer, served eight years and acquired a reputation as one of the true national experts in government financing techniques, particularly with innovative steps in education and tuition funding go and i might add incidentally a noted author and scholar in the old testament. is a great honor to welcome mr. miller here today. >> thank you, congressman, especially for the book plot. >> mr. miller, you're recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and ranking member. i am honored to testify before the subcommittee today. on the state example, of what you are all examining on the national level, we have an innovative financing program implemented last year under the leadership of governor bush year that we called the green bank of

kentucky. the green think of kentucky is a viable program that saves taxpayers billions of dollars and helps protect our states and our planet and natural beauty. and preserves and creates many needed green-collar jobs in kentucky. first and foremost i want to give credit where credit is due. because our successes with the green bank and programs like it back home in kentucky are fully dependent on the hard work that you have done here for the u.s. congress, as well as the work of the obama administration. in fact, green bank was initially capitalized entirely by funding obtained through the recovery act, the stimulus package. without the stimulus dollars the successes that i will share with something have not been possible during the state of economic distress and overburdened state budget. the green bank of kentucky's primary mission is to promote energy efficiency in public buildings by providing public agencies with access to low-interest loans in order for them to reduce operating costs in energy use, protecting private, save taxpayer dollars,

promote economic development and create green-collar jobs. the green bank exist to address projects financing needs that do not work in the conventional commercial performance contracting market. last year governor bush year launched an effort to reduce energy use in kentucky's governor builds the national recognize energy efficiency standards. the standards pose a challenge for us as a commonwealth. while copperheads of energy efficiency reference it public those can save kentucky taxpayers millions upon millions of dollars in the long-term, there are indeed an initial investment costs that are prohibited during these challenging economic and budgetary times. the green bank of kentucky was created precisely to meet this challenge that it provides a unique funding opportunity for government agencies to pay for the up front cost of energy saving projects. first the green bank loans public agencies that money they need to pay for the up front costs. alone then is repaid to the bank over a period of time with the

monetary savings realized in the reduction energy. the green bank, therefore, function as a revolving loan program. as long as it is repaid green bay capital is then recycled and made available for future loans. on december 10, 2009, less than three months after the greenback was launched, the revolving loan fund finance its first loan in the amount of almost $143 million for the department of education. we are especially proud to note the largest beneficiary of this green bank financing project is the kentucky schools for the blind. located in louisville, kentucky, in the heart of representative llamas disappear fiscal of applied offers both residential and day program for privately 70 blind or officially impaired students in grades a to a. this is a vivid and people example of how the stimulus dollars that you authorized work to benefit some of our country's most deserving citizens. but despite these early successes we still have a long way to go to me governor beshear's ambitious goal.

the 14-point for million dollar recovery act investment will provide a good start, but we have more than 200 million-dollar need expressed by state agencies alone. that doesn't even include the much larger universe of county, municipal and school board needs across the state. we have explored other financing options such as the recovery act tax credit and build america bonds programs but our states credit is already burdened by tight budget circumstance. and i know that kentucky's circumstances are not unusual. most every state would like to see the long-term benefit of investing in energy efficient public buildings, but the economic times make these up front investment extraordinary difficult. that's what i am here, mr. chairman. we strongly support the funding of a freestanding green bank or infrastructure bank like authority to finance state infrastructure projects. a freestanding national infrastructure bank could be authorized to make long-term low-interest loans or other forms of deposits independent state green banks across the country. this would allow maximum

flexible before the states to meet the distinct and very needs of their communities. state and local government agencies could compete for funding, or receive to allocation from a national infrastructure bank. and the state green banks in turn would find were the energy and infrastructure projects to revolving loan programs and loan guarantees. the establishment of a national infrastructure bank would address the needs of state level clean energy and efficiency financing such as green bank of kentucky. with a much-needed financing for energy infrastructure projects states for the able to tailor long-term low-interest loans to meet the needs of their citizens and communities while also retaining and creating jobs that will remain in the region. i also want to mention were very supportive efforts led by congressman to create freestanding green bank as an alternative which was part of the waxman-markey bill the past this house several months ago. thank you for the opportunity to speak today, and thank you for your service. >> thank you, mr. the. now i would like to recognize

mr. puentes for his tests were. >> thank you, chairman you, ranking member tiberi, members of the subcommitsubcommittee, i'm pleased to appear before you today. very much appreciate the invitation. i'm particularly pleased to be talking about this issue of infrastructure at the brookings metropolitan program we firmly believe that infrastructure is one of the key building blocks to a low carbon innovation fuel export oriented economy that we need in the future. yet we desperately need need new ways of financing and decision-making when it comes to infrastructure in the united states. today we generally do not select projects on the basis of their merit are biased against men is that, and we do very little long-term plan. in this context we do feel a mayor kevin national infrastructure bank could be the vehicle for greenlight those projects from road to rail, or ports in pipes that have a highest return on investment and support a 21st century economy. a development bank in essence, an ibm would have a bounce of

the rate of return policies of the bank with a policy goals of the federal agencies. the creation of such a special financing entity for infrastructure has been discussed in policy circles for at least 20 years. across the in the european investment bank has been functioned successfully for about 50 years by a major role in connecting the european union across national borders. that eib raises funds from capital markets and leases them -- lends them an irate keeping its operations financially says sustainable. it offers loans and debt guarantees as well as important technical assistance. as you heard this one, they can take many force but at its heart it really is a better selection of infrastructure projects. the nab would lead our grant money on a project basis after some type of benefit cost analysis. in addition to project would be of national or regional significance transcending states and local boundaries. and it would consider different types of infrastructure projects breaking down the mortal

barriers that existed in this would be a child step for the federal funding infrastructure that exist today, much of which dispersed as though aides to states mostly in a side note mayor. yet despite the general agreement about the purpose in need of a national infrastructure bank of that question remains. for one, it is unclear whether it would be limited to certain sectors such as transportation or that would allow application from a variety of infrastructure area. another is the governor structure figure i think there at a rate of options. it could be housed at the federal agency that the administration has proposed in its budget. at the best out as a government owned corporation such as amtrak or as proposed by congressman the lower. or as a shareholder of a corporation like government sponsored enterprises like fannie mae or freddie mac, which as you know have their own problems today. of course, there's also a trade off between independent and the cost of borrowing. it in ib is a federal agency it may drop on a treasure so interest rates to find is that it was a shareholder own entity

it would in encourage higher cost of the loans going through recipients would have to be at higher interest rates. therefore, the budgetary impact of the federal investment infrastructure bank depends heavily on its government structured and i think that's what conversation should be today. unless a bank is a shareholder owned corporation its investors would be included in the federal budget. if it has the power to issued its own bonds and is not a shareholder owned corporation, it's that would be on the federal books that in any case it would be treated like any other federal agency funded through our appropriations and included in the federal budget. the federal government would have to pay for increased spending which is likely to add to the federal debt. the mandate of a national infrastructure bank in practice would overlap the mandate of other existing programs. one is the transportation infrastructure finance innovation act program, tifia as it's known was created to help projects of national and regional significance. the program is made by federal highway administration and provides three force of the

credit to secure loans, loan guarantees, line of credit, to a wide range of public and private entities. tifia is allowed to do it highlights a significant demand of those financing tools that there are three important differences between tifia and the general concept of a national infrastructure bank. one is that tifia is available only for transportation projects, and other infrastructure structures such as water are not available. second, tifia is not really a competitive program, the evaluation budget is basically based on financial viability, not on project which they imposed international and for such a bank. third, it is to write grants uniquely ours will projects were as tifia is only a credit enhanced program. or credit program. lastly there have been some discussions about in ib using

tax preferred bonds as a financing tool for the infrastructure project that he i think there is some relationship between the nib and the build america bonds. starting up in a seamless package the leadership with this committee, expectations about 45 million from the build america bonds, now we're seeing borrowing to exceeding about $97 billion. but why the are very popular and tremendous a successful, they aren't largely funding local improvements such as school sewer improvements, many of which i think would not need a national infrastructure bank criteria for regionally or nationally significant project. so it's not an either or between these two tools. mr. chairman, we do believe a more competitive united city, needs a better into such a system, and at a time of limited resources improve the federal process should be coupled with finding ways to increase the amount of funding for infrastructure. yet a national infrastructure bank is not a super bowl 40 with infrastructure reform. and in within a national infrastructure bank should be thought of as a precision tool

and not. i think you can for the opportunity testified today and i welcome all your questions. >> thank you, mr. puentes. next we'll hear from michael replogle. founder of the institute for transportation and development policy. did i get that right? washington, d.c. welcome. >> chairman neal, ranking member tiberi, -- >> i think you need to turn your my gone. >> members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. and speaking for the institute for transportation and development policy, a nonprofit group, that since 1985 has promoted environmentally sustainable and socially equitable transportation. with appropriate safeguards, we support creation of a national infrastructure development bank as proposed by h.r. 2521.

this would finance needed investments of transportation, water, energy and other things, while giving weight to economic, environmental and social benefits and costs of each project. it would facilitate public-private partnerships for infrastructure development, management and financing. with assurance of appropriate public benefits. while not requiring every initiative to be fully self financed. we also commend to you that proposed national infrastructure innovation and finance fund as proposed in the president 2011 u.s. department of transportation budget. this could provide a $4 billion down payment on our larger infrastructure bank. but our support for these initiatives is predicated on the inclusion of strong projects selection criteria, with openness and transparency, to ensure reduction of carbon emissions, support for smarter growth in public health, and use of smart tool traffic management

strategies, as proposed in h.r. 2521. project should undergo a benefit cost analysis that considers in just traffic, climate pollution, and public health and safety in past. reasonable alternatives to propose projects including operational and management strategies that might minimize adverse environmental impacts should be considered. and infrastructure bank will encourage contracting and ensure ongoing post-implementation in ie wish and. infrastructure banks or funds shouldn't be used simply to build more toll roads faster am about to improve the productivity and effectiveness of america's existing transportation. expanding travel choices and improving community livability. this will require a focus on smart traffic management strategies like bus rapid transit, in a mobile phrase, smart parking, and road user charging, pay as you drive

insurance, congesting charging and user fees, rail system modernization, smarter logistics and supply change management, and real-time traveler information systems. a bank will fund should encourage new revenues beyond tolls and congestion charges, including transit oriented development die your capture, tax increment financing, urban improvement districts and performance contract-based public-private operating concessions for parking, work facility, public bike and car sharing and other infrastructure and related services. a bank will fund, should offer soft loans to cover costs for detailed and costly predevelopment work to establish project feasibility, advance environmental clearances and to undertake preliminary design. these are needed to help advance such things as bus rapid transit system development smart traffic

management planning and other innovations. these would be paid back on a subordinated basis if a project wind financing and is built that could be forgiven if a project fails to win financing. such investment is needed to unlock you trapped in underperforming come often poorly managed public assets. such as congested roads, free orb underpriced streets like parking spaces and slow, unreliable bus operations. this approach could boost the deal flow for private capital and help innovators in both the public and private sector that are looking for ways of boosting transportation system asset performance and value. and infrastructure bank will find, should not only finance large projects, but also bundle smaller projects that cumulatively can produce benefits of regional or national significance. for example, financing a single bicycle parking center with

public rental bikes and car sharing services in a transit send would not be regionally significant. but the provision of 100 such integrated mobility centers at major transit stops and activity centers throughout a multistate metropolitan area could be of regional significance and cutting traffic, pollution, carbon emissions, and improving public health and livability while generating jobs and consumer travel cost savings and access benefits. in conclusion, and infrastructure bank or fund could encourage -- should encourage collaboration among public and private stakeholders and promote coordination with investments in other infrastructure sectors. lessons from european, asia and latin america and latin america evolved banks and critiques of independent banks, independent watchdog groups like bank watching it should be considered in advancing designing new u.s. finances institutions. my written testimony for the

record provides more information about this. thank you very much for your attention. >> thank you. the chair recognizes mr. stable. >> thank you. i appreciate this opportunity to testify before you on the potential of a national infrastructure bank. what i found interesting and listen to the test blog is born and this afternoon is that there is a fair amount of agreement among a number of us, and that there is a need for certainty the potential for a national infrastructure bank to meet some very important infrastructure challenges in the u.s. i would like to focus my oral test mode on what i think might be different between myself and some of the others on the panel. and mainly for purposes of furthering discussion, i may be bring a few issues out. first of all, some of you may or may not know, we have been involved in the policy of you on very forms of innovative finance

for over 20 years. but we focus a lot on polling public private partnerships, we're innovators in the hotly concept, hot networks. so this is not an unfamiliar problem for us. and struggling with these kinds of issues of financing major project that could upgrade our infrastructure, improve the management of those systems have been a concerted so that is the context in which we look at the potential of a national infrastructure bank. i think it's important that the national infrastructure bank, in fact, the and infrastructure bank and not end up being the nation's that, if you were. in the sense that it becomes a source for for for all sorts of different projects that may or may not have to do with direct infrastructure. i think went infrastructure banks were correctly there are, in fact, providing infrastructure. what i mean by infrastructure our physical infrastructure, transportation systems, water and sewer facilities, storm water facilities. i think there's also an income

upon a national infrastructure bank to ensure that its scope and its mission is very clearly defined in particular that it should be focusing on projects of federal and national significance. i think there are projects that are of regional significance that may be multistate that might also fall under the purview of a national infrastructure bank, but i think it would be very wise to define the scope and mission of the national infrastructure bank to avoid local projects as much as possible. we are going to be faced with a limited number of resources, and lots of competing projects. and how we define the mission of a national bank will be very important. i think it's also important, at least some our perspective, to emphasize that as much as possible the bank should operate on a revolving loan type basis. we are not -- there may be other projects that are worth funding, but it's not necessary to that in infrastructure bank is the best mechanism for funding those project.

so if we're interested in pursuing social goals or using grants to cede certain types of projects, that may not be best handled through an investment bank. i think we have the accountability and transparency and the operational efficiencies when an infrastructure bank operates in a revolving loan basis, because they have a bottom line that they have to focus on. that's also a pretty clear criteria for evaluating potential proposals. i think is also important that financial infrastructure bank be is as soon as possible for political manipulation. to the extent that it can -- must be up to evaluate projects subjectively, using clear performance criteria, and to that extent i think we should be looking at and infrastructure bank that is independent of an existing agency. so preserving the independence i think is for ensuring the success of the bank itself. and again, a poorly focused

national infrastructure bank could also end up duplicating a lot of alternative financing arrangements that might exist or could emerge on the state and local level. i think the key for a national infrastructure bank is to level resources and we mentioned before and infrastructure bank is not a substitute for public financing and other types of infrastructure. we need to keep that in mind. on page eight of my testimony i have included a chart that is essentially a checklist of what i think are key issues that are not going to go through those because we don't have the time, but i think we need to think about windows and infrastructure bank work in a high-performance setting? some of those criteria, that chart was created as a way for me to show different types of proposals, is i think we need to make sure it is independent, uses objective criteria, has very clearly and well defined mission and i think a focus on providing physical infrastructure of the gaps with a don't exist. also there needs to be added

revenue stream to support those project. we of course have talked a great deal about pulling but there are other potential mechanisms, including tax increment financing of the local level or die you capture in some cases as well. that might also be considered, but there is a sustainable revenue stream in order to support those loans. that again is important for transparency. it's important for accountable and it's also important for leveraginleveraging what resources are put into the banks. and with that i am out of time so i will stop. thank you bring much. >> thank you, mr. staley. secretary miliband i hope that massachusetts is one of the states that has contacted you setting up their own green bay. is not like a terrific idea. we have a statewide program for sometimes to assist homeowners with energy efficient improvement. and a number of other opportunities as well. have you considered extending the bank be on state agencies?

[inaudible] excuse me. massachusetts has been really a national bank when it comes to energy efficiency. and, in fact, we've been in touch with the folks in massachusetts in the past couple of weeks to talk about sharing information, along the lines you just suggested that they are looking at our model of a green bank for some of their public financing projects. we're looking at massachusetts model for something that we are going to be putting together in the next few months which will be precisely what you suggest a market-based program that will help homeowners pay for energy efficiency improvements on their own home. right now, because of limited funding, our green bank is strictly about public buildings, but we are going to have an additional program, again, using stimulus dollars, although leveraging them with private resources as well, called kentucky home performance, that will help individuals with our own energy efficiency needs.

>> mr. hazelroth, i was impressed with the success of the california infrastructure bank, and it seems almost mythical how you've turned a tiny amount of money into billions over the years. one new bond that i work very hard to get into the recovery act laughter was the build america bonds, which have proved to be very popular and very successful. has the i-bank issued in these bonds yet, and if so i would be interested to hear your thought. and if not i think they should be expanded to other entities like yours might include them. >> the short answer is yes. we recently issued bonds on the half of something associate with the university of san francisco. and i recall at the time that there were, during the sale, that there was kind of optional was to how many would be build america bonds and how many, what percentage would be traditional

tax exempt bonds, and it turned out that overwhelmingly the build america bonds turn out to be the favored of the market. so we have begun to use the program, and hopefully we will be extended and we can make more use of that in the future. >> mr. puentes, i want to follow-up on this query on this build america bonds. you have noted that there could be some similarity in funding projects due in infrastructure bank, and what these bonds already provide. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i think that we are, first of all i should say we're strongly supportive of build america bonds. as you mentioned, localities and states from coast to coast have really been able to utilize this in a way to save some serious money and to really help in a very difficult time.

so it's no doubt build america bonds i want other success stories of the recovery package. i think the similarities really that these are innovative financing tools, and is a departure of how we normally finance infrastructure in the past, which is through these grant programs, the grants rein them from the federal to the state level. there are many differences i think that distinguish between the build america bonds at the national infrastructure bank that would still set them up as totally different tools, or devices. for one i think the national infrastructure bank is designed to finance a very large very complex project. and that's the governing body, the and the at the national infrastructure bank would have much more oversight over not just choosing the projects which are based on rigorous criteria of merit, and at the national significant, but oversight of the project as it develops. build america bonds are designed to be much smaller i think for more local projects there is not

the kind of oversight budget of choosing the process. so again this is why we say that they should be considered in tandem. these are not an either/or, but there is enough similarities in the same kind of conversation. again, and that their innovative in their new financing to but not enough overlap where they would be exclusive. >> thank you. mr. tiberi? >> thank you, mr. chairman. doctor staley, under the delauro bill, the national infrastructure bank would be appropriate $25 billion borrowed 225 billion from the treasury and then lend out 625 billion. the bill goes on to state that the bank will be backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government. so two questions. related to that. the criteria in which the bank which use projects, you talk

about a local autonomy, does the structure and the bill concern you, number one, of the way it chooses projects, and does the structure of the bank itself concern you? and does remind you at all about how congress, on how congress set up gses or fannie mae and freddie mac what do you think they're in a to that structured? >> well, actually both of those concerning. i think both organizational structure of the bank itself concerns me in looking at it, but also there are surely some corrections that need to be asked in terms of how the financing of the bank would move forward, because also, going back, focus on the second first, keeping in mind that if we're going to capitalize this bank with $5 billion a year up to $12 billion, that will leverage a century loans and liabilities of several hundred billion dollars, that's not free money. i mean, that has to come from somewhere. i think to the extent we're

taking the existing transportation revenues and repackaging them in a bank type of format have allowed us to do so with his creative work. that's on the federal level, that can make some sense. but if we're just going to try and come up with extra billions of dollars someplace, somebody's going to have to come up with that money, either borrowing it someplace or gratify the capital someplace. so we have to be concerned with issues of crowding out. in our view the transit should be about trying to leverage private capital as opposed to substituting other forms of capital that might exist or try to supplant in one way or another so we have to be very careful about how those projects elected in the criteria. that criteria in the bill also worries me because i do believe that in order to get the best thing out of an infrastructure bank, it needs to focus on infrastructure. core infrastructure with transportation, energy, or whatever, and when i look at the criteria in the delauro bill,

what concerns me, for example, even, one, is one of the primary criteria for prioritizing projects is job creation. in my view the purpose of the infrastructure is to provide high quality services, public services at the highest level, at the least cost. and job creation might be a nice outcome that we get from that. clearly i am an economist, i am an urban economists i understand infrastructure in creating that foundation. but the goal is not to employ people. the goal is to provide infrastructure that provides a foundation for the economy and providing a high quality of life. to the extent we have written into the criteria of the bill that job creation is one of, maybe even the most important criteria, that worries me because i think it is taking us off with the core pocket of the infrastructure bank should be. >> thank you. i'm sorry to cut you off. just two more quick questions if i can. one, i would like each and every one of you to answer this question that i asked the other panel.

that being, the gas tax increase, if you think the gas tax should be increased now or if you agree with the administration that maybe we should wait. and then tonight, in your windows when you also mentioned this issue, concerned that doctors didn't mention and the government do mention about political autonomy of the infrastructure. can you just expand on that and then have the rest of you talk about the other? >> sure. i think generally agreed upon criticism of the federal transport program as it exists today is that we are not making those decisions for projects that matter to the nation as hell. but because it's mostly these grants that come down from the federal government, it exists for all the infrastructure, two-thirds -- three quarters of the federal investment infrastructure is including state and local grant. the federal government doesn't have much say our there's no accountability how the funds are spent. there's no penalties for good

projects or the other way round, bad project. so the point is, we tried to establish some kind of entity that can transcend those parochial needs, which are certainly important. but we need to have some kind of entity that can invest in those projects, that do matter to the nation as a whole. whether they are pork projects, interstate projects, and all things again that transcend state and local boundaries that we just don't have the mechanism for doing right now. take a national infrastructure bank will going on what to do that. as an at will appointed governor schwarzenegger, i will say whatever he said that and i can't recall what that was. [laughter] >> i can't recall him saying that he would support come it would be unusual for me i think to recall him supporting it. >> no problem. mr. miller? >> governor beshear at the state level, opposed to a broad-based

tax increase at the time and in terms of the federal tax will be for door delegation of. >> okay. there's no question that the transport program is running a deficit. it needs funds, and the gas tax is the workhorse of the federal highway trust fund, there's very little option that can replace it at this time. however, we do have strong enough criticisms about the ways the program is structured today that i personally would not support increasing the gas tax until we pursue a substantial form it comes to the transportation program. once we can be assured it will be reform the gas tax is the only viable solution for the short term. that said, we know the long-term sustainability of the gas tax is a question, driving much less, driving much more fuel-efficient vehicles, and so for the long-term went to start thinking about other sources of raising revenue for the highway trust fund. vehicle miles tax, lots of things have been talked about

but gas tax is a short term but not before we have some fundamental going on. >> i would agree with the statement mr. puentes just said about this. i think that we need to see accountability for how federal transportation funds are spent to make sure how much equity that they are not exacerbating our dependence on foreign oil, greenhouse gas emission burden in to make sure that we're getting better accountability, improve the performance of the system. with that comment we certainly need to be investing a lot more in infrastructure and we need to make sure that as we do that, that we focus on investments that can help us better operate and manage the existing roads and public transportation with much higher efficiency before we go about building vast amounts of new capacity. and so that is part of the equation of getting better

manage system out of this. i think we are to take advantage when the prices of oil drop to put a floor on the price of oil. there were some echo ideas in that direction of sending out a long-term roadmap for how to finance transportation, hold it accountable for broad national goals. >> i am in agreement with mr. puentes, and largely mr. replogle, but not completely. i think our analysis of transportation finance and investment is that current distribution of funds in the transportation -- in transportation in particular are simply very inefficient. they're not going to write project. they are not achieving the right goes. about your procedures in place to really justify adding significant more revenue that would increase, gap that to spot. so we're less concerned about energy and security issues, and -- but we're more concerned about the fact that we're not getting the investments that are really improving mobility or improving the long-term

sustainability of the current infrastructure. and if we add can increase gas tax are simply adding revenues to a system that is already broken and much is going to waste a lot more of that money. >> thank you. thank you. the chair will recognize mr. blumenauer. >> thank you, mr. chairman. the irony of course is that we're involved with a catch-22 because we're spending more money in inefficient system. were propping it up with general fund money right now that is borrowed. and we are unable to the gridlock on reauthorization. we just heard from chairman defazio, chairman oberstar, the full committee has a piece of legislation that actually is moving in the direction that it was captured in the narrative we heard from three of you in your testimony and we're hearing good noises from chairwoman boxer. but we can't move that, because we don't have money. we are facing a $400 billion

deficit just for the current system, between now and 2015. it -- i guess i would like to, first of all, affirmed the thread that is right for your narrative about accountability and focus. i think that is important for how we craft this, but i would like to take off where my friend, tran eight said, raise it now, waiting until later as has been suggested by the administration, isn't there a third alternative? which is, not increase a levy, an increase right now where many states, mostly just a out of the recovery. we have high unemployment and we're still trying actually to stimulate the economy. one of the problems is stimulative effect of the recovery act is wearing thin.

and it was asked as much infrastructure in that i think is many of us would have liked. isn't there another alternative, which would be to establish where we are going with transportation finance in, say, two years after the economy has recovered. but within our six-year window, so we have resources we can count upon which could be used in part to capitalize in infrastructure bank, and to fund a reformed transportation infrastructure system. . .

software and hardware to be able to do this. but isn't there a third option here, which is moved us in this direction with the overall refinement that you want, not have impact for a year or two until i economy recovers but be able to find the reauthorization, the infrastructure bank and the needed reform that i am hearing, through the testimony. would any of you care to speak about this third way? >> when i spoke of freezing your ideas about creating a road map of how we could finance

transportation in the future that's also accountable that is exactly the idea that i was alluding to. i think you have laid out a compelling vision for how we could increase spending in the short term using some deficit spending, using some investment and things like infrastructure bank in the next two years and with a policy adoption of an increase in various revenue measures, fuel tax, the emt fees and other measures that will take effect we can use to borrow against -- >> interrupting just for a second, what i'm talking about would be deficit neutral. in fact it would improve on a deficit situation even if we use some short-term borrowing. but likely it would be positive. i'm sorry. mr. puentes?

>> thank you, congressman. certainly what we want is immediately a reform bill whereas obviously there are problems with that now. the alternative is to do nothing and that is obviously not acceptable, so why do completely agree that we need to get moving in some form when it comes to how we are going to finance the program. in the short term, as you mentioned, this is being funded through general funds right now. it is an untenable situation i think a lot of folks are getting frustrated with that arrangement. so we need to deal with the short term problem and thinly off the road map for the future. there's no. the other thing if we can do is to get into just what is happening in metropolitan areas across the country. we heard from the mayor of los angeles this morning. they are not waiting for the federal government to act. we had a recovery package which was enormously helpful for these folks, but as we know, the money is running out and there isn't going to be another one any time soon so there are a lot of things happening in metropolitan areas across the country.

they can help themselves might be other ballot measures passing because those are being presented with the real tenable options and they know what they are getting for their money. we should leverage that kind of thing in the program and to give a vintage of it. >> i know my time is expired but mr. staley, if you have a brief comment on this with the be all right? >> briefly, i think the problems we've experienced with the transportation program are so severe we need to focus on that. and i would be -- i'm reluctant to endorse an increase in revenue and gas tax until we straighten that out. so, i would be in favor of moving through the reauthorization with existing budget authority trying to focus on getting that straightened out in order to create the foundation that actually creates something that's more transparent, more accountable and more performance driven them i think you could think about revenue raising and have it be much more effective in terms of

actually promoting it and supporting it. thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. blumenauer. the chair will recognize the chairman. >> thank you. let me say i appreciate mr. willingness to refer to the delegation on matters affecting the gasoline tax and assuring him that we will be speaking on retardants and advice of our state officials when we make those decisions. in the state right now and in my district, we have been in the process of trying to finance a mega project. i think it is one of the three largest projects involving the interstate highway system that's now on the books of the highway at restoration and it's a 4 million-dollar project, two bridges over the ohio river connecting southern indiana and then realigning the area of downtown louis -- louisville

where converges probably a mild word, clyde is more appropriate, and certainly a project of regional if not necessary significant because it affects the flow of goods and services on the long north-south axis and also east west. secretary miller i know you've been involved in helping to try to find ways to finance the project so i guess what i would like to know is how you feel the national infrastructure bank could help finance the project. i feel we've been able to accumulate 2% of the funding over the last 11 years from the federal sources so would you elaborate on how this might help finance the project? >> sure. the national infrastructure bank i think would be invaluable to helping finance a project like the ohio river bridges project, which is a very high priority at the governors.

i think what we've seen in the last few years is a very dedicated bipartisan effort from federal officials such as yourself, congressman, state officials, such as governor bushehr and governor daniels of indiana, local officials and then a variety of private business folks who recognize that building these bridges is critical to the future economic trouble might as well as enhancing the transportation in that area. what is natural infrastructure bank could do with some combination of grant and credit support is it could boost its overall feasibility by leveraging the state, local and federal resources currently being marshalled and accelerate the delivery of the project so that in the coming years it would be able to help reduce potentially even eliminate the need for tax increases as well as perhaps even more importantly for those of us who are growing

impatient how long it's been taking it would help accelerate the timing of the project. so we would look forward to the national infrastructure bank being a very valuable partner in this kind of effort. >> getting to the green banks for a second. back in february we had our party issues retreat, and one of the speakers of that retreat was a gentleman who ran the -- runs a company called serious materials. and his company has developed a new form of windowpanes that raises the insulating factor of windows by a factor of about three. and one of the things he said there was that he said they could go into a school district, for instance, every place all the glass in all the windows in the school, float a bond issue to pay for that, and then after, even after paying off the bonds to realize an energy savings of

about 20% overall. is this the type of concept the green bank utilizes and have you seen anything like that kind of potential savings? it seems like almost magical money. >> it's like when i've been digging deep into the energy efficiency improvement whether we are talking about public facilities or even the federal law authorization program that congress dramatically expanded during the stimulus package it is amazing what a win-win this can be by making these improvements in the long run you are saving real dollars, you pay off in just a few years' time and then all the energy savings goes directly into your pocket whether we are talking about tax payers are talking about individual homes. we are protecting the environment by reducing the carbon footprint and we are also creating demand for this whole new green collar jobs sector that we are really trying to be at the forefront in kentucky.

so efforts like the green bank in kentucky and efforts like in national green bay or infrastructure bank when the money is dedicated to energy efficiency it will lead to budget reducing at the state, federal and local levels while having all the other benefits that we already understand. >> great. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. yarmuth. i want to thank the panelists for your testimony today, you might receive some follow-up questions from members and i hope you can respond promptly. but i also want to thank you for your patience today. for the schedule conflict on the house floor. there is very little we can do about that and the best way it plans. so why do have great regard for the expertise you bring to the discussion and at the same time a personal thanks for your patience. and with that, hearing no further comments, the hearing is adjourned.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] coming up soon astronauts

are heading to the international space station the afternoon for a 12 day mission that delivers items to assist russian spacecraft. three space walks are planned outside the station during this trip which is atlanta's final mission. you can watch the launch live at 2:20 eastern on c-span. we will hear from assistant state secretary michael kitv-tv at this hearing scheduled to start 4 p.m. eastern on c-span.

kitv news brings you commitment 2010 special ngress aional election debate. >> good evening. i am pollock.

thank you for joining tonight's debate with the candidates and the special election in the night'songressional district. this election is entirely by ine mail and the ballots have been center presidents. 313,337 people are eligible to vote in this winner-take-all election. and it's up to you, the voters to decide who will take over the seat formerly held by neilyou, t abercrombie. joining us are the three leadint candidates in akthe race. we have republican charles djoua colleen hanabusa, and democrat and. we have four news reporters with extensive experience covering the politics. o you are also welcome to submit questions to through the website kitv led senator with more4's online activity for the date. le sprick we'll hold a live wired

discussion on the kitv donner.da that is the web master over there and i also joined by political analyst neil miller as mast well as the league of women voters. we've got a bunch of people helping out and right now we have got people posing questfrions. you can also look at what other people are posting as well.can k neil will be answering some of the questions and we will take and we'rhe best questions asked. the questionse you asked and poe them to the candidates leader id the eight. paula? to the >> thank you. before we get to the questions pa want to give a brief summary of titles and format agreed upo, by the league of women voters,ro kitv and the candidates debate to participate, a candidate has to have received significant levels of public support ino independent public opinioneceiv polls. receive substantial campaignn contributions, received substantial votes in prior to contons,s for the same or comparable office.ial vote prior previously held a significanthe public office will receive significant news coverage from v wide variety of media outlets. wie complete rules are posted in

e e politics section of kitv.coh politicth the other names of candidates running in thisom election. during tonight's debate each o candidate will have one minute s to respond to questions,now dur responses will be timed.ch candi candidates will receive a 152nd morning when time is running out. candidates will be allowed a rec 32nd rebuttal to each question that isn't directly ask.ates wil if at any time a reporter pamelr starr myself tools there's aeb need for a follow-up question we will ask the candidate for the o follow-up and they will have 30r seconds to respond to each candr candidate will also be allowedfw 90 seconds at the end for closing statements. candida wilb prior to tonight's debate the candidates took part in aor drawing to determine the initial prio order of questioning. the so up first to mike ase charles ques. we decided to forgo the opening, statements for this debate and instead i will be asking the first question. question only, each d f of you will have one minute to respond.only, each mr. djou, we start. wil have we begin with an issue that has. often been forgotten with the

bickering in the campaign. people are struggling to justenl get by. in a recent gallup usa today jus poll more than 90% of those surveyed said the economy would be very important as they cast their vote f%or congress.yed saa family income has fallen,t the tensions have been gutted, home have been lost or at least lostn in value. the same time the cost of livint just keeps going up and taxes have increased. so if elected, what will to do. ii felp the people feel better? >> thank you. and thanks to kitv for hostingp. this debate at all of you foryoh watching. certainly jobs in the economy are the number one issue in this congressional campaign. t what ihi bselieve and i will advocate for if i'm fortunate ts earn your support as you're wil united states congressman or ad vospcaecific things. t number one, we have to reduceour marginal tax rates. right now we need to put more t money in the hands hrof thethin. average family here in hawaii. the government is taking tood to much money and even worse it ish

taking too muche money from you spending it on programs that dog not work and even worse thanwor, that the money is taking it hast no plan to pay it back. number two, what we need to do is find more private-sector ity jobs, a lot more public-sectorir programs. ehe government right now in ther puited states congress is launching hundreds of bblillions of dollars in spending to no ilfect unless and finally i b support expanding the market and expanding free trade. congress has mistakenly not passed free trade agreementsnd that will help a lot he make ars free trade agreement with south korea. agrments i hope that answers. >> thank you. the economy and the jobs in particular has always been my>>h number-onee concern.g. the reason why is because theree was nothing that hits families like the job issue. we need to have people feelissu secure. and paula's questioned the and touch upon what we need to do more than anything else. we need to build public do confidence.

public confhaidence is what iswd going to turn this economyconfil around. to do that, let's look what congress has been debating and s coat congress has done today. the stimulus package has in fact given a sense of stability. has federal funding and why he has a always been very critical because it really is one of our major economic engines. it has been in the government and military funding.een in addition we must start to look at how we can much as tourism and the construction industry all in line with to creation of a new economy so that people will begin to feel o good about where we are going and feel secure in their futuret thank you. >> thank you. >>ll >> hello to the viewers first of all. this has to be the number-one>>o priority. i agree with my colleagues. i'm the only candidate who'sall. running the private sector and run a business the last 30 year but that has been the world i'vo vaved in slight understand thati world and there are three items we have to focus on here.the wod first of all, and the big

picture perspective reasonablecu leverage taxation and regulatiom make business grow. you cannot have excessive taxation and excessivee regulation and expect our business is to survive and prosper as they can if they aren given the ability to and do so. second, federal funding and programs to need to be directed. where appropriate and at affordable levels to help theire inddustries we particularly focd on right here in hawaii, and those would be tourism, by the federal government and military and high-tech are a promising industry. and third, small business for a most. this is a small business state. i served by small business stayed in my prior service. we have to make sure our federa the trend is focusing on small e business. >> thank you. is now we begin with our panelists questions and we start with a question for colleen hanabusa.h >> thanks. q there's a section of thellee campaign website that says that he want to bring back fiscalt

responsibility to washington and it expresses concern about the s rising federal debt.sponsi to but at the same time i didn't es see anything in there except proposals to spend more money. so, what would you doe specifically, one specific proposal to make sure that our children and grand shall from are not burdened with future government spending? >> we've to make the distinctio between what this deficit andhit mve to debt. federal debt i believe if you'vc debtfollowing what is going on in washington you. do know therf is a bipartisan committee that has been established.'s we balance the budget even in dg bance bund we have no deficit per say that we all to have debo so there is a concept that there is some level of debt that isat. necessary. we call it for each and everyone of us like a mortgage but wel need to establish that. in hawaii for example we have but we need t constitutional feelings that arr set.exam ceilieve thisple, commission ie first step in establishing what tepthat level of debt that thess government can have?

thatwe will have that in one form or another we the will havl but what is that agreeable and acceptable level? and that is what i am very muche an advocate of is the studying t and establish of the debt ofiling and that we've reduced. we have to reduce spending to the point we actually get to thn debt level.ctuall >> we have 30 seconds to >> we respond.av mr. case.e secon >> three particular issues we need to focusds o rn and i have, balanced budget in both myoocus government work, my private sector work and of course myove family site, and i served on the .udget committee in the u.s courress and what hope to serve their again. served a balanced budget amendment to the constitution which requires us to do the same thing in ourag government as we have to do witt our families and business.o do e paygo meaning you always have t be budget neutral when you pass a bill it can not worsen the debt and c caps on spending. toe we have to bring spending under bi control.not toere is w no way.

>> mr. djou, 30 seconds.ther >> my entire career as a statedo legislator and now honolulu i council on fiscal responsibility and government accountability now asw the federal government is running amok. ther of th deficits are going te handed off to the children as ai pressingty issue facing the nati today. i specifically support numberue one earmarks on the moratorium the change the culture ofearmark spending in congress.atoriu a balanced budget amendment for the constitution so the federal level and lives like everyfor or gmily does and number three thl stop launching a public-sectoriy programs and get more private sector jobs.ic-secto >> a follow-up question from carroll.uestion >> ms. hanabusa you didn't answer my question. i asked one specific place we can save money. just a quick short answer.skedor >> we can do it by giving the wall street reform because that's costas to do the bailout and that is causing us to haveh the debt and i believe that is e the first place we've got to csg start. got to do the financialstar rmform packagerefo >> a question for mr. caisse.

>> mr. case, your campaign quest focusedio on fiscal conservatise and accountability however you are on record having voted for o dozens of tax and fee hikes whed you were in congress.ver y on or into promising one thing wher ngressliver another? >> i think first of all let'smpn anotrve finding a tax from both of my opponent on many different issues so i am feeling flattered they are coming after me. they must feel there's something to be concerned about. but on the question of taxes, i. have not ever supported the conn absolutely noed tax hikes. he i have in my career voted several times for tax reductions.absolu i think when i watesly s in coni voted for something like $300 billion of tax reductions for over time. the particular attack that he refers to is an accurate as a matter of fact. you go back and study the attack which was a challenging in the tax record i had in congress and on several issues it is straight

up gone. raly stes you vote on the budget and a budget that adds $2 trillion worth is going to bt yeve a fee for example that have been increased, some customs for and others. some is like the most infamous of all part of the budget. fe you've got to vote on thesat budget and it is going to have k some of that in it.o have >> mr. djou, 32nd rebuttal. >> my record on taxes and philosophy is simple and clear. and while elective office i've rever voted for tax increase. i believe the government mustea. live within its means as every family does and that is why i a also believe that if ise. unfortunate during your support, as a congressman, i will never forget that every single dollar toe government spends comes from a family like yours. spends >> miss hanabusa, 30 seconds. >> when we talk about debt, the. creation of debt we have in the bush administration was ahanabu0 combination of push tax cuts,t which aid did vote for some ofhw them, and in addition the cuts,

spending of the war, the war and iraq and afghanistan. when you put the combination pgether at both the kutz and the spending, you are going to have more debt and that is the s kind of thing i believe wasind f directed and paid did in fact believ vote for some of the bush tax in cuts. >> our next question is from didier for mr. djou. sprick democrats are proposing financial reform, yet republicans are resisting. what reforms do you support? >> i think financial service reform is extremely important. my background as a guttedform is business degree from my pennsylvania school of finance. i certainly understand how degre important and strong and vibrant the industry issy for the natio, i believe as we approach financial-services we need to keep in mind to things. number one we have to prevent serv systemic risk. keep that is we have to make sure no ne action can take down on our entire financial sector and a number two we must end the too

big to fail.o, we no one financial the institutio or bank should ever get so large that should get into troubleionn that has to be bailed out by thd american taxpayer. utbelieve congress is making o i ogress in this direction. ibelieve we need moreng someros bipartisan work and cooperation. i am happy the united states senate earlier this week on aat. bipartisan compromise to begin their early steps of makingise o serious financial service reform and i look forward to entering the house after the samet flashes its work. >> a 32nd rebuttal for ms. hanabusa. rebutta >> usa today interviewed because i was the only candidate talking about financial reform. i believe the essence of financial reform has to bencial getting away from the two big t fail concept. in addition to that, one of theo things that's become evident ise the fact that we must take care of h the concept of data does tf has really caused the downfall and we need to regulate that so

we need people to get thewe neet financial reform package ine terms of what the sources of the term has been and how we are wht going to address that.as been >> 30 seconds, mr. case.>> 30 s. >> with respect to charles this, is the third debate he has thehi answer this particular question. we have a financial service ques impact in congress for monthseri now. the house every singleit p republican opposed it. i asked charles whether he would oppose it and he didn't answerhl that. calls for number one orderly tt liquidation of troubled companies and for ay liquition consolidation of consumer protection activities on behalf of consumers and it calls forcts regulation of derivatives.umers. the republicans have opposed ret detives. i believe charles does opsed tha >> thank you. our next question, darryl for all the candidates but beginning cath ms. hanabusa. >> americans narrowly averted a. tragedy recently. two times from terrorist attacks.wo one in the times square just last weekend at christmas time

when a man nearly brought downed henairliner.e w what would you do to make surern that americans at home are safer from terrorism? >> i believe there is no question americans must feel's safe. feelsafe.i also believe that we have begun to institute a bettee kind of intelligence system and our intelligence system must address the potential terrorist address. notwithstanding that, i haveentl always had a t great concern ab. what cost to americans that weaa do this and one of the reasons say that is because i haveo always been someone who isay critical of the patriot act i've because i believe that no time c can we saricrifice our civilievt rights. however, we are in a situation now where the reason why these events have been averted is the because we do have the proper types of control in place and io intend if elected to congress to continue along those lines.

thos >> mr. case, you have 30e 30 seconds. ome quick start with a basic premise and that is the world beyond the border is safe andem. stable so it is the world withis the border going to be safe andi stable so we cannot sit here and pretend that the only answer isr sad moree our borders and to secure our transportation. and that is a crucial part of what we have to do. secure we have to continue all measure. within the country to provide internal security but we also have to be out there in the world making sure we are workiny but other countries in the world weto take care of problemd and issues beyond the border. that is what we have to do to iy protect ourselves.>> mr. >> mr. djou. yk having represented four thewk honolulu council i understand et how a single terrorist attack could devastate our state'sy cii single largest industry, attackd tourism.evasta i understand we need tote make sure we understand you're in a ma fight against extremist islam and to stop this we have to succeed in iraq, afghanistan and

here at home we have to make sun sure we have a fully funded to confident part of homeland have a security.nd >> thank you.ent the question now directed to mr. djou. q >> youuestion oppose earmarks ot federal budget and said heed tod even turn down money for hawaiim to uphold or no earmarks policy. why would you hurt your own hawt state by turning down millions of dollars of federal tax money to defend a position of mainlanl republicans?liear t >> i believe what is going on id >>e united states congress today is irresponsible. i bel we are running budget deficitstt in excess of $1.6 trillion, the largest budget deficit in the history of the nation by a factor of three.ur i believe in open transport and. budgeting process where that everything is conducted out in the open where we don't havepenw this you-scratch-my-back i'll-scratch-your-back that has meant lead to the ballooning oft thech y national debt that willt

serve hawaii better.proble if you look the majority of our earmarks comes of the departmenl of defense budget. t hawaii's location halfway between north america and asia,c talk to the most senior officials in the department of defense and they will tell you nsy he will score very favorable any system the entire budget hi process is done fairly, transparently instead of with backroom deals and political back scratching and that is why i support a moratorium on the earmarks as long as budgetrt deficits exceed a trillion dollars i think it is goodium f hawaii. spec 32nd rebuttal for ms. hanabusa.tal >> what's be clear when the clinton administration and we oad a surplus.ar as t the deficit ochered under thede bush administration, republican administration. astor earmarks it is a necessare component of government. it permits the government to meet the needs of people. a what we need is transparency. o. in have very similar. we have a hearing process people

know who is asking, what purpose and how much. it's critical to continue who's programs like meals on wheels, e the center for apec coming m along. it just make it transparent for the people. >> 32nd rebuttal for mr. case. mrearman with response to charles that is a simplistic ch sound bite typified his simplisi campaign. that oble not earmarks perce because as a member of congress i know my district better than anybody else and believe it is megitimate for i to direct i federal spending didn't cut funding to specific needs in my fed ificrict and that is a designation called the earmarksy it's true they need to be more l trends burnett. there are too many of them anded ar close of a time betweentransp lobbying, campaign contributiony and earmarks but to simply wipen out earmarks altogether will wipe out hawaii. >> the next question is for all the candidates and start withii. >> mr. case.ndidates sta >> mr. case, we've been at war

with afghanistan for ne. arly nn years d iraraq for six years. are the conflicts worth the cost n human suffering and financial cost and at what point do we sag enough and block away or do we? aw >> i would go back to myo previous answer on the security question because we have to be sure that the world beyond our borders is secure and stable. if we are not sure of that and b we will be attacked again. the reason we had to go in we wl afghanistan to start with was rw because we allowed the situation to develop where al qaeda found shelter under the taliban and tunted september 11th againstrr us. there was no reason to expectus. that wouldn't happen again if we allowed it to happen.ect so the answer is that our foreign policy has to reflect the number one goal which is toy protect americans within the th iss and elsewhere and secure the world and we have to answer that question before we do secu withdraw from afghanistan. that

that is simply what we have to withdr do.istan. that doesn't mean we sit there and try to frame the withdrawal in a way thatthat is fair and withdr recognizes the realities of both our budget and the reality ofhe the world. i believe president obama is on the right track in iraq on a phased withdrawal and condition sedthe ground should be paid ana i do think we should withdraw from iraq and i believe that he is also correct on afghanistan.e >> thank you. also 30 seconds for mr. djou.right. sprick i don't want to see a single american soldier servingu in a combat zone risking their lives one day longer than a absolutely necessary. risking in iraq and afghanistan it isely very clear we must succeed in both of these areas. if we do not and we pulled outbe too early whatse will happen isd another september 11th.oo wbelieve that the obamay, admihanistration has a right ani support the current policy in o iraq as well as to afghanistan. >> 30 seconds, ms. hanabusa. sprick the question whether it

is worth the life that is difficult to answer because when i preside over the hawaii medal whether of honor i can tell you it's difficultlife to say any war as a life but what we need to do i but we that whatever we are asking them to fight for that e asking an end and something positive that comes out of it. n es comeve we have to withdraw from iraq on schedule.e to afghanistan poses a differentsce problem but i'll believe the president is correct and diffe afghanistan. bilize t effort to sta he countryhe to ensure what we do s to let the people take control of their own destiny and their future, and that is something that would hopefully make the hopefulle worth while. >> i just a quick follow-up to mr. case. the question asks at what point what are the indices that tell a elt that, the things you hope ft and wish for. forve been to the country's soe if you could briefly answer. islamic i have been to iraq anda afghanistan. those are part ofly as the tripn

taken as a member of congress to eart othnd what is happening in those regions to talk with thend troops and the people of the ground. first and foremost are the stable and secure so that those who would attack us cannot attack us again that has to be e number one. that is the number-one concern.. second, can the country's the nr function as countries in the international community. to the of the institution of government andin society to peos to function provide a sufficient level of stability. the reason that's important is because if they don't have that then they will quickly fall inta they again where allow the activity to foster and come after us again.ity >> thank you. foste now the question from there was. an directed to the corrected to mr. tecum is hanabusa. >> do quinby reformer to take au interest of your campaign isreao btting support from unions and, ,ublicut employees and labor las practice included the teamsters, the longshoremen and as the the senate president he said you heuldn't get involved in theongc

school furlough issue because te you wanted to let the collective hargaining process run itsschoog course. how can you reassure voters he won't put the interest of unions ahead of the general public?intu >> snl one of the things i also did do was this a full servicehi reform that cost many of my cive colleagues their position in the house and the senate. se is because i do understand labor and the working men and women of the state to happen to be members of the collectiveembs units and in the working man anr woman at the interest first above everyone else.n, t the fuharlough issue in the end. negotiated that potential issuen settlement and we are hoping the governor will implement. goveor willproblem because the supreme court has told theis a legislature we cannot interfere but what we can do is when theye got close we believe they are close we did appropriate a sufficient amount of money to

furlough and make an agreement. we no matter what we do the gunn donner has ultimate power of releasing the funds or restricting so that is why it is necessary to have that so discussion and i've always been ready to have the discussion on anhalf of all working men and womend and parents. an >> 32nd rebuttal for mr. case. >> >> the issue here is independence. the i who of us is independent enough to go to congress and represents all of hawaii?p t not theo unions, not the other institutional supporters of colleen or the far right in the country who are busy supporting his with the money and activities but all of the people of hawaii. this is a key factor that t distinguishes me from my k opponents. i am independent and have alwaym been independent and i take myp. hits for being independent but feel in doing so i've also been able to represent any and all o ae people all the time.presenty

>> 32nd rebuttal mr. djou. o >> i built my career as a legislator as atime member oftt. honolulu city council stand up to the old police network.dijou. i have a clear commitment toe cr reform the community and indeed- it is because ibo believe that r status quo here in hawaii asind, well as the united states congress isn't working for our hawa people is why i am sitting hereg running for th e united states congress because i believeis we need to change the structure of the economy at the direction ofe the united states congress. >> thank you. our next question is for mr. djou. >> do you believe health care i a necessity protected byu belieh government or do you feel peopl who cabennot afford health and germans are out of luck? >> of course health care isare essential and important. i believe the president has cous i lievethe diagnosis correct. we need a form of health care reform in the nation. but i believe as a prescription of the united states congress wrote last month it is a prrrible plan to the american

people. instead i advocate three reforma that should i get electedd i rethout a ticket for. number one we need medical malpractice tort reform ande, number 2i support allowing the interstate sale of health insurance 90% of hawaii's residents get health insurance from only two companies and 30 finally and perhaps the mostt ti important but most complex i f d believe health insurance should be owned by the individual, not the and lawyer.ed you don't have to ask your bosst u getou get although, life or health insurance for homeowners insurance from. you shouldn't have to ask whoinr you get your health insurancee k from. >> thank you.insuranc 32nd rebuttal for ms. hanabusa.r fromn important thing for many of the viewers is the need to know that hawaii's health care profession of the law hawapted under the federal legislation because people areai exemed undbsout that and in becauson to that i believe people need to have health care. and the reason why is when we

look at the budget and the deficit 70% of the gross domestic product is related todr health care. this is a matter of investing in the future, investing and controlling the cost in the future. think about the elderly that depend on medicare.budget. de onparticular program will close the doughnut hole for thep prescription drugs. >> mr. case? >> m >> with respect to charles again although i agree with him onwel, some of the items he outlinedlte for example medical malpractice reform, his three points are not going to make a difference to the 30 million plus americans who can't get health insurance even though they want it. it's not going to make a difference substantially to thet escalating cost of health anyife insurance 10% plus and want negative runs to thescalat consolidation of power and at health insurance delivery systen which is one of theot g problemi here. you have to make a decision, you syst have to come up with a solution. proble yohaven't just say no that solution doesn't work.so what is the alternative to covea people if you say that this is

,n factwork. a bright.ople islamic a follow-up. from >> mr. djou the question was about, you know, there are people who need to be protected by the government. you didn't talk about that so what specific flesh of the federal government have for the. 30 million people who have nosot health insurance coverage in thr the 30 m >> clearly the government has a role in health care and we rovide medicare and medicaid and indeed one of the bigkeoke, doeslems with the health care bill that passed the united. states congress is robbing peter to pay paul. taking money from the medicare system to pay for the largeraul. medicaid system. that's not t responsible. the forbes are now planning will do more to control costs, spread the coverage of health insurance and do more to get all the c germans to americans and most will not cost a trillion dollars raising taxes byost $600 billion in the middle of a requir recession. >> we understand what you are not for the time wondering what are you for in this case to

cover americans?recessio >> again, keoki, what i'mhis c advocating andas clearly statin? here is number 1i support medical malpractice tort reform and number two, the sale of internet health insurance andrm. nu individual ownership of health i insurance. the rstee three reforms would do far more to lower s talhe cost of hi insurance in the nation, threatf coverage of the engines in the nation and not break the our taxpayers. that is what we need to have that'st we of here. >> any more from the panelists? darryl?rom our >> so you're saying some people are ouf of luck and also that and ii's prepaid health care act should beyou're dumped? >> that's fantastic question. let's look at the health care bill that passed the unitedjunkd states. congress.. its 2,400 pages long. united 2,400 pages of the health care0 only about 50 pages of the 2,400 deal with health care reform th president and majority of

congress advocated so what ish e the other 2,350 pitches pages? it is for favors extending hawaii from the prepaid healthce care act.n all for bdy should ask themselves is this a bill so good for hawaiipt wide as to why eni to beac exempted? on the other hand if it is badll for hawaii as i contend it iss but of course support exemptionf for hawaii but that begs the the question why do we need the will of the first place. the >> we are going to go to the the next question and if we havepla. time will go back to health care. the next questione'll go on is y for mr. case.ion i f >> you have now run for three oe hawaii's four congressional seats and use them for governor and in this campaign you haven'd ruled out in the future running for a u.s. senate seat. running should voters question your commitment to serve the firstots congressional district and themt role t of your political ambiti might play in your decision making if you did win this seat?

>> my ambition has been to serve the people of hawaii in public office to retrieve to read that in the shell with me for 40 years now since i started in th0 congress on capitol hill in theo 1970's. i don't believe that there is anything wrong with me saying that i want to serve.ng with i want to serve you. i walieve i can and i believe i can function in the offices i'vc run for the rear choice is up tn the voters, can they trust me with of the jobs. the i now have seven years on capitol hill, the four years as capitol e u.s.hi congressman. these have certainly i believe d prepared me for the job again. eparing the voters of the first congressional. the and i believe there is noeason whatsoever under the believe circumstances to question my wht commitment of serving the people of hawaii and congress. >> mr. speed cousin, rebuttal? >> weber of like you to buttal?

understand is of the three candidates in front of you i amd the only one l twhoo lives in e district. i'm running forsi ttthein seat o i believe l this is where i can make a difference.eat i felt my political career on. fiscal accountability and government responsibility. i'm running for the seat whetheb i'ml not another seat opens up, whether or not to ever may jumpa in ort out of any particular et political race. i'm running for this seat because this is where i believer my entire record and career canw make the best friends for the people e of hawaii.people o >> ms. hanabusa?ii. >> the people will decide this specific question and i ask that you look at the records where wo served, how well we have servedh i belowieve the public service s an honor and i have chosen to be run for this office because indi believe i can best serve the thf the pele ofhe state of hawaii and the first congressional district because i have the skill set that makes me the different from my opponents and i have a proven record of being.

an effective leader and a pven legislator. effective >> thank you. at this point we are going to take a brief banreak eff and whg come back kitv-tv returns with some of the questions the viewers have and have beene comb asking for the live wireve. live wn on kitv.com. kiay with us. we will be back in two minutes. ♪ >> welcome back to the debate for the seat in the first congressional district. we continue now some of the questions submitted to thedistri candidates through kitv.com froe you, the viewers.ndidatesgh we're joined from the web our center. >> i'm here with analyst neil miller. we've financing a lot of questions and it's just a long list of questions from folks for all the candidates.king a lotf interesting q stuff, can't get everything but we have a few, questions for each of thehing candidates. we will start with charles djou coming from a viewer namedle

paula.djou. recently at a council meeting wd noted that twice you left theou, room before the votes were takee to increase the gasoline tax ann property tax. how can you say tha tt you have never voted for a tax increase? paul lowe wants to know you a leave the room when there are important tax votes. >> thank you putative let me clarify. i've never voted for a tax thaease. thenk two votes you're talking about here was a procedural vote call second ratings. all votes in votes front of hona city council had to go for threc readings on the city council floor.e i'm very happy and very proud to i and on my record here consistently posing to the to opposing tax increases because s think the governmenttand o nmus responsible and to handle its subject in the same fashion every single family does andsibl that is wee shouldn't be waitint and magic want to increase taxed ,nd ask for more revenue anyhe time we demand or need it. and ask instead, and the government needs to tighten the belt the need to find a means of reducing

needs expenses, not increasing taxes.c sprick its 32nd for a bottle for mr. case. >> i believe on april 22nd they would go on national tv show ans i don't care whether it is afour second or third reading that isc notou responsible. nationa in terms of budget as i recall, charles, you voted against or abstained every vote you had abt chance to, vote on in the state had slature or council and you can't just say no all the timein you have to come up with solutions and vote for somethinh some time. >> as hanabusa?ething connect and and i agree on this and that is to vote no is an easy thing to do. the a most difficult challenge y legislature has and that is that's not forget that is whathe we are running for is the ultimate much as they try to be a member of congress it is your skill to be able to convince your colleagues your position is correct. if you vote no and you were eight troup 01 it is a wastedo

vote. 8-at isn't serving the people of any district or constituency.vo. if you feel strongly on a distrt particular area by all meanseels advocate and convince others to go your way. >> the next question, what you have? >> a question now for a case an we wanted to make sure do got ao education camp question from ars college student who are you going to make education yourolle first priority for instance wha specifically is your view on no child left behind?what speficaly >> my specific view on no child behi left behind as it is a good law that tries to b escalate the standards across the country and try to provide the funding with which to meet those standards. eee was the deal when we passedm no child left behind and i still think it's ae good deal. we need to elevate education across the country.s a good we are falling behind when youra compare education commitment to the rest of the world. the specific problem with no tunneledco left behind door numr one funding. you can't have an unfunded are

mandate. nnat isn't fair to either redue the mandate or increase the funding. one or the other, not both. mana number two, allow morese the flexibility to the local or the communities to go ahead and flexess the very specific concerns they have with t education in their community. we have many examples of thatth right here in hawaii and i serve commun on the education, and committee and small business committee ann agriculture committee when i wat in congress earlier.ll busines we dealt with the child left behind and that there are many instances in hawaii because of our ethnic diversity and thet fact we've different islands we need more flexibility to make ic work.o maket >> 32nd real firmest hanabusa.w. >> when you are a part of them . state and see the impact of nohu child left behind by halifax bun schools you know what doesn't work and the main reason is nomy child left behind in the presen form measure's success on a school basis. n't take into account special needs children or te english as a second language for people with children to be inond

how yg immersion school. people the new proposal coming from th. obama administration is going tm measure success by the student and after all the student is we are investing in and they shoule be the measure of success. of >> mr. djou?succs. >> my most important job is not the council man or officer. j it's been good husband and a l good dad. as the dad to three wonderful children i understand the importance of a good education.e no child left behind is good ine concept but has been grosslyedu. underfunded.believe instead i bel nieveo chi that et should be principally directed at the local level and federal government can play a goodncipay supporting role.al level the current proposal put forwaro thethe obama administration and race to the top are good proposals and i would like to o see them pushed aggressively. pi we need dramatic educational reform in our community. s ow >> thank you. we have another question.

estimates as a question for colleen hanabusa coming from joy.een wall street is out of control. what type of recusation which tf seek to regulate wall street and a larger bank and investment to companies? >> i believe with the recent goldman sachs situation we began and weerstand what to big to fail meant and the concept of hedge funds have taken on a newy meaning to me. take it means hedge yourn best. meai it goes against the concept ofo derivatives that i believebe has been the force of the failure oi wallch street. the fact that these companies sc large work basically able tose hedge their best against thee, e hedgheirtypes of investments we were making. i also believe one of the major concerns is the subprime concer is that we saw. there is nothing to me as terrible as to deal with ahing person's home and when they were permitted to do whatever theyh want with subprime mortgages, pr they were affecting the average

person's major investment, yourt home for the futuinre. ave yo, when we talk about reform, we've gurot to make sure they ae hen wllowed to play with major we've t tos and more importantly than that, they are not allowed to go amuck with derivatives mo else they have in the past. it's been a 32nd or a bottle for mr. djou petraeus pnac the need for the reform is not thefrom m services a trying to reach a specific products. what we need to do is make sure the american tax payer neverguli ever again have to bail out the again has institutions and make sure we take care of something called systemic risk that the american tax payer is and always the backstop bailing out thethaa major wall street firms. my concern and focus if i getcks elected toto the united statese congress is to make sure when the financial service firms use money it is their m money, not s yours.s the >> mr. case? not >> i think charles answer mr reflects a misunderstanding of what happened and what the i

situation is nationally. of course there are markets that need to be regulated. the problem is they are not regulated to start with. of cou they beef of high levels of ted. systemic risk and they were nots seriously substantially regulated and because of that, they took too much risk andth failed. took regulation is always a question of balance to be enough regulation is appropriate tocom. protect consumers, too much shows the industry. regulatio e don'tn w iant to chill the industry. consolidation and regulation of unregulated market is what we ry have to do.nction regul >> thank you for questions froms viewers and very much, laura? >> tha >> we are going back to the than reporter questions and we starto with darryl who has a question for mr. djou. mr. >> mr. djou, all three candidates said they continue to support federal funding for programs for native hawaiians fud also some form of new self-government's for native for hawaiians for something like tha akaka of bill.ns but how do you assure, reassure the majority of citizens who ar non-hawaii and san some of whom

are very uncomfortable with this that doing this special hawaiians is who also good for everyone else?pec >> i believe so long as the federal government is providinge recognition for native americant it should accord is similar form of recognition for native hawaiians. s the assurance you are asking for co th assur gndo not support theitn current version to support theyr previous version o if the bill. any form of federal recognition of the future native hawaiianak government entities should comel about after negotiations between the entity and the hawaii state government. that is the way it can be fair for all people here in hawaii. i don't like the congress ismen. th currently looking at and the in granting by fiat of thecongre is parameters, power, jurisdiction for the future native hawaiian government entity without involving negotiations through the state.ictions,or a to the was that further to say i believe it is time we haveg publicen hearings again here int hawaii on this issue instead ofd having all of the hearings in a

washington, d.c..in >> 32nd rebuttal for ms. hanabusa. >> i think my position on the rm bill is well known among everyone, but the one thing thas i would like to poitint out is o look at my record from the time everyo i chaired wneaterline hawaiianut affairs we've had major challenges beginning with the as [inaudible]e had the in all the other challenges to the rights of the native ritsiians. what i believe this a salacious ans whacerns and fear is what i did during that period of time.n first statewide hearings, hearings on that is what we need. people need to feel comfortable and we need to give that level gimcomfort. >> mr. case. sprick the best answer to the specific question asked is cano. all of us, a hawaiian or not hoo wide and imagine hawaii withouts the native people and culture at its very heart, it's a record,n, at our core and i can't. i

therefore one has to ask thee ay question how do we assure that e culture survive and prosper as? there are many throughout different quarters for the survival and prosperity of theso cultural over time. federal recognition provides the framework in which we can all assure the country survives. >> the next question is from keoki for ms. hanabusa. >> miss hanabusa, the senator daniel inouye is for intends purpose is the most paul flynn in the senate since he's theawai head of the powerful appropriations committee. is n 's endorsed your campaign andi is helping you raise mothney for head o it. how can you assure voters you want merely be his puppet? for can you give that least twoyou n specific 'texamples where youet? specer with him on important issues?s >> i would tell you the reason o whyn senator inouye has given hs support is because the fact he's told people publicly number one, my word is good and number two,s he knows that he can rely on mei

whenever i say yes or no.e he c doesn't expect me to agreee with him because if you know anything about my history you te know that i am not anyone'shiy,y rubber-stamp. one area that i believe iarea tt disagree with the senator on iss on anwr and that is because i believe in the issues of the so environment. i believe we need to dos of alternative energy and we can particular demand. .. particular demand. the other area is in the recent development of 50-year-plus leases on the military bases. the reason i find that to be somewhat problematic is because we're keeping people in place for 50 years. and i'm not sure that that's the best way to meet the housing crisis for the military in hawaii. >> we have 30-second rebuttal from mr. case. >> well the issue again is

independence. we all want independence in our elected officials toda we doen not want our controlacti directed by anyone person, any one con party, any one special interest. we wanton them to be responsible accountable to all of the people there represent. this is the key in question. i have got along well with the delegation and my prayer service and i will get along fine and wn will work together on issues but i will maintain my independence. >> mr. djou. >> wed key is getting balance? if youdepe look around our couny the most effective delegation for a stateur has been in thoser congressional delegations with a bipartisan competition so at the republicans and democrats may disagree on major issues in washington d.c. but when it comes to local issues affecting a state whenm i you have membera that can effectively advocate on behalf of that state i intend to do that as my role model and

campaign chair did when serving in the congress 25 years ago. >> our next question is for mr. case.ght. >> continuing on this team you have answered this but i want to ask you more about it. when you campaigned against senator akaka you enteredabou senator inouye. how realistic is it to say youno can bounce back there and the cooperative and working together again with complete peace ofnd mind when he's helping early spoken out against you. for example, ms. hanbusa campaign opening. >> i would point to the actual experience i've had with member of the delegation and my prayero service in congress.wi in four years as a member of the delegation there was never once a time when anybody criticize me for not being a member of theny team. there were several instances inf

which we work together on very complicated and difficultethe issues. pearl harbor neighbor shipyard, and the agreement among the delegation about where we're going to focus and one of the years of that i was, in fact, a candidate for the u.s. senate. that you're had no problemsr working together. i would go.s. back to the histoy of hawaii to indicate it isn't, unusual for people that have disagreed politically to workuns together as members of the delegation. working with wen washington d.c. patsy mink was the other member of congress on the house side and their rivals but they got the job done.sy and senator inouye got the job done although they have the i rivalry so everybody is going to be an adult and i'm sure we will be fine. >> you have 30 seconds mr. djou >> quickly what i want to and everybody listening to>> v understand about myself and my

record is my interests and advocacy will always be first for most last hawaii, hawaii,ala hawaii. if i have to choose betweenfi ma party, political ambition and the people it will be for the people of hawaii and i believeh that my record on the city council shows that. although on the only republican on the honolulu city council i't proud of my record and i passed my legislation than any other member of the last several years. >> ms. hanbusa.il >> i want to be clear that i'm honest with the fact that both senator inouye and senator akakh have given a fair endorsement and the reason why they have is because they know i can work as a team and they know that my hav word is good. i believe the statement made by ed is a great testament to the both of them because they arees seedsman, there are people who put their personal feelingsst below that of hawaii.

why has always come first and they have it in their hearts so when you hear what ed said remember that's really more a reflection on them than in this on anyone else. >> thank you to our candidates. that concludes the questioning and they will now have 90to o seconds each for closing statements and we begin with mrl djou. >> thank you very0 much. i want to thank you for hosting this and thinking you for taking time out of the evening toan listen to us. ladies and gentleman, what youmt should know is in this campaigna as a lecture next representative fors th the congress neither ofm live in this district and consequently neither of them are among the 316,000 voters who received a ballot this past weekend. when you make a decision and ask that you consider you to go with either one of my opponents inou this debate to want to join the congressional majority ands continue along the path of status quo of spend and spend te

more. or i advise you to take a look my campaign built on three veryo basic principles: first, that wl need more private-sector jobs, not more public-sector programs appear to second that i believe congresssector is taking the nan theli wrong direction.at we're spending too much money and worse than that spending this on programs that don't worh and worse than that all thisoney we're spending we have no plans to pay back. finally it's my core beliefs t that i believe the next congressman should be committed to holding c down your taxes and then you keep more of your money than the congress who wants to spend your money. on behalf of myself and mynts i mily is unfortunate and humble to earn your support i will if never forget every single dollar comes from families like yours.t this is why i'm running and whyd and hundley asking for your vote. hum aloha. >> yankees mr. djou and now ms. hanbusa you're closing statement. >> thank you, thank you and the

voters and for hosting thissing event. you've heard a lot this evening about what we would do if we were elected.stin i believe the proof is and what we have done and i ask you look at my record. i also asked to look at what'seh going on around us.. seems across the nation became grander government has never been greater.na critical issues seemed to give r rise to more arguments. just argue. another excuse to blame someonet else. it's too easy to be negative ane too easy to say now. what we need to do is turn away from danger and look to theat future. hawaii look at what we have. we have a bank and airline, consider the finest of the nation's communities and one of the most lovable, health care program that can be a template to everyone else.iv what does this tell us?hat we all know hawaii is special.at

we have special things to share with the rest of the nation. we have values, we have the confidence and we have hope. you're vote can be one for hope and one for trust, trust in ourselves and trust in future and to get us there who however why in these values. please join me in that effort. cast your vote for the vote for the future. i respectfully ask you for your. vote. >> thank you ms. hanbusa and our last statement from mr. case. >> thank you for joining us tonight and on this mother's day weekend the reason this special aloha the three mothers with me tonight, my mother suzanne, my wife audrey, and i greatee campaign chair. remember to save think your momk the sunday. this election is about tomaha change. first of all, it's about changing u.s. congressman an incredibly important job.

and you must ask yourself whou.. can do that job. two days after may 22nd. cabelieve i can. but that's not why we should elect me to the u.s. congress. this election is about our more change than that, we need to change the way we govern in this country. there's simply too much yelling and screaming going on in washington d.c. and not enoughtr problem solving. with respect to them their part of the problem cannot purpose solution. we p need to identify, work on, but to gather and implementti solutions that work for all americans and that's going to take a different way of thinkinr about government and as when tos take people that have theg a independence and political and i philosophy to reach out and put those items together.nd t that's exactly what we need and finally, of course, we need to change the political culture of hawaii and only my election wili substantially accomplished at. i ask for your vote.

www.and case.com. >> thank you so much for the canada is being with us and the key to our viewers out there for watching and been dissipating in are live for discussion. our coverage continues with a wrap up reaction and analysis. for now thank you and aloha. ♪

>> now a house hearing on the debate over the accuracy of climate change science. the intergovernmental panel on climate change released reports blaming human activity for recent warming trends.

will hear about the incident known as climategate which refers to a 2009 lincoln e-mail's written by british and american climate researchers. the mills have been cited by critics of the u.n. governmental panel. it is 45 minutes. >> all eyes are focused on the economic environmental disaster unfolding in the gulf of mexico. the bp oil spill is causing immediate human and ecological tragedy. this bill is yet another dramatic example of why we must find alternatives to oil. the american people are desperate for safe clean energy alternatives. solutions then added job and oil addiction and heed the warning of clemens scientists who have called off pollution reduction. a lot of people tragically lost their lives in the bp rig explosion and for the past weeks

as made 5,000 barrels of oil a day have been leaking into the ocean. as a result the gulf coast fishing, seafood and tourism industries are bracing for the worst. wildlife refuges and marines in trees remain in harm's way, congress will keep a vigilant eye on ppf efforts to stop the leak and clean up this environmental mess. however, the visible oil is not the only pollution have to worry about. once gasoline is burned in our cars and trucks from tax that is released into the atmosphere. we can see the oil slick in the gulf from space but it's the buildup of invisible curtain dioxide atmosphere that is preventing heat from escaping back into space. even as carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has been accumulating so has our scientific understanding of its effects and impacts. based on over 150 years of

scientific research, a clear picture has emerged of rising temperatures, increase stroud, severe rainstorms, and acidifying ocean. those who deny global warming plan to past uncertainties that have been refuted. they ignore the overwhelming observational evidence that increased levels of the trapping pollution are already warming the planet. instead of trying to understand the science the use stolen e-mail's about analysis of tree rings in siberia to turn discussion into a russian treed ring circus. for the manufacture a cooling trend by cherry picking a few years out of a longer record of warming temperatures. and while the deniers hope to confuse the public, the real-world consequences of inaction amount. over the weekend killer storms blew through tennessee, mississippi and kentucky and national nearly 13 inches of rain fell in just over two days

time, almost doubling the previous record that fell in the aftermath of a hurricane in 1979. these storms follow the wettest march on record in boston, to 50 years storms occurred within two weeks of each other, the national guard was mobilized, hundreds were evacuated from their homes. the region suffered millions of dollars in damages. those can be attributed to climate change. the underlying science and observe trends to point to more extreme weather events especially heavy precipitation events because it warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. in extreme rainfall is just one of the consequences of the polluters rereleasing into the air. our witnesses today will explain how science has revealed this unseen pollution for what is and

discuss the very real consequences of its continuing accumulation in the atmosphere. as we approach summer are clean energy debate needs to a knowledge of what many would like to deny. our dependence on oil carries with national security, economic and rental risk. as gas prices rise in the oil slick spreads perhaps we will finally acknowledge that we cannot drill our way to energy independence. we have to% proven oil reserves in the world. perhaps we can also and knowledge the basic fact that have been known for decades, increasing carbon pollution in the atmosphere is warming the planet and that the only way to put a halt to such warming is to move to a clean energy solution. i would now like to turn and recognize the ranking member of the committee, the gentleman from wisconsin. >> i think the chairman.

when i was tried to advance their agenda a decade ago they pointed to a damming graf in the 2001 ipcc report showed a sharp rise in temperatures over the past century. this graph is commonly known as the hockey stick and into job of steering a lot of people especially politicians. but the authors of a hockey stick may not have done a good job of their math. at least that's what a couple of enterprising researchers thought and in double checking the hockey stick status and showed it wasn't as solid as previously thought. really a lot of people have been taking a second look at the so-called subtle signs of climate change. data collected and it may not be as reliable as once believed. and the climate -- the climategate scandal shows the best that some researchers did everything they could to prevent reviewed their work and at worst it out right sought to manipulate data. the debate on the accuracy of a

climate science is good for science and a proclamation that the science is settled are just politics. the shortfalls in the scientific record could have expensive consequences. proponents of expensive regulatory reform understand they need more than political victories. the epa burdensome regulatory regime must be based on sound scientific foundation. the epa regulations will be panicking in large part on the ipcc most recent report. so far the list of errors in the report includes: a sloppily source himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, reliance on an unpublished and need to claim the world has suffered rising costs due to catastrophic weather events with the offer later said there was insufficient evidence to support the claim. three, sitting here to represent and the netherlands is below sea level when, in fact, only 26%

is. for, supporting the claim that africa's agricultural output would be produced by 50 percent by 2020 and five unsupported claim that bangladesh will be 17% under water by 2015. the citizens audit of the sipc study found that 5,587 cited references nearly a third of all the sources were not here approved publications but rather gray literature such as press releases, newspaper and magazine articles, discussion papers, master's and ph.d. theses, working papers and advocacy literature published by environmental groups. the sources lacked authoritative scientific rigor and are more often than not intended as propaganda this week the interior cabin council said it's taken a committee to conduct independent review of the ipcc procedures.

hopefully the review will result in a methodologies that will give the public more confidence in the panel's conclusions before releases its fifth assessment in 2014. the climate a to scandal brought serious questions about the reliability compiled by the climatic research at the university of easting clara. these e-mail showed a clear bias, systematic oppression of dissenting opinion, intimidation of journal editors and journalists that would dean questioning of so-called consensus come manipulation of data and novels, and possible criminal activity to of the legitimate requests for data and underlying computer codes found under freedom of information act. one of these e-mail lawyers call the steven mcintyre a bozo for trying to hold accountable for his work. dr. mcintyre also reviewed nasa's temperature data and it resulted in forcing nasa to change its history of u.s.

amateur data to show that 1934, 91998 was the hottest on record. another study showed that nasa may have a jury picked weather stations to favor those that will produce higher temperatures than produce record that is warmer than truthful. internal e-mail showed at least one senior nasa scientists raise questions about the accuracy of that agency's temperature data set. the ipcc report relies heavily on the sea are you an acid that is to support conclusions. and the question is raised about these datasets raised more questions about the accuracy and the ipcc study. in a report issued today by the select committee republican staff shows that the epa is violating its own rules by relying so heavily on the ipcc report. the epa and the office of management and budget guidelines state agency must these regulatory proposal on science that's clear and transparent.

zero and the guidelines for the state simply because the study is. does it mean that it fulfills the requirement that the results are transparent and replicable. i want to welcome today mr. monckton chief policy adviser of the science and public policy institute by helping to check and double check the scientific literature. he's helping to improve the state of climate science and i look forward to hearing both his perspective and the perspective of the other witnesses today. thank you. >> thank you. the chair recognizes the gentleman from oregon, mr. blumenauer. >> mr. chairman, i will reserve my time for the inquiry. as inviting as my good friends from wisconsin's comments were, i would rather save it. >> the gentleman will reserve this time. the chair recognizes the gentleman from washington state,

mr. inslee. >> al reserve as well smack the gentleman's time is reserved and the chair recognizes the gentleman from missouri. >> out of guilt i will reserve as well. >> the chair recognizes the gentle lady from california mrs. spear. >> thank you mr. chairman, and not going to reserve. i'm glad we're holding this hearing and a science and climate change and i welcome our scientific witnesses today and look for to rely on theirww expertise as we address increasingly dire and challenging impacts of global warming. i'm from the sand and cisco bay area or are most recognizable icon is the golden gate bridge. a little-known fact, however is that just next to the bridge is our nation's oldest 100 of year-old station that has given us the long as continuous tied record in the western hemisphere. the gate shows increasing level rise of 8 inches over the past century. the rate of that sea level rise has increased and is expected to accelerate further.

in fact, the area is referred to as ground zero for sea level rise. san francisco airport as renting communities could be under water by the end of the century. we in the bay area live on edge of another seriousness of this problem for ecosystem, infrastructure and coastal and shoreline communities. in light of these basic observations ever changing planet acting on global warming and the here and now is plain common sense. how we act demands our utmost attention, the sharp tauzin knowledge of our top scientists must be the foundation for an effort to resolve the, crisis and, please, -- i am pleased to have qualified individuals here. once again, i expect to learn much more from their testimony. i yield back. >> thank you. the time is expired and all time for opening statements by the members has been completed. we will now turn to our first witness this morning, he is

dr. mr. hurrell. he's a senior scientist with in the climate analysis section of the national center for atmospheric research. his research focuses on climate variability and human cause climate change. he's contributed to the intergovernmental panel on it climate change, the ipcc assessments and is also actively involved in the international research program on climate variability and predictability. mr. hurrell holds advanced degrees and atmospheric science from purdue university, he's a fellow of the american neurological society. we look forward to hearing your testimony. mr. hurrell, please began. >> thank you. mr. chairman, ranking member and other members of the select committee, i thank you for the opportunity to speak today on a likely future change in climate and the gush duchenne from human activity to the changes.

although uncertainties exist, significant advances in the scientific understanding of the climate change now makes it clear there is a changing climate that goes beyond the range of natural variability and this change is almost certain due to human activity. this conclusion is drawn from multiple lines of evidence. published and thousands of early reviewed scientific studies by many different investigators. and independently assessed by many groups including the u.s. national academy of sciences. the fact is that the globe is warming dramatically. in this change is already affecting both physical and biological systems. global service temperatures stare almost one-half degrees fahrenheit warmer than at the beginning of the 20th-century and the rates of temperature rise are greatest in recent

decades 14 of the last 15 years are the warmest globally since 1850. in the last decade .4 degrees fahrenheit warmer than the 1990's. there is a very high degree of confidence in these numbers. urban heat affects for instance are real but perry local and they have been accounted for in the analysis. there is no urban heat effect over the oceans were warming has also been pronounced at both the surface and that depp. moreover, warming of ocean waters expanded and contribute to sea level rise. observed and accelerating melting of glaciers and to the oceans. instrumental measurements at sea level indicates that the global average has increased over the last century and the rate of sea level rises increased. global sea level rise is probably the single best metric

of the global warming since intergrades reactions from several different components of the climate system and is accurately observed from satellite instruments. changes in global temperature or sea level don't imply however, that changes are uniform around the globe. regional differences arise from natural variability and these attacks can be large from year to year or even a decade to decade. princeton's historically large albio and event help made 19981 of if not the warmest year on record while strong conditions contributed to relatively cooler worldwide conditions in 2008. simply connecting these two data points in time has shown in the graph has been done by some to mislead argue it has ceased ignoring the fact that longer-term trends is upward and the year since 2000 has remained among the warmest on record. because of such natural

variations in the climate system, climate scientists expect occasional contemporary slowdowns in the rate of warming even of greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase. climate models also predicts such behavior. and today's specified models are able to reproduce many of the observed changes in climate observed over the past century. climate models are not perfect. on certainties' arise from shortcomings and our understanding of climate processes and how to best represent them in model. yet the best, bottles are certainly useful tools for understanding and determine the factors driving the warming and the results are clear. the surface warning of recent decades along with many other changes in climate is mainly in response to increase concentrations of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere which now far exceeds industrial values. ..

is a professor of biological oceanography at harvard university. he serves as co-chair of the impact adaptation and vulnerability portion of the ipcc report published in 2001. he was also one of the lead authors on the arctic climate impact assessment.

dr. mccarthy received his ph.d. from scripps institution of oceanography. he is a former president of the american association for the advancement of science, fellow of the american academy of arts and sciences and for a member of the royal swedish academy of sciences. we welcome you, dr. mccarthy, whenever you feel pretty please begin. >> thank you. good morning, sherman markey, ranking member sensenbrenner and other members of the committee. you asked us to address for questions -- >> could you move the microphone in just a little closer please, thank you. >> he asked we address for questions and i've done this in my testimony so i will briefly run through my response of the question. you ask we talk about observations. how we know the climate is changing. what evidence do we have for attribution of the changes? and what are some of the anticipated impact and finally you asked how climate scientists

should be furthering understanding of climate change. so, i am an oceanographer. i've worked all the oceans in my career. ocean temperatures are changing in a way that could not have been imagined when i began my career as an oceanographer. i distinctly remember the day of 1986 when someone walked into my office and showed me the first graph showing ocean took orders for changing. people ask how confident are we of the changes and we look at the first slide and these are the for graphics from my testimony. this shows the error rate of instruments in the ocean today. this is a snapshot from last month. there were over 3,000 of these sensing devices that provide all, moved up and down in the ocean to depth of 6,000 feet and they report their data by satellite to stations. so this is how we are tracking today the changes in ocean temperature, and i am very confident that they are responding to the climate

system. we know now that more than 90% of the heat that has been trapped in the atmosphere by the accumulating greenhouse gases is being stored in the ocean. the oceans are an instant part of the climate system. now i'd like to say something that's already been introduced by my colleague. in 2001, when the ipcc report was put to bed, it was estimated that the sea over rise over the past century would be relatively modest. perhaps as small as 12 to 24 inches. but it was also not known how rapidly the ice on green land and ice in the antarctic could contribute to the sea level rise. a block of ice sitting on the counter and imagine turning up the temperature in the room you would imagine it would melt faster. that would be true. but what we didn't understand is what could become unstable and begin to lose i said to the ocean and once in the ocean the

ocean is former than the i.c.e. would melt more rapidly. if we look at the estimates of the sea over ice today and look at the next graph you can see if you go back to 1990 which is where the three bottom lines began to spin off to the right these are the projections of 1990 of sea level rise from the ipcc and you notice the red lines which the data refers to earlier by congressman speier, we see the blue line these are the data now available from satellites, which are tracking ocean elevation far more precisely for global competition than local estimates that the stations. and you will see the blue line extends to the upper part of the curve and that the upper, the middle and low were dotted lines for the estimates in 1990. in other words, the ipcc underestimated the quite starkly rise in sea levels. we now know the dustin the last

handful of years, roughly greenland and and arctic are changing, and best estimates of the sea level rise for this entry are between 2.5 to 3 feet. if you look at the next slide you can see on the bars of the bottom of the lower, hi year commission and even how year commission scenario through the ipcc and on the left or the sea over rise projected. and the circles at the top show the estimate today to immelt from greenland to embark to cut and from this you would see the assessment i gave of 2.5 to 3 feet. [inaudible] the carbon dioxide and added to the ocean changes the balance in the mineral composition of what we call the carvin -- ipcc systems. there are planktons with shells

or corals all make the shells out of the calcium carbonate. calcium carbonate is a very delicate balance in the ocean. the organism is taking of a dissolved constituents out of the water making the hard shell and the water is trying to put back into the solutions of the organism is constantly working to secrete materially and the ocean is trying to dissolve it. as you add carbon dioxide to the ocean, you change the composition, change the relationship with the system because it is more corrosive and referred to as ocean acidification. we know now at the rates which this is changing faster than at any time in the history that we can reconstruct over the last several years. now finally i am going to say something about the distribution of organisms. this is very close to where congressman markey and i live that sows in the lubber graphs of the distribution would change

with the warming that is expected. i would conclude by saying these changes are in the scientific literature beyond all bounds of historic record and i would just like to comment with an opinion in response to the last question that i think we have an obligation to do everything we can to take this message to the public. thank you. -- before, dr. mccarthy, very much. our next witness is christopher monckton, chief policy adviser for the science and public policy institute. he holds a diploma in journalism from the university college. he's worked as an editor at various news outlets including the universe, telegraph sunday magazine. today newspaper and the evening standard. from 1982 to 1986, he was an advisor to the u.k. prime minister indicate policy advice on a variety of issues. he is a founder and director of

the christopher monckton, let hid, which consults in public administration. we welcome you, sir. whenever you are ready please begin to read >> mr. chairman and a ranking member, it is a pleasure to see you both again and also the other members of the committee. thank you for having the courtesy to ask me to testify in front of you. i'm going to testify not of course as a scientist because i am not one but as a policy maker. and the role of party makers when confronted with scientists is to know what questions to ask. and i am going to raise one or two questions now about some of the evidence you've already heard. if you look at the slide now before you, that slight purports but does not demonstrate the rate of global warming is itself an increasing. this is taken from the ipcc 2000

report where it appears three times larger and in full color. however, it relies on a bogus statistical technique which is applying multiple trend lines to a single data set and if you choose the starting and ending points closely enough you can make it to go any direction you want. this is regularly relied upon by the ipcc. i challenged them on it recently in copenhagen. it also relied upon by the epa. it is effective as i shall now show. this graph is the same data but this time different trend lines on it. from 1905 to 1945 you will see the temperature rose faster than from 1905 to 2005. does this mean the rate of global warming is slowing down? know what doesn't. this graph and the previous one are bogus but using the same technique on the same data to

produce opposite conclusions. that is why the ipcc should not have used the first graph which has been so heavily relied upon. let us now see what the truth is. next slide. you will see there have been three periods of quite rapid warming over the last 150 years. 1860, and 1976 to 2001. the three rates of warming are exactly parallel. recently when senator vitter questioned john holder about this he tried to claim the third rate increase was greater than the other two. they are parallel at roughly 1.6 celsius per century. we can't explain what caused the first to rapid rates of warming because we don't have the instrumentation to find out. however in the satellite to the vertical line in there we are able to observe what caused most of the third piece of a rapid warming. next slide please.

and this is from a paper by dr. clear thinker and her colleagues in 2005 showing a very rapid increase in book is called global frightening, the amount of sunlight reaching the surface of the earth. enough global brightening as to cause a warming of one celsius degree fell not .37 celsius degrees was observed over the 18 year period. if anyone tries to tell you we cannot explain the global warming of the last 30 years except by reference to carbon dioxide this graph and others like it show otherwise. next slide, please. and if we now include that data from dr. paynter together with the various forces and temperature increases from the individual greenhouse gases we will see that what we end up with a say fourfold overstatement of the rate of increase in global temperature that was actually observed if we use the method to calculate what

the warming would have been, a fourfold the saturation. next slide. and this result is confirmed most recently by professor richard and his colleague choi in a publisher to the coke published again this year showing 11 models predicting various rates of four men from 1.4 to infinity. if you double the concentration. next slide, please. the reality however is just 9.7 which is less than a quarter of what the u.n. would predict for the doubling of the co2 concentration. the conclusion from this is that we can explain the warming by other methods, not for a much warming is going to happen and therefore one should be very careful before spending money -- next slide, please -- on cap-and-trade because even if we

were to shut down the entire global economy for 23 years you would forestall one fahrenheit degree of global warming even if the wind is right in estimating the amount of warming from the co2. there for the correct policy is to have the courage to do nothing you will lose nothing thereby. there are other problems to address i would recommend you address those. >> thank you very much. our fourth witness today is dr. crisford fields. dr. field is the founding director of the carnegie institution's department of global ecology and also professor of biology and environmental earth science at stanford university. he was a coordinating lead author for the 2007 assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. currently he is the co-chair of the impact adaptation and vulnerability portion of the

upcoming ipcc report. dr. field received his ph.d. from stanford in 1981 among his many distinctions he is a member of the national academy of sciences. we welcome you, dr. field. >> thank you, chairman markey, ranking member sensenbrenner and other distinguished members of the committee what i would like to do today is to couple minutes to talk about observe changes in the climate system. i won't be focusing on projection but only thing subserved and clear in the record. on the slides please. as the doctor hurrell said it is clear during the period we had good instrumental records from a weather stations the global climate is warm and the record here is the land temperatures from all of the world's stations since the 19th century the warming has been about 1.5 fahrenheit with the warmest years in the record in the last dozen, 2,009 based on the data from the nasa goddard institute for space studies was of the

third warmest year on record. if we look at the united states -- next slide, please -- you see a similar pattern but a lot more jumping as you would expect for a region that represents only about 2% of the planet's surface what i would like to do is discuss other ways we can infer either one of the climate changes nature telling us how the climate change. and the next slide, please. this is an overview of what the ipcc has concluded. we have a wide range of observations now spanning many decades on a tremendous number of physical and biological and these are things like what are the locations, what are the times when the buds burst or flowers flower. the ipcc exam given to of these and concluded there were over 29,000 statistically significant changes in the physical and biological systems and then it said well, which of these are

changing in the direction that's consistent with climate change being the forcing and which you were changing the direction that isn't consisting? the overwhelming conclusion is that a vast majority of these natural the maters are indicating global warming. 94% of the statistically significant changes in physical systems are consistent with global warming. only 90% of the statistical and sycophant trends in biological systems are consistent with global warming. one couldn't look at any single one of these trends and conclude that it's proof the climate system's warming but when you step back and look at all 29,000 there is a tremendous level confidence in members. now a lot of these trends are issues that don't necessarily have a lot of traction on the human systems but i want to focus on three that do. next slide. most states in the american west have half of the water supply for summertime from snowpacks

and we've seen dramatic changes in the water content of the snowpack of april 1st over the last 50 years in the pacific northwest there's been a decrease of about 30% in the interior there's been a decrease of about 20%. this is the water supply that water regions depend on to make it through the summer and the last 50 years we've seen a profound decreases. next slide please. another impact clear from the data is wildfires have been increasing across american west and the frequency of wild fire sensitive to the temperature anomalies. but you can see on the plot is the black line tracing annual temperature almost trees is precisely the variation a member of wildfires. essentially the risk of wildfires goes up dramatically as the temperatures grows up. if third observed trend i want to talk about this in the next slide the trend observed changes

in the days with the heaviest precipitation. what you can see is from the middle of the last century there has been a 67% increase in the days with heaviest precipitation in all of the eastern u.s. there's been a 20% increase with heavy precipitation. heavy precipitation is essentially the driving force for the kind of floods that we have seen in tennessee recently. we can't look at any single whether even and ascribe it with 100% constant to climate but what we can see is this kind of change in the climate system is increasing the risk of the events. i think all of us would agree to can't get in a car with a bold type year and have confidence that you are going to have an accident but you can say that you would consider the risk unacceptable. with limited think it is very clear that we have now pushed the system to the point where it

basically has four bald tires and flashing check engine. thank you very much. >> thank you, dr. field to read the final witness is dr. lisa graumlich of the school of natural resources and the environment at the university of arizona. her research focuses on the interplay of global climate change and natural resource management. she has also directed the university of arizonan's institute for the study of planet earth and montana state university big sky institute. recently she served on the roxburgh inquiry panel that reviewed the scientific work of the university of east climate research unit following the release of private e-mail of some of their scientists. dr. graumlich received her ph.d. from the college of forest researchers at washington. she is a fellow of the american association for the advancement of science.

we welcome you, dr. graumlich. >> chairman markey and ranking member sensenbrenner and the rest of the members of the committee, thank you so much for inviting me to speak with you today on this very important hearing. in what i am going to say today and in my written testimony, i have focused on the observational record of current and past climate variability and i do that as a tree ring scientist, eight in for, what just about the kind of perspective that one brings to this question as someone that has looked at the tree ring records in the past and i'm going to take you back in time 20 years when i was an assistant professor at ucla as the tree rings scientist i was off in the sierra nevada to look for old trees and in fact found them, very old fox tails pauling's --

pines. what shocked me when i got there, not the oak trees, i expected them, but above the tree line there were very large dead trees. a very large dade trees above the current autrey lines, not just a couple but hundreds of them. and what that meant was that in previous year us the tree line had been higher in thawing temperatures had been warmer. so as a trained streaming scientist it turns out we can accurately date the innermost ring of the dead trees that tells when the strings were established and the outer ring which is a little sort of 50 years or so hero because the loss but it tells when the trees die. the last three years the tree line as high year and then somewhere around 950 a.d. there

was a massive die off and tree line reestablished of the current rate. went back to the lab to look at the data and store to also reflect on the fact if you thought about the dates, those dates were consistent with the time at which they call walleyes to greenland and iceland and the days at which the trees died with the same time the colonies failed. some 20 years ago it is a true of come. one is i became fascinated with what caused the long term variability is in climate. but the second outcome of i propose today was that i was very much struck by the fact when i described my research to the public it was it appeared to them i have a strong ability to say that yes, current climate trends were well within the envelope of natural variability because i had trees in the

sierra nevada and historical data in the north atlantic's. that is not climate science. that is assembly of a couple of just so stories that tell us about claimant at two places on the first surface of the earth and what has happened subsequently is along with dozens of colleagues we had very carefully scanned the earth for other kind of high resolution proxy data, tree ring records, historical documents, i scored, any number of settlements to try to understand how they reflect or don't reflect temperature data. in doing that, we discovered that in fact there were a couple other places around the globe for this warm period and the other eurasian part of the arctic and parts of the north atlantic and the western part of the u.s. and other places like

the northwest and the pacific they were cooler during the medieval warm period and that this dozens and dozens of peer reviewed studies have allowed us to be able to research with great confidence after 20 years of looking for these kind of records that in fact the late 20th century is the warmest period of the earth history and the last 500 to 1,000 years. spec finally it is these kind of data that were assembled by the climatic research unit at the university of the anglia. i had the opportunity to participate with one of the panel members -- as one of the panel members in the assessment panel and in looking at that, and i want to quote the key response we saw no evidence of the law but malpractice in any of the work of the climate research units and had it been there we believe we would have detected it. rather, we found a small group

of dedicated slightly disorganized researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. the full report from the panel is appended to my own testimony. thank you. specs before, dr. graumlich. the chair will now recognize himself for a round of questions today is election day in the united kingdom and it is unclear which party will emerge as the winner. what is clear is the leaders of the three major parties believe the carbon pollution must be addressed. mick clegg system and is running out in the next parliament is the last chance we have as a nation to introduce the bold measures of radical legislation leading us to set us on the path to green and sustainable growth in the future. gordon brown of the labor party has said everybody knows the

importance of climate change. it is one of the key issues that has moved me most and meet me determined to act internationally as well as nationally over the past few years. david cameron leader of the conservatives have said we all agree climate change is one of the greatest most daunting challenges of our age. we have a moral imperative to act and act now. and this concern about global warming is and new for british politicians. please plan the videotape. >> the danger of global warming is real enough to make changes and sacrifices so that we do not speak to its comfortable in its indications to the discovery and there will be even more far-reaching.

>> so, dr. hurrell, despite all of the e-mail ipcc issues what is your conclusion in terms of the strength of the case that has been made that the global warming israel and the consequences are catastrophic? >> i very much agree with those conclusions. as i tried to stay in my written and oral testimony much of the strength lies not in individual papers and individual datasets and analyses but rather the fact that there are multiple lines of evidence conducted by multiple investigators as we heard in the other oral testimony spanning many different physical and biological variables that give a very consistent picture of the global warming of the warming world and the science is advanced to the point that we can clearly a tribute these changes to human activities and in particular the buildup of the

greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. >> dr. mccarthy, fort monckton had the implication of the global record. can you tell what is happening in the global temperature record and if it is attributable to human activities? >> if there have been a number of efforts over the last may be ten to 15 years. to use the knowledge we have of what could change climate and some of these factors referred to by mr. monckton we know that greenhouse gas influence climate. we know that clouds influence climate and soil were variability can influence climate and there are natural cycles as referred to earlier as the el niño cycle and when you use these known aspects of climate to reconstruct climate over the last few decades you find there are not big missing

pieces that the changes in climate we have observed can be explained. why was 1998 such an exceptionally warm year i will refer to jim hurrell probably the warmest amine yell we know for the last several hundred years. why was 1992 and 1993, 1994 unusually cool relative to the years before? immediately following the eruption of mount pinatubo the largest volcanic to have affected climate, the most recent volcano very much in the news probably won't have much effect on climate because the release of the material from that volcano was low in the atmosphere of course we know it interrupted air-traffic. when you put the pieces together you find there are not big gaps. there are periods you can't explain clammed exchange. after time it becomes difficult but if you mark from like 1980 which is when they have satellite observations of ice in

1991 when mount pinatubo was erected the satellites could measure directly its contributions in the upper atmosphere. when you put them together they are no great mystery how the climate is changed over the last ten to 20 years and it is entirely consistent with the forcing of greenhouse gases. >> dr. field why don't you quickly try to answer that question as well. islamic you know one of the major focal areas of climate science the last several decades has been a topical to fingerprinting. how can we really be sure that the climate change now on equivocal is a consequence of human action. and there are a large number of independent climate fingerprints for human action most of which don't require fancy climate models at all. a good example of a fingerprint is that if the climate change is caused by greenhouse gases we expect most of the warming to the in the lower atmosphere with cooling in the lower atmosphere exactly as we see. dr. mccarthy already mentioned

the balance between the heat that qalqilya should be in the climate system and the amount of heat we are actually see in the ocean. the fingerprinting techniques are very, very powerful at discriminating alternative explanations and the point overwhelmingly that the human release of the heat trapping gases as a dominant cause of warming over the last half century. >> and he will agree, dr. graumlich? >> yes i do. >> do you each a disagree with lord monckton's analysis of whether or not in fact there is a global warming trend and that it is a danger to the planet? do you disagree with him? dr. speed? >> yes i do. >> dr. mccarthy? >> mr. monckton said he's not a scientist, he works in the policy arena and on the basis of the science he doesn't think it calls for policy action. i think most scientists who look at the data believe it does need action. >> dr. field?

>> many scientists have looked at the issue. warming is unequivocal, the evidence for the human fingerprint is very, very strong and the prospect of continued warming in the future is very strong. >> so you do disagree with lord monckton? >> his i do. >> i disagree with lord monckton's conclusion based on the evidence to present as well. >> thank you. my time is expired. let me turn and recognize the gentleman from wisconsin. >> thank you mr. chairman. dr. graumlich, you were on the panel, weren't you? >> yes i was. >> do you have a professional relationship with any of the scientists criticized during the climate gate? >> as a member of the paleoclimate attic community i have an acquaintance ship with many of the people that were mentioned in the e-mails. you are probably unaware that of those, dr. malcolm hughes and i are from the university of

arizona and that we both have a professional relationship with the laboratory of treatment. >> have you co-authored papers with dr. hughes? >> i've co-authored one book chapter with dr. hughes. >> has your work rely on information or data from the cru? >> no it hasn't. >> the retrieving data and the hockey stick and graf were directly called into question by climate date. have you rely on any of that in and your professional work? >> the data that myself and my students have produced have been at times part of these very large compilations of data that have allowed us to assess the nature of climate for the ability of the last 500 to 1,000 years. the hockey stick is never quoted

in my own professional work. >> okay. what did the panel learn from critics during the review? >> what i think the panel took away from the cru is that in particular what we discovered was foreseeable the archive of data and the development of the documentation on the computer code such as they could be widely distributed by the general public was something that for years haven't really been a high priority often it was on funded by the kind of scientific funding available and the stolen e-mail as well as other things from motivated both

scientist to do more public archiving of data -- >> did the panel interview any of the critics of the cru data? >> know that wasn't our charge. >> how can you get an objective viewpoint if you just look at one side of the issue? >> the charge to the panel was to look at the scientific integrity as a publication of the cru unit and we fulfilled that charge. >> and that was an extremely limited charge to the preordained conclusion. was there any analysis of the actual e-mails or the bayh uses the exposed? >> that wasn't part of our charging that was actually part of the other kind of inquiries that have gone on. >> were you aware of any of the diocese of the other members of the panel? >> i believe the panel was

chosen to minimize the by yes. >> personal financial interests and and how global warming policy he is the director of an international environmental organization we call the quote international peace also the chairman of a green energy firm president of the capture association and there was an article that appeared in the times of london on april 14th lord roxburgh himself even told the university is unfit to chair the panel because of conflict of interest and morning people might question his independence. were any of those issues raised either out of roxburgh or the other members of the panel? >> those issues were not raised. what we were focusing on is the science of the climate research unit has revealed in the publication record and in their day-to-day operations. and lord oxford was actually

functioned very much as someone who has a ph.d. in the earth sciences and brought his scientific mind set to the task. >> if he is a director of an advocacy organization called a global international, i have had meetings with and tiffin ever since kyoto together with the intertwining of the other members i don't think that this was an objective review. i don't know how the universities and united kingdom get to the bottom of the potential scandals but i don't think our news media here in the united states would allow any university to get away with a panel that would come to a preordained conclusion and i yield back the balance of my time. >> i guess i am having the terms

at go inline year. it seems that it's a very stark difference. dr. graumlich, you were talking about focusing on the science. our purpose today was to do precisely that, and i find it a little embarrassing and sad that the minorities witness is a journalist with no scientific training who didn't come here with any information against the science. it has been intriguing. i have heard mr. monckton i've often thought appropriately named in the past and it's entertaining but it doesn't feel very much with the essence of what we are talking about here. my sense is that, dr. graumlich, there were several other studies. one by the british house of

commons. there was won by the university itself if i understand correctly. one by penn state. all have looked at the science and concluded that this is a tempest in a teapot. there is nothing here that contradicts the basic science that has been reintegrated by the author of three di panel; is that correct? >> that is correct and if i could add to a list negative institutions at arizona at the request of the president, all of the e-mail and query was made, every single e-mail was read including those that dealt with dr. hughes and there was a finding there was no impropriety that affected the scientific conclusions of dr. hughes and others. sprick i suppose i should

declare for the purposes of the record i worked with quote international and other areas dealing for instance with serious problems and international water supply. i don't think it has affected my object of pity or do i noticed any sinister underlying motives or international agenda. dr. mccarthy is good to see you again. i'm struck. we first met in your office ten, 12 years ago where you were kind enough to help sort of walk me through some of these issues and in the course of the ten or 12 years, not coming back now to 86 when you talked about the trends that caught your attention that in the ten or 12 years since we first met have you seen anything in terms of the trend line?

can you talk about whether that has gotten more urgent or less in that decade or more? >> congressman one thing i remember distinctly was our discussion about infrastructure and wondering the degree to which planning particularly for to build infrastructure, the bridges, tunnels, mass-transit systems, utilities of all sorts should begin to take into consideration for the coastal cities the prospect of the sea level rise and at that time i confess this is something we need to be concerned about in the future but if you took the best estimates of the ipcc at that time the planning horizons were out many decades. that is all become compressed over time in the last decade because the new knowledge of the rate at which the ice loss is

going to affect sea level rise so you look at the coastal cities and the shape of florida with the to play five or 3.5 feet of sea level rise it is a different looking for the and also you think that rye is just the height of the counter is a lot but when you consider the low-lying land and how far it reaches inland the gulf coast very much in the news these days will be dramatically affected by the sea level rise and of course there are entire island nations with a combination of sea level rise and the loss of coral and the ocean will be at risk so that would be my biggest since a change and in that period as has been pointed out, we have seen temperature record after temperature record logan for the average temperature. >> and in terms of the, quote, mistakes of the ipcc, i mean, what you have demonstrated with

your testimony is that the studies, the projections were very conservative. people tend not to appreciate how the ipcc process ase. when you get a bunch of scientists together and get them to agree on a statement trimming as many caveat as you can because the scientists always wanted and caveat. we are not entirely sure what this is what we would expect, you end up with a conservative statement without extremes on either side and in this case in sea level it was a great conservative statement. >> thank you to read and in terms of the risk at stake we take in the northwest very seriously diminishing of the snowpack, the less water content in the community negative i live in and the fact that more than

half of the american population is in the us 673 coastal counties when you're talking about inches let alone a fee to this is pretty compelling at least in my mind. the point i guess in terms of a policy perspective based on the potential risks, based on the economic, security problems and waste of resources is there any good scientific reason not to advance sound policies even if we were not concerned about global warming? stunning silence. [laughter] why don't we -- i will turn to mr. shadegg for your inquiry.

>> thank you, mr. acting chairman. that's what you are. first i want to begin by apologizing. i had to duck in and out a couple of times because i had another hearing going forward on the health care issue. second, i want to welcome dr. graumlich. you are now at the university of arizona where i received both my undergraduate and law degree and i am pleased to have to hear and proud of the egg university of arizona and proud of being a recognized for the knowledge and skill of the scientists and professors. i guess i have to begin dr. monckton some reference to door naim i think that is a little inappropriate. but that is what we are going to do in this hearing, soviet. i believe you were just told because you are not a scientist you didn't bring forward any scientific any information value to this hearing.

somehow i don't seem to agree to it if you brought forth an analysis of scientific information which i thought was fairly clear and i guess i would like to see you at least have an opportunity to retain the picture because apparently some people in the room didn't understand what you said was here is scientific data, and here's how it was presented, here is the conclusion that was drawn from the scientific data and why that conclusion is in fact and supported and apparently that he escaped the attention or the understanding of some people here. is there a possibility we could call that back up and you could explain it to us? >> me we have the slide again? >> i am most grateful. i think what is happening here is a certain amount of politics has crept in on one side of this date. >> what a shock. [laughter] >> and therefore in a convenient has been dismissed as not being science at all. that is the ipcc's graf with a fee for separate trend lines on

it. that as i've said is an inappropriate technique >> while we are done that won the purpose of the lions are ipcc? and all of the lines slope upward at different angles. >> the slope up at steeper and steeper the implication which is stated in the report being that there is an acceleration of the rate of global warming. no, there isn't. as we see from the subsequent slides. first of all, if you choose different starting points and ending points for where you do your trend lines you can make the lions ago, make the trend go the opposite direction. there you've got 1905 to 1945. was more than twice the rate of 1905 to 2005. >> so it's the same data? >> same datacom the same technique. a bogus technique and that is why you get opposite results

depending where you choose to start and end of the line. sprick incorrectly analyze on the earlier draft show the increase of warming. >> and incorrectly utilized again. next slide here is the true position you have the three parallel rapid rates of warming to read the first to cannot have been caused by co2 on any of you. the increase over the period wasn't enough even on the u.n. formula to cause that. the third one we know was largely caused because it was the satellite iraq and largely caused by a naturally occurring decreasing called coverage chiefly in the tropics allowing more sunlight to hit the ground. and that, if you use the year and multiplying up of the warming effect that should have caused one celsius degree of warming and only .7 celsius was in fact observed. so we now know their rapid rate of warming was caused by a

natural yvette almost entirely. >> could you clarify something for the panel and for the people in the room listening? what is the satellite era? >> from about 1983 and onward we had satellite up there not only measuring changes in global surface temperature, which they do by reference to the platinum resistance from arbiters' comparing that with the temperatures they see on the ground, but also changes in outgoing radiation and changes in cloud cover. and all of these satellite data show exactly what has caused the warming of the most recent rapid period and it was largely to do with reduction cloud cover that happened quite naturally over the period. nothing to do with co2. >> and with regard to -- you don't take the position that there has been warming. >> there has been warming. you can see it on the graph. of course there is venturing. you've got that wrong when i say there hasn't been warming to get there has been put in the one

period we can tell about what caused the warming, the satellite period it is clear though boreman was largely naturally caused and there is paper after paper in the literature establishing this. go on again, next slide. dr. pinker's paper established that is largely caused by a naturally occurring reduction of cloud cover, extra sunlight reaching the ground. next slide,lease. we go on here to feed 11 models all predicting very rapid rates of warming but this is the relationship between warming of the surface and extra outgoing radiation. most of the models predict there would be less radiation into space a few warm the surface. the truth however as you see in the middle panel now that is the earth radiation experiment satellite measurement. it shows a very rapid increase in the amount of outgoing

radiation escapes into space as you warm the surface. what that means very simply is the radiation is and being tracked down here to cause warming and anything like the rate of the human predicted and that is why the professor of mit concluded the amount of warming you can expect to get from a doubling of co2 concentration -- this is scientific measurement cannot pleading with the xbox 360 models, it is only .7 compared with a 3.26 plus or minus, not .69, which is the best system of the u.n. climate panel. 4.7 for the doubling of co2 concentration is small, harmless and generally beneficial. >> i thank the gentleman and brigety indulgence of the chair in allowing him to answer. i guess your conclusion is -- i will conclude with this remark -- we should do nothing. it appears the majority of the witnesses. one witness here it is pretty evident to me that whether we do nothing or what we do is clearly

a dispute about the evidence and it is not in fact apparently agreed upon. mr. chairman, i would like at some point to ask unanimous consent to put into the record the actual e-mail which were exchanged, which i believe show the dialogue going on with regard to the analysis of the ipcc report. >> without objection it will be included in the record. the gentleman's time is expired and the chair recognizes the gentleman from washington state, mr. inslee. >> i would note there is a dispute about whether we landed on the moon and there is a dispute about whether the earth is round and a dispute about gravity and some places. >> [inaudible] >> we will get to you, mr. lord monckton shortly of on to talk to the scientists on the panel first thank you three much. doctor i appreciate your bringing up the ocean as a vacation issue that the doctor is called the evil twin of

climate change. and i would like you to describe what actually happens to species when they are exposed and i want to put up a slide i believe i got from the doctor the basically shows what happens when you put a pteropod or small creature in the water on the left to see its picture. these are rebel relatively small and this shows what happens when you put a pteropod in water that will be in the same as a conditions that will exist in the year 2100 if we do not change the course. it basically shows according to the doctor that the pteropod melts. the low calcium carbonate structure actually melts. and i just wonder if you could describe what they would look like from the acid in the standpoint in the next hundred years if we don't change course and what that does to the

plankton that serves or what it could do to the bottom of the food chain? >> thank you. this, like a lot of the other change we are talking about, is not simply a difference of one condition to another but the time period over which it happens. so if we look at the changes in the ocean over the last million years every 100,000 years or so we saw ice advance, retreat. we saw organisms that lived in the high north and of course the equator during the period moving back on land and into the ocean. it's interesting there are few know in their history being able to accommodate the changes is essentials for survival but when you crank the rates of change up the change during the period. temperature change. when you crank them up 100 or close to 1,000 in some cases,

then you exceed the capacity of ecosystems to adjust. now in this case the pteropod, i was tempted to put a picture of a colorful animal. pteropod are beautiful animals and if you have one in a beaker to foot of the mollusk is thin and flat we call them see butterflies. if you see them swimming the are spectacularly beautiful, a very delicate shell. they are a very important part of the food web in the for salmon. we know the pink salmon depends heavily on the pteropod for its food. that is one example. i mention of this. microscopic plankton and of course coral are subject to the same condition. that is as the carbon dioxide is added to the ocean more rapidly than it can adjust and if the are being added over thousands of years rather than over 100 would be a different story. but we are rapidly and then the

constant tension of the animal we are trying to keep the skeletal material, its shell from dissolving it becomes more and more in the water that pulls the minerals back into solution. so this is the condition and of course we know in the past there's been more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and we know that in the past there were periods where organisms like this disappeared. the conditions were not suitable for the coral or mollusks to survive so this is an important issue. >> i'm told the water is more acidic. 30% more acidic than the preindustrial times. what will they be at the end of the century approximately? >> if things don't change -- i don't have to express in terms of percentage but if you take these extrapolations as is done here experimentally you can show what the effect would be of that changing acid balance referred to in the vernacular

acidification they are becoming less but it will dissolve the minerals. >> thank you. i was impressed -- we are here as the house of representatives to have a state of the science discuss about climate change -- and i was impressed those that have denied the threat this poses to the planet earth couldn't produce one scientist, not one scientist to propose a hypothesis to explain the earth is undergoing the changes now say produce somebody that doesn't even have a field background in science and that's what they produce to try to convince americans somehow that this is a big hoax. i think that's impressive or unimpressive depending how you look at it. so i want to ask about board monckton's viewpoint and basis

for that. fort monckton, when did you start serving in the house of lords? i noticed you brought greetings from the mother of parliament to congress to our athletic democracy. when did you start serving in the house of lords? >> i have never sat on the house of lords as you have probably been informed -- >> so basically i want to understand -- thank you. you've answered my question. you come here and call yourself a lord to try to convince the world to ignore something that threatens our grand kids and you're not even a lord -- >> [inaudible] >> or monckton, we ask the questions and you will answer them. thank you very much. >> thankvery well [inaudible] >> to come to our democracy, sir, calling yourself lord monckton. not only are you not a scientist, you're not even a

lord who served in the house of parliament; isn't that correct? the house of lords, is it correct you did not serve? >> i've already answered that, sir. >> thank you. we not only have the deniers who denied this clear science upon which there is enormous global consensus that can not only produce one scientist to deny this clear consensus, they can't even send us a real word from the house of lords. now i think that says a lot about the status of this debate which we should not be having because we have an overwhelming consensus, and i note that it's not just by these four scientists. joe barton, our good friend, asked the national oceanographic and atmospheric administration to review your statement, lord monckton, and this is what they said. quote, the fact that global the average surface air temperatures has shown a lower trend or a slight cooling over the last

seven years is not an accurate reflection of the long-term general trend. in fact, calculation of the trend of the last seven years is a gross mischaracterization of the longer-term trend. the last seven years have been part of a strong trend that began in the 1970's which is attributable to human influences study of ipcc in 2007. during the last seven years six of the seven warmest years on record have all been observed based on global, land and ocean data. do you see long-term trend is over such a short period of time as comparable to estimating the height of the swell by looking at the short period waves on top of a swell, and of quote. more, the people who work for our athletic democracies have concluded we don't need a fake lord to tell us not to act. we need real science and we need to have a clean energy policy. thank you. ..

i'm correctly addressed as -- i am by virtue of the 1999 act and i know i have the right to vote was taken away from my father so i have never voted in the house of lords nor have i pretended otherwise and i think that really should deal with that matter. thank you. >> thank you.

mr. monckton, what could climate scientists do to regain the public trust in their work? what can they do to ensure transparency and accountability that climate scientists community especially as we look toward development of the upcoming ipcc's assessment report? >> let me, first of all, began with a quotation from noaa response to my britain testimony which essentially i won't give a copy before this hearing and i think somebody has that there, but what was quoted was focusing on one short thing which mentioned that for the last seven or eight years there has been an amount of global cooling and there has been my temperature record goes back as far as the near proterozoic era three anger 50 villiers' ago, the grafts i showed today are for the last 150 years. so i don't think i can be accused of having an reasonably

jury picked the periods over which i was looking at the data. what i think scientist therefore need to do if they want to start demanding the respect of the public because there are losing that respect of this issue is two stop chattering about consensus, science has never been done by consensus and isn't going to be now, stop using in the ipcc document references to documents not produced by. sources but green propaganda groups and journalists. and confine their analysis to the peer review literature as i did today. and all so they must make sure that instead of trying to push one agenda and shout down anyone who dares to put an alternative point of view as i have politely sought to do today, they should treat those who disagree with them with courtesy.

here with some care what they have to say. instead of dismissing an argument they perhaps don't understand as one of the panelists did after commenting on my testimony, they should instead engage in a rational debate with the peer review literature with the many scientists who disagree with the official line and, of course, scientists could have been paraded today. but quite rightly, the minority groups that the majority would merely want to throw that pass them decided instead somebody with a certain amount of experience in politics and a thick skin should take and take what is thrown at him which i'm happy to do so to spare the many diligent scientists who are questioning every aspect of this ludicrous scare to get on with their work and that is what in the end is going to decide this matter if he's going to be

diligent scientific inquiry and not the holding of childish politics. >> anyone can dance to this question. how are the scientists funded? are there grants or organizations that give finding? do think that has a potential to corrupt the process? do they feel beholden to certain results because of that? >> that is a very shrewd point. the only reason why the notion that consensus the side science has unfortunately -- unfortunately crept in. the signs effectively is a monopoly and there's only one paying customer. that's the unwilling taxpayer and because of that and because of the grant funding structure and because of the resultant academic pressures to come form, it takes enormous courage for any scientist to stand out against the political will line

that is now being taken among the scientific institutions and say, hang on a moment, the numbers don't add up, i've just shown you today various points at which the numbers for a plan they don't add up. there are established in the peer review literature and established by measurement and not by modeling. you've heard the rather qualitative replies of the four scientists here. they didn't really quote numbers much, they were quoting models. but science is best done most accurately down by measurement and those are rely chiefly on measurement are finding that there isn't the problem we are told there is. >> thank you, sir. >> congressman cleaver. >> thank you mr. chairman. dr. field, and i will get the other three to respond to this as well. i think all of the denials and all of the talk of climategate

has had an impact at least in the united states. in 1997 gallup began conducting polls on attitudes in the united states on climate change and tragically the number of people who believe that climate change has been exaggerated according to gallup the latest poll was 40%. until the latest poll, the number of those who embrace climate change is being impacted by human activity was on the way up. so the folks who have been fighting this have unfortunately from my vantage point been winning. the poll also shows, and maybe this is one of the reasons, that

in areas where there was extreme cooling over the past winter, those people polled in those areas tend to embrace the theory that it's an exaggeration. one of the questions i would like to ask is, what atmospheric condition now needs to be a play for a higher level on the planet? >> well, perhaps one comment on those lines, indeed, as they tried to emphasize in my testimony global warming does not mean that changes are uniform everywhere pirko there are pronounced regional and seasonal variations and this is due to the national -- natural

variability. we still expect under climate change that we will have snowstorms, we will still have cold periods, cold periods become the most frequent as we go to the future but they will certainly occur. it in terms of of some of the heavy precipitation events as my colleagues have spoken to today, a key ingredient in that is that as the atmosphere warms as it has unmistakably been observed, the warming, the atmosphere can hold more moisture and therefore any given storm will precipitate more than it otherwise would have. as we've also been very explicit that does not mean that you can and should be in the individual store into climate change, but on average and statistically we would expect the increasing trend in heavy precipitation event including heavy snowstorms and this, indeed, is being observed over many parts of the world. >> though its counter intuitive

the scientific truth is we have more snow if it is warmer. >> again, that relates to the ability of the hemisphere to hold moisture, warm atmosphere can hold more moisture so if its nose and will sell more. >> dr. mccarthy. >> thank you, this is a very complicated subject and one can take one little piece of it and make a headline out of it and find that it's very true but it sounds like a contradiction. the place i live right now in the pacific northeast, what limits snow fall and winter is on temperature and moisture and that moisture may come off the atlantic with a nor'easter and may come from the gulf war may come off the lakes, the great lakes. so one of the early projections of climate models is in a warmer world we would have more snow in

greenland and antarctica. now, that to many people saw like a contradiction but, indeed, for exactly the reasons that dr. hurrell explains to a warmer atmosphere holds moisture, the air comes off the ocean over antarctica and greenland. early studies showed that was, indeed, happening. not possible until we have very precise estimations of the satellites but even though they are gaining snowe more rapidly in antarctica, it's the call this continent and also the highest average elevation of a consonant, the windiest and also the driest. it's our biggest desert said the ocean around it, more moisture in the air in the interior but we see now as you look carefully it's gaining but losing at the edges and on balance antarctica and greenland are you losing is more rapidly. getting back to you start of this comment, one of those short phrases you can make a headline

at of it and often the public is very confused because they see these fragments of information and don't understand how they fit together. >> thank you. that's important. one of the things we've got to do is to be able to figure out a way to present complicated information. i think the newspapers are supposed to be printed then a sixth grade level and i think something as important as this we got to figure out how to simplify the language for the public because otherwise they're going to get a headache and bailout because not because they're not concerned, but they don't get it. some of this we learned in eighth grade in.

my frustration is simplify the language and i don't know how to do it. >> and i make further comment? >> yes. >> consensus seems to give a bad word but when decision makers come to a group of scientists and say, tell us the simplest version of the story, that's for the consensus statement comes from. if you get them together and say what you want to talk about, we talk about the parts we disagree on and the things we don't understand. in furthering the signs and if you made to rosters that say where the savings on the subject that say there's a problem because the climate is changing, we know the causes of that. if those trends continue all of this sort of impact we talked about will come and play. who is on the ledger? the national academy of science, in my testimony i included a statement last october, 18 organizations in the u.s., they look at any of our society's,

american ecological society, all of their statements are very similar and i've given examples. so we're asked at times to simplify this. this is the consensus where it comes in place so i don't sit around talking about things, and talk about what we disagree on. >> thank you. >> thank you all. the gentleman's time has expired. we are about to be summoned to the floor with bells and whistles for our robust democracy on the floor of the house. we deeply appreciate your coming here and i think any review of the record today, the materials you have submitted, i think illustrates the purpose of the hearing but we've been so patient with this. we want to make sure that have apologize for trying to bring to a conclusion but we would like to give every member of the

panel a minute for a summary conclusion you may have, any take away. if you decided it was just cloud cover in your wrong -- any wrapup gods? >> i would appreciate the opportunity to make including comments. i think that transparency with making data available and codes available was extremely important. that's something that by and large the climate's sensitivity does a good job of. i worked at the national center for climate research in boulder, colorado or we developed one of the world's leading climate models in the world that is used to understand climate as well as project future changes in climate. that entire code and all the data going to that model are publicly available. you can go to the website right now and down the bad data. i think the climate science,

standing and the threat of the sciences, makes a very valiant attempt to be as transparent as possible. i also want to emphasize in terms of the ipcc process and that it is, indeed, an assessment and the consensus view is, indeed, a powerful view. the ipcc report did in exhaustive job of documenting not only what we do know but also what we don't know and where the grand challenges are and with the uncertainties are. there are many, many. papers that are thoroughly assessed in those international assessment reports. and we saw some of the mr. monckton assessments those are based on several studies and i can take the time if he wanted to go through those on an individual basis and point out some of the flaws of the studies as well.

that's the scientific process and, indeed, for the papers that he's highlighted there are other papers in the literature that counter the points and raise issues. very quickly, the final last word, what i did not address was the importance of communicating and i thoroughly agree that's a very fundamental, very critical thing that all scientists need to do. >> thank you, i will make four points. in my testimony, what we're talking about here are not just changes, changes we've made to the past been very rapid changes, rapid rates of change, rapid rise in he level, rapid changes in ocean chemistry, and that's an important part of the message. secondly, and like to say that we should think about this like assessing risk. what if you're right and what if we're wrong? what's the worst we could do?

as you puzzle year with that logic think of how we assess risk whether we buy insurance for houses are not. i don't think my house will burn down but i wouldn't want to own one without fire insurance. we look at the risk and they could we err on the right side or the wrong side and i think we want to air on the right side. then you look at the projections for cost and increasingly from the report's findings you see that doing the right thing to was away from dependence on fossil fuels is not expensive and there are enormous benefits many of which haven't been looked back. finally, if you go through the exercise you see that we have a limited time in which two act. we're going to avoid the things we've talked today, the high consequence low probability changes. it a lot of models show that if we do not act in the next decade to ban these curves and we're

entering dangerous territory. finally, we all need to communicate better. scientists are clumsy at this and it's not our profession. we learn how to do science and not communicate well and we need to work,. >> the central point of light to leave the panel with is that there is no hurry. the -- if you do nothing about this at all, for the whole of the next 23 years, the worst that will happen using the u.n. own estimates is a one fahrenheit degree warming. which will be largely harmless and beneficial. so you have plenty of time to check the studies, just a few of which i have shown you today in the peer review and literature suggesting that there is another side to this story, another side

based not on modeling but measurement. which establishes with increasing clarity establishes that there is no scientific problem, even if there were adaptation and and where and if necessary would be orders of magnitude cheaper and more cost-effective than trying to stop the emission of carbon dioxide. who is going to get hurt if you start closing down coal-fired power stations, pushing up gas prices and electricity? who is getting her? the working people of america. is that a good thing? i don't think so and nor should do. >> figure much the opportunity to make a couple concluding remarks. one of the things that they really needs to be emphasized is that the scientific evidence on climate change is based on many

lines of independent evidence, on thousands and thousands of scientific studies that are quantitatively careful, some based on metals, many days of observation and all that together in a fabric in which the general kinds of conclusions that indicate that climate is changing in the changes are important are very real. it's also important to note there are important unknowns. some of those have been discussed today in many of the unknowns are in the direction of risks that are potentially higher than we've been able to accurately categorize on the risks of 7c level rise, the risk of carbon release from ecosystems, and the risk of traumatic changes in the earth systems. they've all been difficult to quantify and are generally recognized in the more conservative kinds of assessments that typically come from the ipcc. i also want to emphasize the point that dr. mccarthy made about the importance of dealing

climate science is essentially risk-management. we don't know precisely what the future will look like, but we have a very clear picture of the risk elements introduced by changes that people are causing in the earth's system and we can have an increasingly clear picture of the consequences of a common-sense investment in decrease in those impacts. finally i want to conclude with a very strong comment that mr. monckton conclusions we don't need to do anything now is fundamentally misleading. we haven't seen crises that we can unambiguously it to be two climate change but we have seen increasing risks to a wide range of systems and also know that the longer we delay the more difficult against address the problem and the more expensive it gets. this is a problem where common sense investments in the short term are likely to pay big dividends relative to waiting

and hoping against hope that the situation isn't as bad as the signs indicates. >> thank you, dr. field. ms. graumlich. >> thank you for the final comment. i like to for some simply agree with my colleagues on this panel that the scientific consensus is clear and that the urgency to act is very much upon us, but i'm struck by congressman cooper's comments about the degree to which public perception is perhaps lagging behind the perceptions of some of you on this particular committee. i want to give my view from the southwest. i'm part of a land grant institution that has a very strong relationship with the ranching community in the southwest. since 2002 we've been in a deep drought and there's very good scientific evidence that that's due to the northern migration of the westerlies that a longer bringing as much precipitation as there was before. our ranching community is not

arguing about whether climate change is here are not, they're coming to us saying what are we going to do about its. and climate is the number one issue in this community and they're asking us to give them guidance about how to adapt both in the short-term and long-term. so i think that the public perception that climate is an issue whether it's called climate change or not is particularly keen along the peoples of the southwest. secondly, as a professor and a large public university, we share a concern about the increase in scientific literacy that's going to be demanded to address the complex tradeoffs we're coming up against and very much engaged in that enterprise. thank you. >> thank you very much, ms. graumlich. we think he to do for your participation in this very

important. we will continue with additional hearings on this issue so that we can ensure that all of science is out in the way that makes it possible for the public to be able to make an informed decision as to whether or not there really is such a thing as global warming that has been caused by man-made activity. we think that there is no more important the three can have in the congress and our country and in the experts that we had today i think very clearly laid out the scientific reality in and has only added to my conviction that we have to act and act soon. the waxman markey bill passed last june 26th and 2009, the senate has a bill which was --

with a little luck will begin consideration of in the relatively near future with the time is of the essence. so with the thanks of the committee, this hearing is adjourned. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

now the confirmation hearing for president obama's nominee to head u.s. customs commissioner and border protection. alan bersin has been serving in that position since the end of march following a recent appointment and he base questions about the legal status of several household workers under his employee. held by the senate finance committee this is an hour 40 minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> the year will come to order. in the door roosevelt said it and i quote, the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity made america. mr.