i want to thank all of you for your work. i lock forward to working with you to pass this, and i hope that this support on a bipartisan basis leads on the other issues facing the nation today. the americas cities deserve no less. thank you very much. ..

>> meanwhile, there are 1.3 million men and women who are ready, willing, and trained to rebuild america's crumbling transportation systems, but through no fault of their own are jobless. the nearly two years of delay is not a recipe for economic growth or competitiveness. it is a recipe for disaster.

that is one reason why una is gratified and thankful to testify, the outline put forth by the u.s. house of representatives. we join with partners in the environmental community like the blue/green alliance and with the business community, including the u.s. chamber of commerce in pointing out the house proposal locks in failure for six years. in effect, it gives up on america. likewise, we join with others in praising your political courage and focus on maintaining a foundation for the future which is is illustrated by your partisan proposal. i want to emphasize to have the necessary economic impact, investments must be made through the existing core program and highway trust fund and there must be a commitment that in the short falls do not result in less investment that is made.

liuna welcomes investments and believes that properly structured mechanisms such as the infrastructure bank could provide a valuable supplement. but we believe some of the prooh -- proposals are years away from creating a significant number of jobs. like many others, we also believe there must be greater transparency. we've all heard about the bridge to nowhere. we must remember that there are plenty of bridges to somewhere that are deficient or obsolete. in fact, four years after the i-35 bridge collapse in minneapolis, 27% of our bridges still are structural deficient or functionally obsolete. in stark contrast to this committee's proposal, the house outlined would result in massive job losses. as many as 490,000 lost jobs related just the highway work in the first year alone. and it would result in a dramatic acceleration of the decline of our nation's

transportation infrastructure. one could argue that those who crafted the house proposal have found the will to justify billions of dollars in tax breaks and loopholes for corporations and the wealthy, while cutting invest manies that all americans and our economy depends on. this maybe the summer of the blockbuster harry potter move, through a magic wand won't prevent what will be the real deathly hollows, as more jobs disappear, more families suffer, and the u.s. falls further behind. like many americans, we're frustrated by the inability of some in washington, d.c. to put one and one together and match those who desperately need work with our critical infrastructure needs. just last night i held a conference call with thousands of our members activist. about mobilizing for a highway bill that builds america. we will make sure their voices,

their dreams, and their hardships are heard loud and clear. liuna's perspective this is a no brainer. we can put people back to work, spur economic growth, and create real tax cuts for taxpayers in future generations. we can again be the nation that does big things, even in trying times. we can fulfill our ons base -- obligation to make sure what we do leaves our nation better off than the way we found it. chairman boxer, ranking member inhofe, members of the committee, we can build america so america works. thank you for the privilege of addressing you today. >> thank you, president o'sullivan. i hope this phone call that you had with all of those workers will continue. because we need the people to communicate with those on the finance committee on both sides of the aisle and this committee that you really need us to do this. because a lot of you said it

took courage for us to come together. we need to have you in the background. so with a loud voice. so thank you for that. >> thank you. >> and our next speaker, donald james, chairman and chief executive officer of falcon materials. you had a fabulous introduction from senator sessions. we welcome you. >> thank you, chairman boxer, ranking member inhofe for the invitation to testify today. as senator sessions said in his gracious introduction, we are the largest producer of construction aggregates in the united states. we are here today to address the critical situation with respect to the federal aid highway and transit programs that exist in this country, specifically with respect to the next two years, fy '12 and '13. at the outset, let me say it's our view that highway and transit programs were not created by congress for the purpose of providing jobs. although they do, in fact, do a really great job of providing

jobs. the real purpose of the program is bigger and much more important than that. it is to provide the nation with transportation infrastructure that is essential to the efficient functioning of the u.s. economy. transportation infrastructure is a basic and fundamental good. every man, woman, and child in this country is a direct beneficiary of federal investment and infrastructure, as is every business in this country. providing that transportation infrastructure properly maintaining and sustaining it is a core federal responsibility. the life blood of the u.s. economy flows through our transportation system. and in funding it, congress provides a critical public benefit that extends decades beyond the construction project. our nation's economic competitiveness, our economy's growth and the creation of jobs year after year are directly correlated to the health and

quality of our infrastructure. for example, the roads and bridges move close to $40 million every day, but could move more if it were not for traffic congestion which costs the nation $87 billion annually. the construction that implements the responsibility will be severely tested in fy '12 and '13. the downtown in the economy has placed historic economic stress on the businesses that build and maintain our transportation system. commercial and residential construction in the u.s. have dropped 75% to historic lows. short and medium term prospects for improvement remain bleak. aggregate values at vulcan are down 50%. our employment has dropped by 30%. transportation infrastructure

construction is the one somewhat stable construction sector in the u.s. economy today. the annual federal funding for infrastructure has been vitally important while at the same time enhancing economic efficiency nationwide. congress wisely chose to maintain the fy '10 baseline for fy '11 federal highway even while reducing spending in other areas. as a result many u.s. companies did not have to lay off even more employees as a direct results of these cuts. instead, they have been able to continue providing the public and economic benefits that the transportation construction industry produces. throughout the recession, we have of necessity had to reduce our work force and have taken additional measures to size our company to meet the current economy. you face similar challenges in reducing the size of government. when we reduced our company's size, and the number of our employees, we had an obligation to do it in a way to preserve

our company and to position it for future growth. the cuts and layoffs were painful. but strategic, designed to ultimately make us stronger and better. if we had ignored this core responsibility and cut arbitrarily across the board, we would have damaged our ability to grow, to rehire our employees, to survive and flourish again as a leading u.s. company. in roughly ten years, the current authorization will require. it is required to maintain the nation's transportation infrastructure in order to grow the economy. we strongly support the funding on the bipartisan level at the current baseline to continue congress' long commitment to this core responsibility. our nation is at a critical cross roads economically. i asked you to consider the

importance to prioritize in a way that preserves the nation's potential for economic growth. your bipartisan decision on the baseline determines whether we can begin to climb out and rebuild our work forces or experience further decline and lose more employees during fy '12 and '13. our nation's ability to grow economically, to continue to create additional taxpayers will be subverted if we do not maintain the baseline. we've all heard that the job loss, if we do nothing more than fund construction at the current gas tax receipts, we'll lose hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country. as bad as this is, the true calamity will occur in the ongoing nation/national economic impairment for which there are few if any existing and accepted metrics. our ability to produce and expert u.s. products efficiently is directly tied to the quality

of highway infrastructure. absence adequate funding, we will experience the question tyveloses as we've all heard today from other witnesses and from members of this committee. the infrastructure investment in china, india, european union, brazil, canada are making in the infrastructure. it would be prudent to avoid the loss of competitiveness. they will support the public good that enables us to become the greatest economy in the world in which can preserve that status. >> thank you for your eloquent statement. we are happy to welcome back susan martinovich, director nevada of department of transportation on behalf of the american association of the state highway and transportation officials. and i want to thank again your organization for being behind

the bipartisan approach. >> thank you, senator. good morning. i thank you to share your views on surface transportation reauthorization and the bill summary that you recent he released. i would like to gratitude for your leadership in advancing a bipartisan reauthorization measure. we recognize in the time of partisan distress, it requires all sides. we applaud your effort. the merits are strong support. if it succeeds over $500,000 jobs will be saved and hundredths of projects vital to america's excel tiffness will be made possible. let me make three brief points on your proposal. first, the fiscal year 2012 budget resolution approved by the house in the past spring

would lead to a 35% cut in federal and highway transit funding and this has been mentioned that it would have a devastating effect on many state transportation programs. in nevada this would result to $122 million cut in funding next year with a major impact. one of those impacts being our project neon which is scheduled to begin construction in 2013. this is a $1.7 billion reconstruction project on interstate 15 in downtown las vegas. i-15 is a major corridor, multistate corridor for east, west, foods movement for the country and $122 million cut to our program would delay that start date. but it's not about the start date that's important. but it's also about people. there are developers, there are businesses, there are individual homeowners who's lives are on hold and in limbo waiting to see if we had the funding to acquire

their property or to even start the project. we understand that in order to maintain the current funding levels, our revenue gap of approximately $6 billion per year is needed to be filled. we urge the senate finance committee work, your committee to find that offset and revenues to fill the gap. we recognize the current highway trust fund revenue and limitations but advise it's absolutely essential to maintain current funding levels. we need this not only to sustain hundreds and thousands of jobs and keep essential transportation projects moving, but what's also been said, it's for the economy of this country. second, states have a critical need for program stability and the certainty to plan, development, and process state projects. without that, they have to defer invest: in major multiyear projects. to simply put, states will not advance the first phase of a

project if funding required to complete the project is not available in subsequent years. and so with major projects deferred, construction companies will not make the material and equipment investments. they will be forced to further cut their work force and this trickles down to even more jobs and businesses that ended directly support the construction industry. while states would prefer the six year reauthorization bill, two year bill provides the opportunity to advance towards that long term goal and into some vast improvement over the uncertainty of the month to month extensions that we've had over the past two years. third the state dot has been advocating many of the policy reforms similar to those in your legislation. we recognize the provisions in your bill reflect many of the compromises from all view points. we thank you for that spirit of cooperation. it appears from our review we are in agreement where some of the key policy forms are needed, program consolidation and flexibility, the use of

performance measures, expansion of innovative finance, and further streamlining to accelerate project delivery. there's two policy reforms we are supportive of. that's the enhancement and extangs of the tifia loan and loan guarantee program. i do want to caution that innovative financing mechanisms, including infrastructure banks are valuable financing supplements, but they cannot replace the need for funding of the base program. we are also supportive of provisions to reduce bureaucratic hurdles for projects with no significant environmental impacts and visions to accelerate projects approved within specified deadlines. we hope your bill will also encouraged ned cooperation with the regulatory agencies. and i want to emphasis here we strongly believe a constant or reduced funding levels, congress should be more aggressive in removing regulatory burdens and provides states with greater

flexibility to deliver projects. finally, i would like to reiterate what i said at the beginning is that we believe a bipartisan measure which has been a cooperative between you, madam chairman and senators baucus, inhofe, and vitter merits our support. investment in transportation is truly an investment that's immediate and has long term benefits to this country. and we respectfully urge you to continue this bipartisan effort and thank you very much. >> thank you. and now we call upon the honorable gary ridley, secretary of oklahoma department of transportation. senator inhofe has given you a warm introduction. we welcome you. >> my name is gary ridley, i'm secretary of transportation of oklahoma, and i'm here to testify on behalf of the department of oklahoma. we want to thank you for your

leadership and efforts to sustain funding levels and increase the efficiency of delivering the projects in the reauthorization. as we consider the deficiencies of our national transportation in the next highway bill, we recognize the challenges faced by congress are significant. transportation departments across the country are hopeful that congress can make every effort to at least fund the transportation at the historic levels. however we are acutely aware of the difficulty that is are presented by the limitations of the projected highway trust fund. you work to find ways to benchmark investments and direct more transportation dollars to the car infrastructure is appreciated. when considering a reduced federal funding projection, none of the critical needed transportation projects currently being prepared for delivery in oklahoma can be held harmless in the rebalancing of our fiscally constrained work plan. your renewed focus on cored infrastructure and reviewed and

consolidation of programs that mandate the commitment of the highway trust fund to fringe activity is welcome. if eligibilities are retained, the decision to commit transportation resources should be left to the states alone. even more, so when our state and federal budgets are under extreme pressure and our performance is proposed to be measured by key outcomes, such as reducing fatalities, improving bridges, fixing roads, reducing congestion. the utilization of garvey, tifia, and other such investment that prove certain in well defined transportation should be mindful that none of these financing opportunities provide new revenues or sustainable long term funding. it is important to ensure that financing option are not held as the federal governments best or only solution. to stem the further decline of the national transportation system. the nation requires new and effective transportation revenue

streams but does not need new encouragement to incur additional debt. extreme care must extended exercise when considering such programs in order to avoid over projecting and over extending the limited resources. states should not be left to bear the financial bush burden alone. we recognize that consistent authorization with reasonable funding commitment, and a term that extends beyond the reach of the endless extension acts. while the complete fiscal resolution of our national transportation funding crisis may not yet be at hand, the value of the legislative provisions proposed to the facilitate a more effective project and program delivery system should not be discounted. reducing environmental hurdles for project that is have no significant and environmental impacts will be extremely beneficial. for example, in the last three years, we let the contract almost 200 routine projects that were less than $5 million costs.

all of these projects required the document that took 30-180 days to complete. assuming that such projects would meet the criteria for the exemption, a complete nipa exemption, oklahoma would have had the opportunity in many cases to reduce the process cost and shorten the project delivery on each by like amount. the introduction of these ideas is a giant step in the right direction. the preparation, efforts, and time saved to deliver projects that meet the fine criteria would not only translate as a cost and time saving to the agency, but will accelerate a direct user benefit to commerce and the traveling public. also the state and federal regulatory resource and lead agencies will have the opportunity to focus more of their internal resources on progressing other large scale proposed transportation improvements in a more timely and effective manner. however even as some progress is

evident, we have recently become aware that the epa and core of engineers are seeking to expand the authority over new waters through issuance of clarification guidelines. such guidelines are greatly concerning as more and more regulation creeps into the simple drainage ditches and minor tributaries that were long considered nonjurisdictional. in the oklahoma, core of jeers issues permits and members approval is becoming more and more difficult to obtain in a timely manner due to the resource strain on the existing broad jurisdictional. it will be expanded by the authority under the proposed guidelines. regulatory should not over state the law, they should be easily manageable, and determined reasonable by state governments and by the private sector.

it is critical that a balance is maintained that pride -- that projects environment does not restrict the delivery of critical needed safety and condition-related improvements or the economic growth in competitiveness and development of our nation. thank you, madam chair. ranking member inhofe, for the opportunity to testify. we are grateful to the other -- efforts of the committee and congress to craft and fund a transportation compromise that will carry us to a multiyear authorization. i'll be glad to answer any questions. >> thank you. our next witness is deron lovass, of the natural resources defense council. welcome. >> thank you, chairman boxer, ranking member inhofe, for invites me to testify today. i want you to imagine a world void of the transportation. in that world, we'd face

gridlock and analysis. manufacturers of vehicles unable to ship overseas. it's a key end that boosts the economy. it under mines the safety, and economy. now is the time to rectify that by first investing wisely by setting national mobility in access, safety, economic impact, energy use, and environmental quality objectives. public investments can yield large economic productivity gains. a billion dollars in public transportation, for example, yields about three and a half billion of gdp. annual investment of $30 million, and $10 billion in intercity and high-speed rail would create 700,000 jobs. it would generate $60 billion in gdp, nearly $45 billion in annual worker income, and $14 billion in annual tax revenues,

spurring additional growth throughout the economy. current fiscal constrains warrant collection in use of cost and benefit data during planning and project selection and design. we need to make sure to invest carefully. government should turn to the tool in the kit of companies, strategic plans, including the use of scenario building. one recent studies pegs the cost differential between strategic and business as usual investment as 12% savings for sacramento, 24% through albuquerque, and 54% for national. they are big savings if we look seriously at the future. two, we need to fix it first with clear or more aggressive maintenance policy. deferred maintenance, let's be clear is the national crisis. 500 bridges in america failed, and today nearly 70,000 bridges across the country are in disrepair. as former white house economic advisors put it, you run a

deficit when you borrow money and defer maintenance. either way, you are imposing a cost on future generations. number three, we need to break our oil habit by delivering mobility choice, driven by a national oil savings objective and similar objectives for states and regions. transportation drives america's dependence on foreign oil. we have nearly weaned our electricity sector off of oil thankfully, but transportation remains entirely dependent. nearly 70% of u.s. oil use is for transportation. overall, this translates to a 9,000 gallon per second habit. how do we reduce that dependence? well, raising the bar on fuel economy performance for our vehicle, which we are making good progress on, is the first step. second, making more cars pluggable, and more fuel choices. and third prong is greater mobility choice. consumers deserve more option for travel, including virtual travel, high occupy tolling,

technology that improves road and transit traffic flow, as well as convenient and safety opportunities to walk and bike. four we need to secure funding and finance with new tools, i think we are all on agreement in some of those tools. we favor looking at tools like an oil security, increase in the gas tax, or bmt fee over the long run as well as financing. expansion of tifia and other tools involving public/private partnership should award assistance on a competitive basis. focus on maximizing returns based on measurable outcomes, including fuel savings and cuts. it's important that performance measurement and accountability be a component of any program. five, we do need to improve project delivery by tackling real causes and not compromising environmental reviews. let's be clear on environmental reviews that count for only a small share of transportation project delays. lack of financing is a bigger

factor. they need an environmental impact with fewer subject. congress shouldn't legislate by anecdote based on horror stories, but evaluate and tackle them with planning improvements and adequate resources for viewers. six, we need to move goods faster, cleaning, and hearer while reducing environmental harms. we can meet the demand for goods, as well as reducing air pollution, water pollution, and noise through the targeted positions. specifically, we favor the competitive grant program to fund the projects based on criteria developed in coordination with the environmental stakeholders. last but not least, we need to protect the natural resources by setting the performance standard for new and rehabilitated highway and roads. the green roads and highways are cost effective way to reduce the storm water runoff, flooding, and help make the clean water requirements. thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. we need to press forward with wise investments in a smarter

and greener transportation program. i look forward to work, you on that. >> thank you so much. last but not least, we're very happy to welcome back mr. greg cohen, president and ceo of the american highway users alliance, welcome. >> thank you. madam chairman, ranking member inhofe, members of the committee, thank you for allowing me to appear here before you state in strong support of your plan to enact the map 21 bill this year. highway users is the only organizeed nonprofit, national nonprofit, across all of the highway modes. we promote federal, state, and local patrol of -- local policies, including trucking, bus, motorcyclist, rvers, and others that contribute the users fees to the trust funds. these members and several hundred businesses remember millions of highway users from

coast to coast. we've worked closely with members of this committee and your excellent staff to advocate for a new vision that is reformed, robust, streamlined, and reflect the core priorities that serve the national instruction. we congratulate the committee on this week's release which largely reflects priority that we share with you. our goal is not to please traditional transportation trade associations in washington, but more importantly, to serve the interests of the public at large, particularly those who pay the highway users fees. unfortunately, the unyielding and complex authorization bills of the recent past generation lacking in direction and full of earmarks put this committee at a public relations disadvantage before you even began working two years ago on this. that's why it's worth emphasizing, again, how delighted we are that this is a big ford bill that sets a new core, focused on reform. we are thrilled that despite the current devicive political environment, map 21 is being

negotiated to receive the support from some of the most progressive and some of the most conservative members of the u.s. senate. bipartisan cooperation on the surface transportation is a tradition worth keeping. we strongly support passage of this bill and the house bill, so the congress committee can be convened quickly and complete your work. the worst possible outcome would be if congress fails to make progress and we end up with an extension bill that cuts funding and fails to reform the program. the federal highway is much more value than simply being a jobs bill. mobility and safety investments create broad economic growth, improve the quality of life, and give america competitive advantage in international trade. for example, saic has found the safety investments under the hsip program has save $43 in societal cost for every $1 spent. according to u.s. d.o.t., investing as much as $175 billion on year for highway

would have a positive cost benefit ratio. the highway program would deliver hundreds of billions of dollars to economic benefits to americans in every state in the country for only $40 billion in annual user costs. we support your efforts to prevent cuts to the highway funding. due to the shortfall and the seemingly impossible task of raising highway users fees on fuel, we encourage all of the committees that are involved to encourage with general funds over the next few years. however, it's important to note that we've supported the highway users with the full share and we agree with the committee that growing the tifia program is a better plan than the national infrastructure fund. we also encourage senate consideration of senate wyden's bill which was funding for all states. we applaud the committee for taking a strong position on bureaucracy and project delivery. we understand it's to keep all

of the environmental protections in place. at the same time, we can improve inner agency procedures and establish deadlines for nipa reviews. according to the usaid, it can take 19 years to complete a highway project. every ten years it's over it costs double. we also support the streamline transportation processes that include consultation with a wide range of interested parties and ensures that representatives of motorcyclist, private bus companies, truckers, and other highway users fees paying groups are at the table. however, money in short supply and time of the essence, congress should avoid the edition of new planning that force cooperation with coordination with new groups of reviewers. transportation planning is already extremely complex. i know. i've done it. federal mandates that slow the process give new actors veto power, reduce the transportation consideration and transportation planning, mandate experimental

planning techniques, or create additional hurdles for usaid to approve plans, these have to be avoided. most of the core policemans proposed by the committee are similar to those that we've proposed in the authorization brief and previous testimony. we congratulation you and strongly support your program for core safety, freight, and national highway system program. safety is the top priority. we urge you to consider the baucus safety bill and others that we endorsed in our committee testimony back in april 2010. the new fright program is critical, the new national highway will improve 4% of the roads. but they are the most serviced in the nation's economic arteries. in conclusion, the committee has an extraordinary opportunity to help improve the economy, reduce congestion, save tens of thousands of lives by expediting the authorization of map 21 with the reform streamline and robust

highway and transportation program. we greatly appreciate being your partner and we'll be happy to answer any questions. >> thank you very much to all of our panelist. and mayor, i do have some questions for you. don't go just yet. i want to just say that i thought mr. cohen, you really brought to home to me, a lot of reforms that are in the bill, probably all of them, there are many, came from the people out there working on various commissions and committees and have worked with us on both sides of the aisle, and we really appreciate it. and what we were able to do was look at all of the proposals and finally doing? -- finally do something about the program which let's just say it was sprawling. it was just too many little things. we managed to consolidate and save the things that we've worked hard together on. there was some differences here. we gave and we took.

it was hard. but i think at the end of the day, we managed to get this together. mayor, i want to make a point here which i don't know you agree with, the basic highway trust fund, that's how we fund, that's the great and butter, it's what mr. james referred to, it's what mr. ridley referred to, all of you have referred to it. most of you have referred to it. that's the bread and butter program that we're talking about. and that's why i have appreciate, you know, all of the new idea that is are coming forward. by the way, support them. i think whatever they are. but we can't allow those ideas whether it's an infrastructure bank or anything else to replace the basic funding mechanism that we have here. i know the senator baucus has on his plate, you know, as soon as we act, he's going to do everything in his power. you need to help him, support him, and i say this just as someone who's been around here and on this committee since the

day i came to the senate so that he and his members feel and senator carper is on the committee. i don't know who else here is. but the bottom line is, they have to feel that this is a priority. i already feel that. because working for a year, doing a congress calls with you must have been sick of me already every other week on the phone cabbing where are we, how can we move in all of the rest. i felt the support. but the support now has to continue with this committee, but also with the finance committee. because if they don't sense that america wants this. it's going to be very difficult. i wanted to make that case. as of today, i think you've seen the bipartisan support here. mayor, i wanted to thank you personally, but also your organization now that you head the conversation of mayors. you are bipartisan. you've worked with us clearly and on the need to have a strong core bill which is maintaining

the levels that we have now. you've worked with us on safe routes to schools, because that's so crucial. we kept it and bypassed and kept it in recreational trails and tough debates giving here, taking there. but that has remained in the bill. but i want to ask you a question about tifia. for the information of all senator, this is so to me so exciting. when you came two years ago, huh labor, management, chamber of commerce, everybody. you said los angeles has passed a half a sent sales tax. we have a list of programs, i think you said nine that the people said they want to do. it's going to take us 30 years to get all of the funding. if you could come up front and

help us at the beginning and move the projects forward, you know you have have steady stream of income behind it. would you be willing to come out? and we talked about it, and i went to senator inhofe and i said here's an idea who's time has come. the cities and the counties are stepping forward. but it takes time to get the dollars in. so through the existing tifia program, and i give credit to my chief of staff and chief council, for saying there's already a program here. it's small, but it could meet this bill. meet the needs here. we were able to help already with one project. i wonder if you could just explain to my colleagues now because they support this robust and so does chairman micah, robust increase on how tifia works and what is enabling your city to do and other projects were funded through tifia and

also if you could speak to some of the reforms. if you are familiar with them. if not, we'll put those in the record. go ahead. >> yes, thank you, madam chair. again, i want to thank you and the committee for the work that you did on this issue. you know, in the middle of the recession with 2/3s vote with bipartisan support passed a half penny sales tax to generate as you said $40 billion to double the size of the rail system, 12 rail projects, but also to invest in highway repair, bridge repair, hot lanes throughout the region. it became crystal clear when almost the days, weeks after the passage when people would walk up to me and say, mayor, where's the subway that you promised? i would have to explain to people that it was half a penny sales tax, not a ten cent. that money would generate over a 30 year period of time. as you said, working with you

and your office, we began to look at innovative financing tools. we knew this day was coming. the conversation around the deficit and dealt was such that people here in the congress didn't just want to rely on programs that provide grants. what's great about this specific program is that there's a 30-1 leverage. in our case and in the case of cities across and counties across the country and states, if you have a revenue -- a revenue pool from which to invest in, a stream here, you can leverage that, get a loan, and pay it back. and as you know, we already have done that with 546 million

dollar loan. we are now in the pipeline, finalist for the subway, and the reason why we are qualified in the way that we are is we are putting up our own money. at a time of high deficits and debt, what it encourages is the responsibility, not just beyond the federal government. now i associate my remarks of support for miss martinovich which said we don't want this to be in lieu of a federal commitment. we understand how important that is. but at the time of, you know, when we are all debates deficits and debt, this is a creative way for incentivize localities. by the way, if you ask someone in l.a. and detroit and the small town wherefore it is, if they'd rather support a tax or a local tax or bond or a state or federal one, there are almost enormous in their support for a

local one. because they want to see their dollars come back to their neighborhood. so that was the idea around tifia, and in addition to that, you've responded to a number of other changes, instead of just going for 33% of our a project, this could go up for 50%. >> right. >> also we could do multiple projects here. you could get advanced notice, or advance -- get the exact term. but an opportunity to get up front credit going forward on multiple projects which would help us as well as. and that is -- >> thank you. >> -- the thinking behind it. i want to say one more thing. to really make this work, getting a transportation bond program could really enhance all of this as well. also have a great deal of leverage, also promote public, private partnerships, and the

like. to really help us particularly during these tough economic times. >> thank you, mayor. i'm going to turn it over to senator inhofe for eight minutes. i want to say here to my colleagues, when we were able to -- when department transportation made that tifia loan to los angeles, $500 million; right? the score was $20 million. it was barely anything. the reason is it's a dedicated stream of funding, the people voted for it, there's hardly any risk at all. that's the exciting part of tifia and why i'm grateful. it doesn't replace the core programs, in these times when you hear about mr. james talk about layoffs and worries and the rest, we know construction is still down. this will give us a chance to even more than, you know, we can do with the basics. the last thing is we do reform tifia also to allow rural areas to be able to move forward here

with practically no interest rate. so i think it's terrific. anyway, i give you eight minutes. >> thank you, madam chairman. i am -- you know, you went through this back in 2005. at that time, we were a majority and i was a chairman. we had a successful effort then, but that was what $286.4 billion, i believe, initially is going to be a six year bill or five year bill, i guess. and yet at that time, we had really good testimony. i remember maybe some of the same ones that you were here at that time. saying that amount of money really just maintains what we have now. it's just -- and so what we're talking about here, it's not as if we are saying that the -- to drop $12 billion over a two year period is going to fix some kind of heart. even at the full fund, it is not adequate. that's coming from a conservative. i feel strongly about that.

i remember so well when we had the $800 billion stimulus bill. and we are down on the floor and i couldn't believe that only as was mentioned by senator sessions, only three and a half percent of that actually went to what we were talking about today. and so we had an amendment. you talk about being a bipartisan, the chairman and i had an amendment to take that, and i'm going from memory now was $29 billion up to $79 billion. and i was going to ask, you know, where do you think we'd be today if we'd been successful in that effort. that still would have been only 10% of the $800 billion stimulus. and i -- it's just mind boggling to me that when it is such an easy thing at that time to do, and we didn't do it. we don't want to make that mistake again. i'm going to start with secretary ridley because we talked about this before. i think that miss martinovich would agree that how this

affects oklahoma would affect probably the rest of the member states. in the event that, gary, we had to do the 34% cut from current level -- and that's what we're talking about. specifically what would that mean in oklahoma? >> thank you, senator. certainly the impact would be devastates. we put together an eight year plan that's fiscally constrained based on the money, as well as the anticipated revenues, considering current statutes and current law. so if you have a basically 1/3 reduction of the federal funds and the federal funds make up 60% of our eight year construction work program, one would have to if you do the math, you are looking at somewhere around $750 to $800

million would come out of the eight year so you have a 4.1 program that would have to be reduced by $800 billion. certainly there's projects that you could probably look to rescope and reduce the length of them. but in that program, we have 650 bridges that we'll replace or rehabilitate. you can't reduce the length of those, as you might expect. they are what they are. it would certainly put all projects within that eight year program at risk of being either reduced in size or scope, or being pushed either out of the eight year program or certainly being moved. >> would there be a specific program in our state of oklahoma that you could just real quickly address as to what that difference that would make in that project? we have as you know some huge ones in oklahoma city and tulsa and elsewhere. >> and you are absolutely right, senator. we have project in oklahoma city, it's the relocation of the

i-40 across town bridge, and we're getting close to be able to take traffic all of that critical bridge and get them on the new main line. but with that requires us to recorrect the downtown area of oklahoma city back to interstate 40, interstate 235, and i-45. we're scheduled to have that completed by 2014. one would imagine again that project and those series of projects would have to be delayed. in tulsa the same way. we have a section of interstate commonly referreds to the bypass of the riverside of the yale that's a $340 million project that we have the last project as scheduled for letting about this time next year. if we have this major reduction in federal funds, one could imagine that that could very well be a project that we'd have to delay. that is the oldest section of interstate that we have in the system. in fact, it was in place before

the interstate system was established. it was planted on top of the existing highway. high accident rate, high severity rate, and high fatality rate in the area in some of the worst on the interstate. delaying the completion of the project would not only cause additional costs, but certainly you could expect to have additional accidents both personal injury and maybe even fatals, any delays we would have, you could expect that. >> i'd like to ask maybe mr. james or it could be just about anyone, the alternative that -- if we were to deal with just more extensions as opposed to a bridge, and even if the money were the same amount, in addition to just the reforms that we have in there, what other problems, miss martinovich do you see that would be there. in other words, we spent the same amount of money, but do it

with just extensions. >> thank you, senator. the biggest problem is not being able to plan. as a transportation official, i don't know when the money exactly would come, or even how much because of the unknown times or criteria. assuming it's the same, you would be hesitant to put out any project that is are past that, not knowing if i'm going to reimbursed on time and supplements paying those contractors with our state money. so it's a balancing act and planning act. and so if i can't plan, how can our customers plan? how can the contractors know and set up their resources? how can the supplies even be available not knowing do they make a lot? or do they be reactive? and so then that delay could impact time. >> that's what i'm trying to get at. we have a lot of things, predictability that's in here and how it translates into what

we're going to be able to get from a bill. we have the flexibility and in terms of the states activities and these things. so i guess what i'm saying is we have a lot of really good reforms. some of them more easy. some of them we didn't agree on in the beginning. but that to me is almost as important as the amount of money to be able to predictably see it and i'm going to thank you, mr. o'sullivan too, my time is expired. i wanted to tell you i appreciate you being here and bringing to the table the fact that we have thousands and thousands of jobs. if we had been successful in changing the $29 to $79 billion, how many more jobs today would they be actively working on? [inaudible comment] >> put your mike on. >> if we used the 34,000 jobs

created for every $1 billion, there would be an awful lot more jobs, less unemployment in the construction industry, and just the question about what would happen as far as the state department of transportations from the labor perspective. we already have a 15.6% unemployment rate in the construction industry today. down from 23%. 1.3 million out of work, from the unionized sector, we've lost $30,000 members in the last two years. unfortunately, over half of those were construction laborers, working on heavy highway projects that had eight or more years in the service of the industry. as the unemployment rate goes up and this has been a sustained depression or recession in the construction industry, one that we really haven't witnessed in a real long time. and we're seeing an exodus to

rebound. so the skills drain because of the prolonged recession in the construction industry is a real problem. >> well, i so appreciate your asking that question. i went to -- >> go ahead. >> our committee, our witnesses here, this is really unusual. we've got everybody covered here. >> we do. >> so, you know, i've expressed to my my appreciation for working on this input that we're getting. >> well, it is extraordinary. i went about a year ago to a job retraining center in the central valley and i -- one the programs was learning how to chef. i went around the room, and at least in that room of about 25-30 working people were at least ten that said they were construction people. and i imagine. and they just plain had given up. so your point is poignant and it's accurate. and i thank you for it.

senator whitehouse. i'm sorry, senator merkley was here first. i'm so sorry. go ahead. >> thank you for your testimony. i really want to make sure we understand fully the job implications. i've heard the estimates ranging from 700,000 jobs at the high end, 500,000 jobs, can a couple of you who feel like they have a real hand on these numbers help us understand what happens when we don't get the reauthorization and we have the roughly 35% drop. >> i can speak from my company. >> thank you. >> for my company, my customers' companies, and our suppliers companies, we are staffed at a level today that is in

anticipation of maintaining the current level of funding. if for some reason that declines further, we unfortunately, and our customers, and our suppliers will also have to take further reductions to remain economically viability. we have no other choice. that is our only option. so this is not a theoretical job loss issue. this is real, these are human hn beings, these are members of mr. o'sullivan's union and others who we will not have worked for if the federal program is not maintained at current levels. >> senator merkley. >> yes? >> the number that i mentioned earlier was with a 36% cut about a 630,000 job loss to our agency alone, the l.a. county metropolitan transit authority.

about 1.4 billion. so it is a very, very sizable impact on the job market, but also on our ability to fund important projects. >> senator, a lot of talk and a lot of discussion rightly so on the current job situation in america in all of our states. and in that is certainly an area that we look at in the short term, especially for the creation or sustaining jobs in the construction market. but to me, the idea of investing in ourselves and investing in the infrastructure establishes much more than that. expotentially more than that. if we think about the investment that our nation put into the interstate system, and where we are at today with the economy, and where we would be without it. i think that rebuilding our system, our national system if you will, to get it to back to

where we were, or better than where we were 20 years ago, will create that investment along those corridors like we haven't seen in a long time. so i think that the economic vitality of this nation is totally dependent on how well we do our job as far as the infrastructure is concerned. >> thank you. i certainly agree that investing our infrastructure is absolutely critical. critical to our economy in terms of jobs creation, and critical to the future economy in terms of the ability to transport goods and people. we recently had a bipartisan delegation that went to china. and 14 years since i had been there. in the 14 years, the amount of infrastructure that was built was massive. the estimates that i've heard will be ranging from 10-12% of gdp in invested infrastructure. to write a 200 miles per hour train out of beijing was an

experience. i've never had the experience in united states. to see the amount of lightrail transportation and amount of road infrastructure in a decade and a half. :

>> the point is reflected in today's panel. we obviously are facing a very serious short fall in transportation funding. in rhode island, one in five of our bridges are presently structural deficient. that's the fourth highest ratio of any state. 68% of the reeds are rated in poor or mediocre condition, and 77% of the major urban highways are congested. there's a lot of work that needs to be done. to bring the systems to good repair, we have to double the current spending levels for ten years, but against that backdrop, the house of representatives, the republicans, proposed a budget that kits current transportation funding levels by more than a third. this would have a devastating impact on the economy, jobs, and

rhode island's unemployment rate is the fourth highest in the country, and this cut would lead to the loss of 3500 for jobs in rhode island, so it's totally up acceptable, and i applaud, again, the chairman, the ranking member, and senators baucus for their work to bring us to this point. the question i'd love to ask, let me ask mr. o'sullivan, representing one of the strongest labor organizations and mr. james representing a very strong and successful private sector corporation with interests in this area -- have we done a good job in congress at distinguishing between spending and infrastructure spending? i think of a family that has a moderate income, and they discover they have a significant problem in the roof of the

family home. you could ignore that. you could sit around the kitchen p table and say, you know what? this family is spending too much. we're not going to spend to fix the roof. that would be wasteful spending. well, the water could continue to pour through the roof, damage to the house, the family asset would continue. there's a circumstance in which the smartest decision for the family would be to go to the credit card, fix the roof, protect the asset, save money in the long haul, and that's a very, very different family decision than saying, you know what? take the same credit card and take the family to wallet -- walt disney world for a week. some people in washington don't know how to distinguish between those two kinds of spending. one is money out the door, and the other leaves you with a national asset that you can go out and touch -- a bridge, a

highway, a high-speed rail system, an improved airport that runs on digital technology rather than ray tubes when it's bringing in the aircraft safely to the landing strips. i want the thoughts of mr. o'sullivan and mr. james in spending for spending's sake and the commonwealth of the nation. >> you first. >> well, thank you, senator whitehouse, for the question. having spent a lot of years in the business world where we invest heavily in large equipment, the answer to that question seems so obvious. when the united states spends money building infrastructure, you have created an asset.

that asset lasts literally for decades. we are all traveling on a federal interstate system that's been in existence now for four or five decades. it's a real asset. unfortunately, there's not a federal balance sheet like there is in the private sector where we look at our investments over the last 10-30 years and say here's a real asset. it's producing economic efficiency. it's producing revenue. it is a long-term value enhancing asset. somehow we don't see that or that doesn't seem to enter -- >> indeed we have no capital budget in the federal government to work with to accomplish that. >> yeah. >> senator, thank you for the question as well. nice to see you.

>> not only -- we talk about accountability, i think, we all believe whatever money we're going to spend on infrastructure, there has to be accountability, it needs to be targeted, and we have to feel it, touch it, and see it at the end of the day and it impacts the economy and imfact pacts the infrastructure and puts people back to work and our ability to move goods and services across the country. i also think that what we need to do is a much better job of the general public realizing we talk about statistics by 27% of the br bridges that are insufficient, but people keep driving across them without any real knowledge. we did a campaign called build america campaign, and we took out billboards a number of places across the country showing the undercarriage of a bridge that was rotting away because you can't see it from the top down, and the impact. it was a union funded campaign, but a campaign to inform the

general public about the sad state of our infrastructure, of our bridges in this country, and i think if we don't get it in washington sometimes, i think what we need to do is take the message of a crumbling infrastructure across this country so people realize the state of affairs that we do have a $2.2 trillion problem, and even command this committee and chairman boxer, again, on your leadership on this issue, but we all agree this is a starting point, and we know we have to do more, but i think what we need to do is we need to make sure that people understand the state of affairs and the reasons that we need to invest in infrastructure because it affects their livelihood. that campaign really highlighted it for the general public. we got more calls, not from members, but general public saying i can't believe that bridge is in that repair because they couldn't see it driving over it, but we took pictures below.

>> if you go into the providence place mall, the big downtown shopping area in providence, the highway 95 goes by on a large bridge, a viaduct, and you go around and underneath it to get to the parking area of the mall. look up, and there's planks supporting the bridge. the planks are there because the bridge is falling through and planks stop the bridge from landing on cars as they go by. that's the state of the main artery going up northeast as it goes through our capitol city. thank you very much. >> well, senator, that is a visual that we need to be reminded of, and i think senator inhofe talked about the tragedy when a piece of concrete fell on a young mom and she's now gone. this is our responsibility frankly, this committee's responsibility. i think when we get to our mark

up before we leave here, i think we should get a few paragraphs of this example and others to keep it in the front of our minds from alabama to california and every other place that is a stark reminder that really is life and death and safety and movement of goods and services and freight and everything with. senator sessions? >> thank you. we had some top appointments to the defense department and budget member had to tighten belts like everybody else, and we're all in that mode, and i think that we need to do the best to maintain the kind of funding this committee proposes whether we can do that or not, i'm not sure. wii in worse -- we're in worse shape financially than most realize. we borrow literally 40 cents

from every dollar. cities, counties, and states are used to repairing from the federal government. i asked them to help and they live within their budgets, and they know we don't live with ours. we'll just be a source of money, and it's a very, very difficult thing, so a number of things that i believe the bill attempts to do, and i think it can be helpful, is reduce delays, some of the roadblocks, and problems and that reduces costs. mr. ridley, you testified about that earlier, but delays do drive up costs, and means you get less miles constructed roadways as a result, and regulations also can drive up costs. do you agree with that? >> yes, sir, senator. you're right on target. it -- as we talked about, it's not only the cost of the delays for putting people to work.

it's not only the cost of the delays for increased inflation, but the real cost is for the road user that may have to have a structural deficient bridge that's low posted and has to take a detour around that with a heavy road or school busses can't cross bridges because the average load of an average school bus is 15 tons and bridges rated under that cannot cross it. it may be the shippers that are trying 20 get from one side of the state to the other cannot use the system because of delayed costs, but more important than that, senator, it's the fatality accidents, personal injury accidents that happy on those roads and bridges because we've been unable to fission the problem we know exists. >> and when people -- it takes people out -- it takes time out of their day

in carrying out business functions. mr. damon, i remember years ago, birmingham had a serious interstate problem, a wreck, and they put it on a accelerated repair schedule and gave rewards for coming in under time. what's your recollection of how that came out? >> it came out beautifully. a good customer of ours repaired the bridge. they worked 24/7, seven days a week, brought a lot of labor in, and they got the bridge repaired. it was destroyed by a fire, and it was back in service, i think, within 90 days or less, and the contractor earned a very nice premium from the alabama dot for completing the project on speck and early.

>> and accelerated time frames don't always drive up costs either, do they? >> probably they make it dramatically more first efficient because the contractor can mobilize, bring the work force in, finish the project, demobilized opposes to stop and start construction which is often occurred. >> i think some of our governors and politicians, they promise 20 roads, and they've got money to complete ten, and they start 20, and it takes twice as long, and sometimes that drives up costs, but i'm not accusing anybody of anything, but i see a lot of roads that have partially constructed drafts drawn up and months going by, and -- >> if i could -- >> yeah. >> i think it is the duration of a program that is really the key to efficient construction so that a project can be started

and completed within the duration of a multiyear program, and i think that is a huge key. we are all supportive of the two year bill that this committee has reported out, but ultimately to get efficient in highway program, there's not to be a multiyear bill. >> well, thank you for sharing that. we'll have to look at some things. i know the president believes in high-speed rail. i think that's not yet proven, and it's veryings very expensive. certain rail projects and high population areas i'm sure can be worthwhile, but i think we'll have to look at that as part of our projections as to how to -- is that the best place to spend our dollars right now when people, committeers are blocked significantly, so we'll be

looking at those issues and the regulations, try to get more bang for our buck as well as trying to preserve the amount of money preserved to funding i got. my time is up. madam chairman, thank you. >> senator, i want to pick up on a couple things. you're right. if we build incentives into completion on time or ahead of time, it helps with the carmag carmagmageddon thing. it's remarkable how that incentive works, and we tried hard to do is give disincentives to agencies to move things forward without taking rights away from people, and if there's an environmental issue, okay, bring it up, but we can't string

it on forever. that's an important reform that we did. i wanted to just before i call on senator carper to tell you you're so op track when you talk about the wasted time. the texas transportation institute does a study about this very issue, and the latest study was finished 2010. this is what they said. americans waste $4.8 billion hours -- 4.8 billion hour as year sitting in traffic due to congestion. this translates to almost 4 billion extra gallons of fuel consumed and 115 billion cost not nation when costs of fuel and lost productivity are factored in, so talking about -- and i couldn't agree more -- this is a question of priorities. if we lay low the highway trust fund to expire, and now we see a

34%-60% cut, it's counterproductive. this is one of those investments that the dividends paid are clear, but it's true. we have to make reforms. we don't want a program going that's not efficient, and the reason i'm proud of the work we've all done here together is we have taken all the recommendations and a lot of people sitting here, business, labor, environmentalists also who have helped us to work together across party lines, to come up with a bill that's going to address those issues that you talk about, the waste of time, but at the end of the day, we have to determine as americans and we represent the american people, if investing in additional $6 billion a year for two years makes sense, and i can honestly say in the size budget that we have, we're going to have to figure this out. i don't know if you were here when i pointed out that the gang

of six, which was first the gang of six, then five, now a gang of 42 or whatever it is, they actually do mention only one spending priority, and that's the highway trust fund, and they instruct in that particular doesn't the finance committee to fund the highway trust fund at the current levels for ten years, and they say how much it would cost. i think senator inhofe was happy with that because it shows a bipartisan consensus building, but we all face cuts in the future, but in this particular arena if we were to allow the draconian cuts that, you know, appear to be on the horizon if we don't act, it's terribly counterproductive, 620,000 jobs lost in 2012 alone. that's not a guess, but a true estimate. we've seen business and labor

today confirm that it's just crisis out there, so i'm so -- i know how you're wrestling with this whole issue of, you know, we need to do this, but how do we do it? my opinion is there's certain areas of the federal government that some of us don't think ought to grow, really have different opinions on a host of them, but on this one, i think we should build on the bipartisanship we have. we have to do this because if we don't do this, it's counterproductive. people are going to lose their jobs, and i'm not being mellow dramatic. they'll lose their lives. we've seen too much of that, and we will not be able to compete in the world, and so i look forward to working with you, and i'm with you. i'm going to do some tough, tough cutting. we have no choice. we have to do it, but we also need to be smart about how we do it so i just think you're helpful today, and thank you for

being here, and with that, closing up shop today. tom carper, please have ten minutes because we used too much time. >> i don't know what to do with ten minutes. i'll figure it out. i'll do two opening statements and 17 questions. [laughter] thanks, madam chair and putting this together and working so parred and working with our colleagues to the right and to the left. i really appreciate very much the witnesses being here, and thank you for your -- some of you have been here before, a number of times, and we're grateful to your advice to os and response to our questions. senator boxer was just mentioning how much time we waste sitting in traffic jams around this question, and every year i think i know somebody -- referred to them, the university down in texas that actually figures this up every year and tells us how much time and puts

a price tag on the time we waste. there's a running through up and down the east coast of the country is i-95, starts in florida, ends in maine, and run through delaware and cuts the state in half, and for as long as i can remember, came to delaware out of the navy in 1973 and there was a toll plaza between maryland and delaware, and during weekends, especially summer weekends people trying to get to the beach, going up and down the northeast corridor, holidays there were backups, traffic jams, i-95, there's a to plaza going out of delaware into maryland, and one of the things i thought to do as governor was to into deuce know -- introduce new technology, easy pass, to move vehicles easily through i-95 and increase the number of lanes in both to move

people through. i felt badly about saying to people trying to get through the state, not only do you have to wait for awhile for the privilege of getting through delaware, you have to pay for that privilege. i thought that was abhorrent, and we worked on easy pass. there's 140,000 people a day that come across the border from maryland into delaware going the other way, 140,000. one of the things i thought to do here in the senate was garner support through a series of earmarks for a highway speed easy pass, so we have two lanes northbound, two lanes southbound, and be able to really move traffic. turns out 55% of the vehicles going up u-95 through delaware have easy pass. if we can move half of vehicles on to easy pass highway speed lanes, we help ourselves in a variety of ways, reduce the amount of time wasted sitting

there getting through the state, we reduce the amount of fuel we waste, and reduce the amount of air pollution that are sitting there trying to get through the state, and we promote public safety. notice the toll plaza's, people dart from one lane to the other. we worked on four different points, and we finally did it, used money from the stimulus package and finished the -- took away, we had to work with the folks from maryland. they were helpful with us. working along the border, opened it up on 4th of july weekend, and the governor and i did a cool event. we had an arc that goes over the plaza. you can walk up there, took camera crews and opened the side and you can see traffic coming north and heading south and the other way and everything, and on the 4th of july weekend, that weekend, 4th of july was monday,

but this was friday the 1st. friday, saturday, sunday, fourth of july, no traffic jams for the first time anybody can remember, no traffic jams. that is an investment that it's not just a twofer, but yields fruit in so many ways. it cost about $40 million, but the fruits were great and that is a smart, smart investment of public dollars, i think. not just for us in our state, but people who go up and down the east coast. as we prepare to spend money, madam chair, transportation dollars in the next version of our transportation infrastructure bill, i hope that we'll try to figure out how to use the money not just to hand it out in formula grants, but to disperse money in ways that actually meet objectives of our nation, reduce dependence on

oil, especially foreign oil, reduce pollution. those are good goals for us, and i hope we keep that in mind, and the other thing i want to say, the chairman referred to the gang of six. the gang of six really flows from the simpson led efforts from a year ago, and that's a commission created by president obama, and one of the things the president called for, and supported, i think, by bowles and simpson, and i think by the gang of six, is while it's important for us to reduce our budget deficits, if we don't, we're doomed. we can't go on this way. we need a comprehensive bipartisan approach. there's things i didn't like entirely by the bowles-simpson proposal, but there's good there. same with the gang of six. we need to set aside differences and deal with the issues strait up and do more good than bad. one of the things as we pull

back on the spending, a few dollars in revenue, one of the things that i think is important is to do what the president suggests. he says, if we're going to out -- if we're beginning to win the 21st century and outcompete the rest, we have to, as we reduce spending or the growth of spending certainly, that we have to continue to invest in three areas. number one, work force. we're not going to be competitive without royal class work force. number two, research and development, research and development with the potential to being commercialized and new products to make in the country and sell all over the world. number three, infrastructure. number three, infrastructure. if we don't have a modern infrastructure without highways, bridges, trains, rail, all the infrastructure broadly defined, we'll be a second class nation someday. hopefully not in our lifetimes or children's lifetime, but someday we will. it's critical. thank you for reminding us of

that. as we go forward investing in infrastructure, it's important for us to invest not just in transportation, not just in the domestic spending, not just in defense spending, everything we do, health care, everything, we need to find out what works and do for of that. invest in things to get better results for less money or better results with the same money. that goes back to the example of the's -- easy pass. okay. questions. thanks for the ten minutes. got that off my chest. this goes to lovaas. the question deals with maximizing return on investments, and with new transportation fun, and as we know, are in short supply, we can't fund every project, and we have to support projects that give us the most bang for the buck. there's a proven approach that

examines costs and investment alternatives. for instance, the delaware valley regional planning commission uses a strategic planning process that compared alternative investment approaches and as a result they reached new growth while reducing congestion, pollution, and transportation costs for the families. should more states and cities use this common sense approach to make the best use of constrained funding by targeting our infrastructure investments, please? >> short answer is yes, more states and regions should use this tool, and there's already several regions doing so both big and medium sized and finding there's huge potential savings based on infrastructure that does not have to be built by engaging in scenario planning. corporations do it, fortune 500 companies do it, no reason government shouldn't learn from them. it's important. actually, in addition to encouraging more of that with

the new law, under current law there's programs that programs should be constrained. it's a good question to ask the federal highway administration and federal transit administration whether or not that's the case because nrdc and i want to see more investment in the program. let's be clear, there's cuts as well, so it makes sense to look at plans and programs and be sure they are fiscally constrained. >> all right. thanks so much. the last point i'll make in the last 40 seconds, in delaware when i was governor, we used to say if things are worth paying for, things worth having are worth paying for. we could have had money until cows came home to fund transportation projects. we didn't do that, we do some, but reraised revenues by easing up a little bit the tax on gasoline, still to be competitive with the region, but used other sources of funds, user fees that were transportation related. at the end of the day, we need

to raise revenues as well. it's smart to raise revenues to reduce dependence on foreign oil and encourage us to be more conscious to the need to conserve. i leave with that, and with that, my time expired. thank you so much, madam chair. thank you, all. >> senator, thank you so much for your leadership in this committee. it's so important. you're -- the fact you're also on finance is key to us because we have reached a milestone today in the bipartisan support for this bill, and we must get that same sense of bipartisanship in the finance committee because these are, these are tough times, but we know that if we fail to act, we are inviting unemployment. we're inviting second class economic leadership. we're inviting. it's not like we don't know. it's not like we're walking blindly into something. we know what the options are.

what i would like to do in closing today is to go through this panel. i know mayor's gone, but i know he's told me he's utterly committed to this. we have starkly different approaches going on in the senate and the house right now, and i don't think it's necessary to bemoan that fact, but it's necessary to recognize that fact that we now have the house proposed bill which slashes spending in this area between 34%-36%. we have the budget passed bill over there which does the same. we know we have a looming deadline which does the same. we have three ways to go that will result in a cut of more than a third and disastrous

consequences that all of you have spelled out regardless of your views on the environment or politics or whether you like the president or you don't or you're republican or democrat. this has nothing to do with any of that, and i guess what i need to hear from you today in the most unequivocal way, if you can do this, is to tell me whether you are willing to be part of a team that is going to move forward with this bipartisan bill. this is not going to be easy, but it's necessary. it's necessary for the economy. it's necessary for the environment. it's necessary for competitiveness. it's necessary for safety. there's a lot of other necessaries. it's necessary to make sure that for a couple of years the states know how to plan. we heard from two incredible people here who deal with the uncertainty of this every day,

and i remember once before when we were not going to agent on the extension that i believe it was nevada, but it could have been other states, it i think it was your state, susan, that just said layoff notices are going out. we just can't proceed, so we can't go into this future. this is america. we don't do that when we know that we can work together. my question to you, and if you give me a yes on it, i'll be grateful, but if you can't, don't do it because i'll call on you. this is an unprecedented job we have. we don't have time. we have to mark up the bill before we leave this summer. we have to get this bill to the senate floor and pass it. we have to then persuade the friend chairman mai cay who i -- micah who i agree with on many things, and i know he cares about this, we have to convince him to work with us if we get to a conference. this is a long hurdle.

we have to convince the administration to please weigh in now. yes, we want infrastructure back. we love it. it's great. it's not the core program. we should build support for it, but it's not the core program. i'm going to ask you each will you be part of a team, a bipartisan team, and work as hard as you can to accomplish this bipartisan bill. i'll start with you -- >> chairman, boxer, we'll be there unequivocally, we'll be there with you lock step with this committee. this issue is too important. we will be there with you every step of the way. >> wonderful. mr. james? >> my testimony today was in full support of the bill that's being introduced by this committee. we certainly think it is hugely important that surface transportation funding be remain a bipartisan effort which it has been throughout its history, and

we certainly believe that maintaining the current level of funding for the next two years is the best approach to the highway program. >> and will you help us? >> absolutely, absolutely. >> make sure -- >> that was not implicit in what i said. we absolutely will be there. >> excellent. look, we understand if this bill takes a different turn and somebody here says -- any of you don't like it anymore, i get it, but that's not our intent. it's our intent to keep it as you see it. >> madam chair, simply, strongly, and clearly, yes. we will be there. it's crucial, and the honorable gary what do you say? >> cities and states like los angeles can want rely on the gas tax. they have to require on other funding because they take transportation as a higher

priority than what those funds produce. the federal government needs to do the same thing we believe. 23 you take transportation -- if you take transportation infrastructure at a higher priority than the gas and diesel tax from the trust fund, we cannot produce the revenues to pass the bill. you need other resources in order to be able to ensure it is funded. we are a yes. >> you are a yes, okay. mr. lovaas? >> we are part of the blue-green alliance with president o'sullivan and look forward to working with him and you and putting shoulders to the wheel and move this forward. >> very pleased to hear that. mr. con who represents everybody, all the users. >> absolutely. we're 100% supportive of the bipartisan effort, and we're glad to be a part of the team, and we'll be there. >> good, because tomorrow every won of you is on a conference call with me and getting other colleagues to join on that call so that we can just keep this

coalition together. i just want to say to each and every one of you, this job that i have and senator inhefe has and the rest of us, we're nowhere without the people because otherwise we're just talking to each other. i honestly believe in this effort, and i cannot thank the staff enough, republican staff, democratic staff, this has been a team effort, and there were moments when i thought we'd never get here. we have gotten to this point, and so we now have to keep up the momentum, and your answers to this question that i had mean a lot to me, and i know senator inhofe feels the same way because we can't move through our republicked conferences unless we know we have you behind us, so thank you very much. this is a milestone. i think this is a day that we'll remember for a long time, and let's just keep up this spirit, and i'll talk to you all tomorrow, and we stand

adjourned. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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

>> this week, "the communicator" begins a four part series on cyber security. howard schmidt is this week's guest and talks about reducing cyberthreats and protecting the u.s. from cyberattacks. >> host: this is week one on the four-week series on cyber threats and legislative proposal to address the threats. we're pleased to be join on the first week by howard schmidt,

assistant to the president. guest reporter is here from the "wall street journal". before we dive into the proposes put forward on cybersecurity, is there raise revenues working definition of what cyber security is across governments and stake holders of what it is and what it will entail? >> guest: i think the term we use in what we now call cyber security evolved over the years. it was information security, then information assurance, and now we are around cyber security because it encompasses everything from end user devices, smart phones including government systems and defense systems. we're around that from a government perspective. intergnarlly, there's other -- internationally there's governments that take information security still looking at issues around computer security, so locally,

we got it, but internationally it's not the same. >> host: is it a global issue? >> guest: it is. not only are we paying attention to it within the u.s. government and private sector, but the economics of the world has turned around on the technology backbone that we see today, and a lot of this hinges on how well we do security. >> host: in the last couple months, the white house released a series of cyber security proposals, some legislative. how did you incapsulize the proposals? >> guest: it's a continuation of what the president asked us to do in 2009 releasing a cyberspace security review saying there's things to look at. one is the april release of the national strategy tar trusted identities in cyberspace looking at identity and how to do that. the second which we'll talk about in a little bit is the legislative piece, what are things congress can do to help not only u.s. government, but u.s. businesses. the third one, sort of the

corner stone of a lot of what we look at is, the president's international strategy on cyberspace. note it's cyberspace strategy. the title is prosperity and economy in sort of a tech any coal world we live in today. >> guest: i'm wondering one more stage setting question. characterize, on a weekly basis, there's new evidence of cyber up filtration attacks, things like that. i mean, how do you -- when you look across the board whether it's state based, cyber crime, ect., how do you characterize the threat that the united states is facing in cyberspace right now? >> guest: a couple places. one, you have to bucket it in the correct places. you mentioned cybercrime. we have seen that since we moved from bulletin board systems to the internet to the web and e-commerce that there's been concentrated efforts by criminals out there to take advantage of that.

there's one piece we continue to see. that, of course, increases the more we are dependent on i.t. systems, the more people engaging in it, the more opportunities for criminals 20 operate in cyberspace. on the other end, we look at the dependency we have as a government, as a civil society. the lights are on because somewhere there's an i.t. system running a power generating system, so therefore because that dependency exists, any threats against those systems have a more dramatic effect on us which is why we get focus on identifying what's going on out there, isolating impact, and stop it from happening. >> host: one thing that intrigued me is different corners of the government have different views on how severe the threat is, and one of your jobs is obviously to coordinate different views that one of the most vocal components of the government on the cyberthreat is the pentagon, officials warning of a cyber parole hair bon.

i i don't see that in your approach. how publicly do we assimilate views across the administration in terms of how severe the threat is. >> guest: looking at the different parts of government with different responsibilities, the department of defense looks at the worst case scenario and does what they can to protect the united states and our interests against that. other parts of the government, department of energy, department of treasury, commerce, they all have different speedometers, and you key is through from lens. when the president created this office, the idea was to coordinate these and develop good policy the president could put forth on behalf of the u.s. government. >> guest: what do we make of the pen -- pentagon's stronger views? when they talk about the millions of scams done in defense systems every day. >> guest: it's not necessarily only the defense systems that are scanned. you know, private sector, we have other parts of the

government including other governments, and what it is when we hear what they say, we have to take that as part of the overall picture we look at, take that into account, figure out what they can do to help, how much is directly related to the defense activities, how much of it goes to the fbi, department of justice, secret service? how much goes to homeland security. this is hart of an overall picture, but not the whole picture. >> guest: we eluded earlier obviously to the white house's proposal, and i'm wondering now that we're over the debt crisis, is there more action? speaking with people on capitol hill, there's been fears from aids working hard on the issue that things stalled out. can you give us an update? >> guest: yeah, and we, like you just mentioned, believe we'll see movement on this when the congress comes back. this is a big issue. we recognize there's a lot of pieces that we need to put in place on this. legislative is only one of that. now, while this has been out there since we submitted the

proposal on behalf of the president, that doesn't mean we stop work waiting for congress to do something. we continue to make efforts, but when congress comes back, there's extra focus, not just in the senate, duh -- buts house, and there's a continued movement forward recognizes there's pieces the legislative body can help us with. >> host: you talked about pieces of cyber security legislation. do you want to see a whole package passed or see it in bits and pieces? >> guest: we considered what we considered a comprehensive package based from senator reid, and that's the important way to look at it. when you look just at the process getting things through congress, if there's small bite chunks, it tax longer than i think we want to see happen. this way looking at it from a perspective of here's the pieces, put them in place at one time, and then continue to evaluate things moving forward. if we need more in the future because technology changes, threat change, adjust in the

future, but looking in the comprehensive fashion is i think the way forward now. >> host: if congress doesn't look at it that way, which one piece do you think is critical to get passed asap? >> guest: the biggest is where information sharing with the private sector, particularly the critical infrastructure and the role of the u.s. government in there. we debated what is government's role, private sector's role, how much interaction there should be. private sector says there's a loft things they can do, but the government has unique information based on intelligence, law enforcement investigations, other activities. they really need that. those are the two pieces we have to get locked down to mutually sort of accept that shared responsibility we have to protect the critical infrastructure. >> guest: what have you been doing to work with private industry on this? talking with people on capitol hill, the prospects of the legislation, i heard there's been push back from private industry, not just the chamber of commerce, but

telecommunications and intelligence companies are not fans of the sort of system that you're proposal and other proposals on the hill set up to kind of require certain parts of critical infrastructure to evaluate their systems and kind of report back on that, and i'm wondering what -- how the white house is managing industries' concerns 07b this -- on this. >> guest: a couple things. one is we said this is the beginning of the dialogue, by no means the end of the dialogue. secondly, as we work with the private sector, not only the white house, but also all the departments and agencies that have a sector specifically speedometer, getting feedback with the private sector in shaping what is it we really need to do and what are the things they need? i don't know i would characterize the private sector response as being tremendous push back. there's concerns -- >> guest: one characterized it like guns blazing, some of the folks getting feedback on capitol hill described it as significant.

>> guest: the vast majority of people i say to say it's measured. they understand the devil's in the details. we have to figure that out and define what is critical infrastructure, what's the reporting mechanism, want to make sure if there's a reporting requirement now to some government agency that we're not piling something else on top of them. those are the concerns i heard from the private sector, by the way, are shared concerns that we have. as we get into the details, we have to make sure we continue to economic growth that i.t. and technology gives us while still making sure that the lights stay on, and we have the ability to communicate. >> guest: would you anticipate any changes made to that portion of it begin that that's kind of the section that seems like both the legislative proposal and also the thing that's causing heart burn among some in industry? >> guest: as this moves forward, more input from private sector, and congress getting more used to the details, and we anticipate changes and expect them to come back with the

proposed changes so we can provide feed back on how workable that it is under the current set of situations we live under now. >> host: on may 27th in the "wall street journal" an article by her, she had a document saying this, "layering new regulations on critical infrastructure harms public-private partnerships, cost industry substantial sums, and not necessarily improve national security." >> guest: it's interesting because we read that article needless to say, and i got a number of conferrings with the chamber, and basically as they try to -- bear in mind, they there's a number of different companies with a different perspective. it was a draft, not fully vetted with other members, so basically that getting out there was not quite fully representative of the position on the chamber itself and what they told me. we continue to be sensitive of their needs. we continue to hope that they work together interimly to figure out what are the

alternatives that can want only once -- cannot only once again continue business needs, but while improving security. >> host: another quote, sir, the 451 group quoted in the huffington post on may 13th, "the attackers are two years ahead of the defenders, security defenders, who are two years ahead of the market, which is two years ahead of compliance, and legislation is five years behind that." how do you keep up? >> guest: well, that's the thing. when you look at how you define being ahead of somebody, i get that question all the time. we're more better prepared than last year, have better processes, not only within the government, but outside the government, but the vulnerabilities still exist, and the bad guys still exploit the same vulnerabilities over and over again. a typical thing seen through the anatomy or autopsy of these

events. you have a fishing e-mail exploiting a vulnerability. we've seen that for 20 years. i don't know that anybody's ahead. we all recognize it. it's doing basic hygiene we look at. legislatively as pointed out in the proposal we put forward, there's things we need to catch up on, the penalties for impacts critical infrastructure, the impact on organized crime, now a part of the cybercrime thing we talked about moments ago. updating that is key, but i don't know that i'd put two years two years and two years -- we recognize there's ground to make up. >> host: this is c-span's communicators program. kicking off today, doing a four-week series on cyber security and cyber threats. coordinator for the white house and assistant to the president is our guest, and gorman is our guest reporter. >> guest: one of the other issues coming up in the

legislative proposal is the white house puts a lot of stock in the role of the homeland security, and i talked to lawmakers with hesitation to that because they feel dhs is still nearly a decade old, not yet, still kind of a young agency, and cybersecurity is a newer speedometer -- responsibility for it and it's like the national security has done this for decades. i'm wondering why focus on the department of homeland security, and how do you respond to lawmakers? this comes up from time to time in discussions with the administration. >> guest: first, when you look at the roles of different parts of government, there's the national security agency which had great technical capabilities. i said many times, if i have to protect the system, they are the folks i'd go to. go to the civil you know responsibilities across the security, you look at the things that have been put in place for homeland security and the relationship with the private sector, they are the best place to put it.

drawing on other resources in the government, the department of defense, energy, department of justice and fbi, it's a supported role, but somebody has to lead this. as a consequence, they continue to build their capabilities as we develop the national cyber instant response plan. we look at things such as cyber storm, some of the exercises. that gives them a window into the things they have to modify and change to do this, so i have confidence in the leadership. i have confidence in the mission they have got, but we continue to build the capabilities with smart people and good laws put in place to help support them. >> guest: can they do it fast enough though? as we discussed, this is something where government's response to the threat has been rather slow, and so if you add a learning curve for an agency on top of that, i mean, can the department respond quickly enough to this threat? >> guest: i think they can, and it's the thing where it's more than their responsibility. private sector is a big, big part of this. private sector's been dealing with it for a long time, and so

as a consequence to ramp up to deal with what we're dealing with today is ongoing work, but more importantly is building for the future because the ideas as part of their role in just dealing with today, but how do we make sure private sector's better organized, the government's better organized, and there's a clear message sent to those disrupting the system is there's consequences for that. it's not a learning curve, but a building of capacity. they are not the only ones in the world to deal with that. >> host: james louis,ic worked with you on this report of csis, a quote by him saying that asking private enterprise to help protect cyber security systems is like asking the airlines to protect the u.s. from air attack. what's your response to that? >> guest: yeah, i'm not sure that's a value is characterization. if you burrow down to the business needs, i think we've recognized in business more over

the past five years that there's a business imperative. security's not just a luxury, it's something you need to do, part of a business process. building that into the systems and having an open system so we can do online transactions, coordinate with business partners 1 a new thing. this is a brand new technology that we have been pushing out, the boundaries with. asking them to do it, they have a need to do that to make their businesses successful. you know, people talk about power station and the other things. they don't make money if the lights are not on. businesses don't make money if their products can't be sold securely. there's a business imperative to do it as well. there's some slowly coming to the table to fully recognize their role in critical infrastructure, but they are getting smarter about it, and part of our job, department of justice and homeland security is to understand they have a sharedded responsibility as well. >> guest: at what point does it exceed their responsibility though? one of the things the pentagon

is concerned about is they are relying on the same mower grid all of us are, and if the lights go out, it affects them as much as it affects the hospital next door or whomever. i mean, when does it -- when does the cyber attack, an agent of war, use of force, whatever terminology we use, something where it goes into the military realm. >> guest: we debate that with really, really smart lawyers. ..

>> the unexpected. we have to do the same thing in the critical infrastructure realm as well. >> even as the lawyers debate the notion of an act of war. you've now studied this problem for decades. what's your sense of it? >> i think if we are ever to get to a point where it's military against military, or military against civilian structures, then that sort of flips the switch the other way. it's not to say it's automatically turn the switch back. you have diplomatic, economic, all kinds of pieces in which the president has laid out to deal with those sort of things. that's the worst case scenario. >> so if the u.s. can prove some other country's military

attacks. proving a specific government, much less their military is responsible is something that is really difficult to do. that almost seems like i'm not sure when you would prove that. >> that's the thing. when you look at attribution. we've talked about that before, it's nobody's interest to create a cyber armageddon, or digital pearl harbor. that's why we have to be careful in analyzing, every intrusion, left of passwords, every one of those scans that you mentioned to analyze and rise to the level of being a threat to the u.s. or the u.s. interest, and if so, how do we deal with them? a lot of this is basic hygiene and making sure these things that we know can't affect us. >> howard schmidt is currently the white house cybersecurity

coordinator. mr. schmidt has had one the most intriguing careers that i've ever seen. i would suggest you go to the white house web site in case you'd like to look at it further. but he served in vietnam with the air force, he worked as a policeman, he worked for the fbi at the national drug intelligence center, he was a special advisor for cyber space security for the white house chief security for the white house, under the george w. bush administration, he was vice chair of the president's critical infrastructure protection board. he served as -- with microsoft as well. and that's just a couple of the things. he's gotten both his ba and mba from the university of phoenix, mr. schmidt, what are the proposals that the president calls for that it needs to be coordinated from the white house? do you see this as a cybersecurity czar-type of position who coordinates the activity? >> yeah, i wouldn't car -- call

it a czar. coordinator is what it's all about. interesting enough and we've seen positive in similar states around the world do similar type things. recognize there's the defense, intelligence, commerce, there needs to be somebody bringing those things together, getting the input from everybody, and making good advise to in our case the president and in other countries, the prime minister or presidents there as well. so clearly it has to be anchored in the white house as the president has put forth. >> are there any funding numbers in place for this? >> as far as the white house or broadly? >> just cybersecurity in general. >> yeah, we do have some things that go back to the comprehensive cybersecurity, where money is allocated for that. once again as we evolve in cybersecurity, one of the things we look at was cybersecurity cost. that would be anti-virus or firewall these sort of things. no longer are they viewed as strictly security type of things. they are part of the infrastructure. it's like when we buy a car, we

don't say i want to have brakes or not have brakes. it's part of the safety. that's why we look at the it, the security has to be built into it. >> in looking at your office, one the things that is -- one the proposals that still circulating on the hill is to create more structure around your position. i'm wondering now that you've had some time to spend in that position, who is your take in terms of proposal that is would give it more control over the pursestrings or just sort of establish your office more kind of grounded in statute. >> first, having control doesn't make you more secure. we've seen that with the evolution and most recently some of the changes that we've made to make it work. the structure that we have now is a good structure. we have the ability to bring all of the leadership and go through the tough issues. who handles what, how it gets handled, what are the policies,

what are the legislative pieces? i think by virture of the fact that we've been able to accomplish so much, for cybersecurity sort of lends some credence to the fact that we are well structured. plus it wasn't mentioned earlier, when the president created the position, it was not only part of the national security council, but also duel hat at the national economic council. i think it's vitally important, because the economy deals so much with the cybersecurity and technology. >> what's the hardest issue that you've had to sort out among the agencies. >> i think when you mention in the beginning. when you have great expertise in different areas, look at the it very specifically, which is what we want them to do and getting people to come together with a consensus. what are the things that we need to fix right now? moving away from the edges and getting to move to the middle, how can we move this forward? >> what are you hearing from congress? >> well, the meetings that we have with congress and on the hills of submitting the

president's proposal, we're getting a lot of good feedback they welcome the opportunity to debate this more deeply within congress and they look forward to us providing the input, what are the things we really need. i think the last accountant that we submitted this, there were 50 some odd pieces of legislation across 26 committees, all of them well intended and exercising jurisdiction, but have not heard saying what are the things that you need? that's what we put forth. they are happy to get that. as we mentioned earlier though, the debate is going to start when congress comes back and really get into the detail was this and how it's going to best work. >> given the realities of three months or so of legislative season left this year, do you forsee anything happening? >> i do. i'm very confident because there seems to be a commitment from the leadership up there that says, yes. now that we've got this big issue behind us right now, we can start focusing on this. they all recognize we need to do things, and those things are part of the proposed legislation

that we put forward and we need to move them forward. i feel very confident they will be moving it forward. >> have you gotten the commitment from the republicans to move on this? this was one the things i was hearing on the hill was there was concern that the republicans had other priorities and this wasn't necessarily going to be at the front runner? >> yeah, and my conversation had not been bi -- not been partisan at all. i meet with members of both parties, they have committed, they need to do more, and getting educated and figure out a way forward. and break in which side of the aisle is going to be working with us. >> you think they are going to have time to pass legislation in the next few months? >> i do. i feel very good. because they recognize how critical it is to so many different pieces how we look across the united states. >> mr. schmidt, we have not talked about the privacy concern which would be the guest in a couple of weeks. this was a quote by mark looking

at the white house proposal. there should be legal standards, not voluntary guidelines, when it comes to controls on privacy. >> yeah, one the things we did for not only the legislation, but very deeply engaged with the privacy and civil liberties. with that, the international cyber space strategy, and everyones to freedom of speech, freedom of expression, privacy, civil liberties when it comes to cyber space. that's one the core tenants that we have. even to the point where the president has the dedicated privacy officer in my office to look across the broad and the various. when mark or anybody from cdt or any other privacy agencies look at this, we want to make sure they have the confidence that we are focusing on it, they have controls in place, to make sure they are protecting privacy in civil liberties and it's something that they are accountable for, something that's transparent to whatever

organizationments to look at it. we'll continue as we move forward to the legislation and make sure it takes place. the other piece we look at when the proposals was the data breech. there's two pieces when we look at the national breech notification. one is citizens often times were not sure what our rights are when it comes to our information being compromised in the hands of the third party. on the same token, businesses that have that information are, you know, dealing with 47 odd pieces of legislation from different states on it's encrypted, not encrypted, we think something happened. once again, i think we help vocalize more on the privacy and the proposal with the data -- with the national data breech notification. >> how do you make this user friendly? >> well, that's one the tough things. security has to be transparent to the end user. when i see end user, it's just not, you know, any of us sitting in front of a computer. it's the small medium sized businesses, when you look across the united states, it's the 27 plus million businesses are

doing things online. we saw even during the economic problems we had a couple of years ago, we saw a tremendous increase in the billions of dollars in online commerce. it's got to be transparent and user friendly. and the end user should not be the one saddled with is this good or bad? we should have mechanisms, businesses, governments to make sure you are not confronted. that's part of what the proposals will help lead to. >> the flipside are the critics that say the white house's proposal didn't go far enough. that it was just sort of created a voluntary set of standards for business particularly critical infrastructure, and they say, you know, if this was truly infrastructure that critical to our security, why isn't the government just simply telling them what they need to do in order to protect national security. i mean what do you say to the people who raised those concerns that, you know, this isn't really that enforceable? >> and if it was strictly voluntary and nobody else cared about it, i'd have the same concern. but those same businesses that i

mention earlier, they had business need to do better security. they know they are doing business with government or other companies, hinge on how well they can do if they are doing the right thing. once again, there's an imperative. >> but that imperative has existed now for many years. i think everyone acknowledges at this point, it hasn't gotten the country to where it needs to be. otherwise we wouldn't need to be doing all of this. >> i agree. but i don't think the awareness has been there, the business need has been thereby, it's let's build it, roll it out, and secure it later on. i think there's a full recognition now by particularly large businesses that they can't continue to do business that way. it's too competitive. they now have to design the infrastructure. when you look at the voluntary regime that we've proposed on the legislation, they have to prove they are doing the right thing, not only to us, but to the public at large. and what other -- what better way to drive a business and say your customers out there know that you are doing the right thing, or not doing the right thing. that makes it more than just a voluntary effort that we are

putting forward. >> finally, mr. schmidt, now that the proposals are on the table, legislation has been introduced or up in congress right now, being looked at by committees. what about your future? are you planning about sticking around at the white house to see this through or home to seattle? >> i serve with the pleasure of the president. the best that i can see, there's nothing and no shortage of work to continue to do in the future. i look forward to continue to serve the president and indeed move these things forward that he's put on the agenda. >> white house cybersecurity coordinator, special assistance to the president, thank you for being on the communicators for the intelligence correspondent for the wall street journal, thank you as well. this has been week one in our four week series on cybersecurity. next week, two members of congress on the legislative proposals, mac thornberry, republican of texas, jim langevin, democrat of rhode island. >> in less than an hour at 8

eastern, booktv in primetime. p/

>> it couldn't be resolved. >> he had the misfortune of running against a great military hero, dwight eisenhower. i don't think there was any way that adlai stevenson would have won. >> think of al smith, lost to herbert hoover, but paved the way for franklin roosevelt. there are 14 people, many of whom viewers may never have heard of, and all of whom i can pretty much guarantee they will find interesting to fascinating, and certainly surprising.

>> >> history professor gene bar talk about the 14 men that ran for president and loss. it's a preview for "the contenders" beginning friday september 9th. >> our "washington journal" series on the weather continues all week. this morning, the director of the center for ocean, land, and atmosphere studies, james kinter, was on the program talking about the science of climatology. >> and we are back to talk about our weather series. tracking the weather. yesterday we looked at disaster relief and preparedness. tomorrow the role of the

national oceanic and atmospheric information, noaa, and they with are looking at climatology with james kinter, he's the director of the center for ocean, land, and atmosphere studies as well as a climate dynamics professor at george mason university. let's begin with what is climatology? >> guest: climatology is a study of the statistics of weather. a lot of people confuse weather and climate. they tend to think of climate as the same thing as weather. we study the long term variability and statistics. we look at temperature records, precipitation, sunshine, cloudiness, so on in the atmosphere. we also look at how the variety and how the world's open transpires. >> host: what is done with the information? >> guest: there's a lot of data collected. we have an apparatus across the

globe within the united states and partners in other countries to collect information. it's principally the main volume of data is coming from satellites. but we also have a lot of resource that is are deployed in the atmosphere and the ocean to try to measure those quantities that i was just talking about. all of that data is publicly shared with people in, you know, anybody who has access to the internet, or people like me who do search with the data, and then it's also used for what people call operational purposes. which means they make weather forecasts and climate forecasts with that information. >> and then what is -- what decisions are made, government decisions are made based on the information? >> guest: well, you have the recent event, of course. everybody is talking about hurricane irene. a lot of information was gathered and put into computer modeled to generate weather forecast. those weather forecasts were guiding decisions by fema and state emergency management people and people who had to

make decisions about whether to put sandbags in front of their property, to evacuate from areas, all of those decisions were based on that information coming from weather forecast. >> host: what is climate dynamics, how does it differ from climatology? >> they are similar. they are both scientific studies. in the case of climatology, we are thinking about long term statistical relationships. but in the case of climate dynamics, dynamics means change or movement. we are looking at how things are changing, and particularly how things are interacting. we study the atmosphere, ocean, land surface, including the organisms that live on the land surface and try to understand how they all interact to produce the sorts of variations that we observe. >> guest: why do you differentiate between climate and weather? >> host: well, weather, there's a famous quote. >> guest: professor lorentz

says weather is is what you expect, the climate is what you get. the temperatures are going to rise into the mid 80s and that's exactly what we expect for late august. if you go back a week, we were having torrential rain, it was cloudy, wind blowing. that's not what we expect. in principal, we could say irene was the weather, today we are getting the climate. >> host: what was the federal role and what federal agencies do the science or are partake in it? >> guest: well, the principal agency that's working on climatetology is noa. they are responsible for monitoring the information, or archiving and collecting and maintaining the data when we take measurements of the climate system, and then they thirdly have the responsibility of producing outlooks on climate time scales.

they are looking forward in time and try to make predictions of what the climate will be like in the next season or year or perhaps beyond that. other agencies are also involved, primarily supporting research like what they group does. we are federally funded, we wrote proposals to get research grants that are funded, also by noaa and by nasa in our case and the department of energy. other agencies include environmental protection agency, faa, federal aviation administration, the department of interior, i could go on. >> host: what happens when he does the search? >> guest: two things. i think of it as happening products. we have scholarly papers. all of our work, eventually, is described in a scholarly journal which is peer reviewed by other scientists who are experts in our field and the other thing we're doing is we also provide

that information back to the government agencies to help them improve the computer models that they are using to make better forecasts, find better ways of making sure of the information, and we work very closely with scientist who were in the federal laboratories. >> host: here's a headline. >> guest: right? >> host: explain that more. >> guest: in the case of hurricanes, we have a fundamental observational. if you want to launch a balloon, you are more interested in preserving your life than gathering the data. people are finding robotic ways of gathering that information. of course, we have data coming to us from space. form of satellite information, but we'd like to get closer look, and particular with hurricanes, the problem of

forecasting hurricanes is principally getting the intensity of the storm right. and that means we have to know a lot about the internal structure of the hurricane. it's -- the way that we represent hurricanes today is vastly superior to how it was a few years ago. still there's some misses pieces we don't completely understand. >> host: right, this was the criticism with hurricane irene. the scientist could say it's heading towards new york. this is the path. we don't know if it was a category three or one. what is the future of predictions it's intensity? >> guest: right. first of all, in my opinion, the forecast for hurricane irene was spectacular. the track was predicted very, very tightly, many, many days in advance. particularly if you talk to emergency management, they will tell you that 72 hours in advance is the sweet spot. they have to deploy resources for the aftermath and for protection of life and property,

and that time scale is exactly what they need about three days lead. so the forecast were spot on about three days in advance in terms of the track. the intensity was as you say not as well forecasted. as far as i'm concerned, it was a wonderful forecast. what we expect in the future, the two things that we are missing right now as i said some better information about the internal structure of the hurricane, particularly the internal part of the hurricane which is in the clouds. so clouds are very difficult problem for us. and so we are hoping to get better information about clouds, and then the other thing we need is the computers that we are using for weather prediction and climate research and climate prediction are still not adequate. even though they are very large and very fast super computers. they are by far got the fastest super computers in the world and not what we need to do the job. >> host: if you look at how storm trackers precision have

gone, 1970, they would predict within 400 miles three days in advance. in 1990, it improved to 200 miles, by 2010, a storms path and intensity could be forecasted five days to within 200 miles. any thoughts on that how it's changed? >>guest: i think you are reading from the bible. that's exactly what we expect. we are seeing the study slower. progress towards greating better forecast. one the things that we try to understand in our research is whether there is an irreducible limit to the uncertainty. whether we can actually decide now we have done as best as we can. that still remains illusive. i think what you are seeing and the statistics that you just read was that the forecast are getting better, and we can expect to continue to do that for another couple of years. >> host: we are dividing the lines on the region here.

vicky first in florida. >> caller: hi there. good morning. first time caller. >> host: welcome. >> caller: i love c-span. i'm happy i'm first time caller with the topic. i'm happy that a topic like this is on c-span. i wish the topic could be in the local weather channels on educating the community as far as the weather patterns, not just the local weather. we suffered the hurricane in florida. and, you know, we are hurricane state. and we are well known now about hurricanes. but all over the world, there were things happening, you know, earthquakes, typhoons, and sometimes i just wish that when

we emphasize education for our children on the scientists that are local weather is an avenue for that to be educated and expanded. but my question to you there, sir, is that. what effect does this -- this is off of the walls, are the 20 grids that are owned by various countries, i think that we own four or five of them, the last one was built in alaska, that affects the debt stream? and in your research, do you take that as, you know, into consideration? >> host: do you know what she's talk abouting? >> guest: no. >> caller: can you explain grids more? i don't know the official name. i know they had the warfare and history channel had the big episode on the grids being made

all over the world and certain countrying build them. they had that piece on history channel. i apologize for not knowing the official grid name. but the last one that was built, i guess, it was finished couple of years ago in alaska. >> host: all right. james kinter? >> guest: i'm not entirely familiar with what you are talking about. there is a history of weather modification research that's gone on. the military has been involved in that as well civilian researchers. what we have -- and this is not my area specifically. but my understanding is that our attempts to make changes to the weather have not been all that successful. we do have some capability to alter the amount of precipitation that's produced in a storm if we happen to have storm clouds available to us, cloud seating and with those sorts of techniques. but the idea that has been there that we might be able to steer tropical storms into a different place, or that we might be able

to somehow influence very large scale circulation in the atmosphere like the jet stream that you mentioned is probably ill founded. and we don't really believe that's particularly possible at this point. >> here's a tweet from emma. >> guest: i think five degrees is a large number and probably not realistic. there are people who are studying that. that's not really a weather/climate problem. >> host: it doesn't impact the climate/weather? >> guest: we don't know. the probable is a minuscule and unmeasurable effect. >> host: gregory, good morning. >> caller: hello, i think it's important to point out that the government bodies that will help us track climate phenomenon, and all of the issues that relate to climate change, like the u.s.

and noaa and others are being cut and are slated for cuts by the republican party, and in that regard, i'd like to suggest that this super committee is being put together that has cut the budget have as a guiding principal, and not anything that's going to help us track, learn about, mitigate, prevent, or otherwise address carbon loading of the atmosphere and climate change, and conversely, cut first everything that helps subsidize and promote. corporate jet. talk about a high carbon footprint for individuals and, of course, subsidies for the oil and gas and coal industries. if we can't do at least this much as we go about cutting our budget to also cut our carbon, the future is bleak on every front and our particular system

and i.e. the republican party which seems to dominate it will properly be condemned by every future generation for if we cannot at least do that. >> host: there's a tweet from matt smith. >> guest: sure. one the things we fete asked a lot about the work we are doing on climate prediction, predictability, and how it impacts extreme weather and the sorts of things we just experienced here on the east coast. and our answer to that is the climate change is happening, it is very likely to be associated with human activity, and we believe that the way the things are going if the climate system will lead to more extreme behavior of the weather. that being said, it's a very general statement, and people want more specific information

about things like specific hurricane. the problem is in the climate research world, those are the sorts of things that we can't answer. what we -- the analogy that i like to use with the students is if you think about and do a thought experiment where we are dropping pieces of paper from standing up. we mark on the floor where all of the paper lands and what you'll find is that there will be a preferred spot where all of the paper lands and then it will spread out from there in all directions to have less and less paper piling up. so that would be what the climatetologist of where the likelihood of the paper land. if we put a fan and drop, we'll find the distribution will shift. if think about the extreme places where paper might land, which might be hurricanes if we're thinking as an analogy for the weather, what you would say is the wind blowing in one

direction may give us more of that extreme behavior in the direction away from the fan. that's the sort of thing we're looking at how the change of climate affects the predictability and the rate at which we're going to see the sorts of extreme behaviors. >> host: it's a science of probabilities and variabilities? >> guest: yes, in principal, it's an accumulation about the weather. to see whether or not the climate has changed. we collect statistics, construct the distribution to tell us how different things are from point to point and time to time. then we wait and see how different things are compared to the previous. >> host: katherine from north carolina. good morning, katherine. katherine in north carolina. all right. i'm going to move on to will in albany, oregon. good morning. >> caller: hello, good morning

c-span and washington journal. >> guest: morning. >> host: we're listening. >> caller: i would like to comment on what the lady from florida was talking about. he was talking about the h.a.r.p., high altitude research project, in alaska. as a career atmospheric scientist, i'm disturbed by the level of ignorance of general public. things like h.a.r.p. are the results of sheer misunderstanding of what the at most fear is all about. -- atmosphere is all about. could you comment on the education level of the american citizens and what we might do to raise the level? >> guest: i'm glad you brought up the point. there's a serious problem in the country. there seems to be what the people in the educational community call a leaky pipeline for scientists. we find -- i mean most of my students are graduate students who are working towards phds in climate dynamics.

and, you know, what we find is that many of our students are from other countries, we don't see as many americans coming into the program as we would like, and where that is not really a big issue for us, it is a big issue for the country at large. we're not seeing people thinking of science or scientific research as a career possibility. and we are trying to understand that, trying to understand how we might do a better job of educating the public. one, of course, thing that we're doing is using social media and internet to try to put information out in a form that's more pal ofable and acceptable to digest it. we also try to do a lot of things in terms of reaching into secondary education, high schools, and also under graduates to try to help them see the path towards scientific careers. but for the general population, there's also a crying need for people to become informed about what the real risks are, and

what the real issues are with regard to whether and climate and climate change. >> host: joe, you are up next in washington, d.c. >> caller: good morning, two quick questions. the first, what's the role of the commerce sector in climatology in the country, and second, what kind of impact will the forced discretionary budget cuts have on commerce, noaa, and on you guys? thank you very much. >> guest: so the private sector is very, very active in the weather world. you can probably name several private companies yourself that are very -- obviously apparent in produces weather products, weather forecast, weather information, producing the weather on television and so on. for climate, the private sector has not been quite as vigorous. principal because the government is providing a lot of information. but also because people don't really know what to do with that information. that's a very rapidly growing sector. there are a number of companies that are starting up to try to

provide climate, climate forecast information, climate change information, there will be a big need in the future for the next couple of decades for what i'll call translators. people who are adebt at understanding the scientific aspects of the problem and at communicating the aspects of those issues to the public at large. your second question was about impacts of budget cuts. there's one that's very obvious right now. we have as i mentioned earlier, reliance on satellites to provide us with global coverage information about weather and climate. those satellites are very expensive. they are very expensive to develop, launch, maintain, collect the data, and make use of it. of course, the u.s. government puts a lot of money into satellites. that's where all of the information comes to you on the internet, or through private companies like the weather channel, those satellite missions would be in jeopardy if we had budget cuts such as are

being discussed today. i think along with the fact that we haven't invested as well as we should in computing infrastructure for weather and climate, and also, of course, high plug would be for research, we see dwindling capability to provide the sorts of cutting edge research activity that is are needed to advance weather forecast and climate prediction. >> bill in mobile, alabama. >> good morning. >> caller: yes, in the last few weeks, we've heard lots of information on the presence the el niño and as they may effect on the atlantic coast. this year i haven't heard anything. could be just me. anything on that? >> guest: yes, there was a routine set of predictions have come out from the u.s. government, the climate prediction center of noaa, that relate el niño, la nina to the

hurricane center. the past winter, the el niño has been in the feminine phase, in the la nina, or cold phase. it has been transitioning towards a neutral state currently. currently the tropical specific is near neutral in terms of the temperature. means it's about at it's expected value, the average or expected value. that ought to provide some capability for the atlantic hurricanes to be more vigorous than normal this year. that was forecast by the climate prediction center, as well as by the hurricane center. and that information should gotten out. so, it's a little surprising to hear that people weren't aware of it. el niño and la nina, that's the main area at 4:center. the relationship to hurricanes and to whether on the west coast of north america, as well as

indonesia, australia, the micronesia, south america, all of the areas are impacted by the state of the ocean in the tropical pacific. >> what are you studying next when it comes to la nina? what's the prediction for the future on the weather patterns? >> guest: well, el niño, we have a capability to predict with several months lead with something on the order of 70% accuracy. that varies from time to time through the year because el niño turns out to be quite dependent on whether it's summer or winter. and our particularly if it's spring in the northern hemisphere, we have a great deal of difficulty predicting how el niño will involve. we're working hard to understand if that's basic limitations that nature is providing to us, it's hiding el niño under the covers and we can't make, or if it's a

limitation. we're trying to understand if we can push beyond the barrier that we have today and make more accurate, longer lead forecast of el niño. >> host: dale is next. when i talk to washington. >> caller: good morning. being from central washington, i want to seattle area in 1995 and went to work over there for a big asphalt company. i was talking to our truck boss, i says what's the best way to forecast the weather. he said if you can see rain here, it's going to rain, again, it's raining. i figured that out. that's the best way. thank you to c-span and everything. >> guest: in meteorology circles, we very persistence. whatever it is today, let's see what it's like tomorrow. if you are in a variable place, that's probably a good forecast that whatever is happening today i want to expect something quite

different tomorrow. >> host: texas. >> caller: i had a couple of things on chem trail. if we pay more in taxes, will hurricanes and tornadoes go away? >> guest: so i don't know a lot about the atmospheric chemistry program that people are talking about. the answer is no. we are going to continue to have hurricanes and tornadoes regardless of whether the climate change is going forward or is somehow kept from happening. so i don't think that we are expecting such huge changes in the climate system that we would have tropical storms disappear. but what we are wondering and trying to explain and understand is whether climate change will have an impact on tropical storms in terms of changing their intensity, or changing their probability of occurring. and right now, the jury is out.

we have research that supports both sides of that question. whether we expect that in the future, say 50-100 years from now, we might see much more intense tropical cyclones, and we also might see basically the same sort of distribution that we have today. that's an area of very active research right now to try to understand how climate change will impact hurricanes and tropical storms. >> host: cindy, welcome. >> caller: thank you. i've been curious. are you doing any studies like on the effect of weather due to the bp oil spill and all of the chemicals they dumped into the ocean? just last winter/spring, where i'm at, we rarely get snow. over a foot. and several snows. and then the tornadoes in april. you know whereby is there any relation between the two? >> guest: relation between the bp oil spill and tornadoes, probably not.

although there is this notion that if you alter situation or conditions on the earth surface anywhere by any significant amount, you will have an impact on the weather. what we won't know is precisely what that impact is going to be. i would say it would be irresponsible to say that the accessive oil spilled on the gulf of mexico was responsible for tornado outbreak. but that being said, we do know that changing surface conditions in the gulf of mexico has a big impact on things like the amount of heat that's exchanged between the ocean -- between the gulf of mexico and the atmosphere. that hat convection for thunderstorms. it's a serious issue if it persists far long time. my understanding, again, this isn't my area. my understanding is that the oil was removed quite readily from the gulf, particularly from the surface, and so our expectations

is that it had a relatively minor effect on the weather. >> host: how do you distinguish between a trend and just a spring of bad weather? >> guest: no weather is bad weather. there's interesting weather and uninteresting weather from a research point of view. >> host: defending the climbtologist. >> guest: no value. i what you are talking about is extreme weather. i think you were talking about the el niño. it doesn't give us an edge knows if l in terms of predicting a storm. what it does tell us there's a higher or lower probability there will be tropical storms

and the more storms that fall, the more likely they will make landfall and cause troublely irene. >> host: robert next is sacramento. go ahead. >> caller: everyone needs to go to the libraries and check out the dvds on climate change. if they libraries don't have them, to buy them. for instance, have you seen the dvd "six degrees" and in the movie, it advocates watching mirrors that reflect the suns rays in space which would reduce the temperature problem that we have with the polar ice melting, because it causes so many problems, it may shut down the atlantic ocean conveyor. >> guest: yes, what you are describing is a series of mitigation activities to try to reduce the negative impacts of climate change. it's also being called geoengineering. people are talking about

changing the whole planet in terms of the energy budget, and climate that we talk about. we talk about the energy budget of the planet, because there's a certain amount of energy that's being received from the sun and back to space. what you are talking about is the idea of mirrors in space, there's also ideas of putting aerosols, particles into the upper stratosphere, people are talking about putting pumps and having it spray ocean water to brighten the clouds. all of those ideas are intended to reduce the amount of energy that's coming to the earth from space. reflecting it back into space with mirrors or aerosol or bright white clouds, all of that is intended to get the energy coming into the planet to be reduced. what our view, those are interesting ideas.

and in some cases they are feasible in terms of cost and implementation. but there are some very serious potential, unexpected consequences with those, or unintended consequences with those. so we feel a lot more research is required to understand precisely what would happen if we were to reduce the energy budget by cutting off the sunshine, or by putting aerosol particles in the statosphere, we would like to understand before before we experiment. >> host: tom you are on the air. >> caller: yes, i'm a farmer here in the midwest. i was -- i heard on the news the other day when the hurricane came up through there, they canceled close to 2,000 jet flights. and i was wondering if there was

ever any research done on like if you stay on the side of the road and you have a semi go by you, it'll almost knock you off of your feet. if you have that in jets, each jet from the way i understand it from washington, d.c. to california earns over 2,000 gallons of diesel, jet fuel in the atmosphere. you have that many jets and then the other thing that i wanted to say was as anybody doing research on that? and anything above 25,000 feet stays there. anything below 25,000 can be washed out with rain. >> host: james kinter? >> guest: yes, you raise a number of interesting points. there was sort of from meteorologist and horribly for the nation, an experiment to see what the effect of airplane ises on the atmosphere, which

happened in september 11th, 2001 when all airplane traffic was canceled. so we had all of the information at that time of what was going on in the atmosphere with respect to the time prior and the time after the sensation of aircraft travel. and, of course, during the time that we still had all of our satellite data and we were able to do studies. and when i say we, i mean my community. it wasn't something the group did. we did look at the effect of airplane traffic on the atmosphere. particularly contrails. they tend to produce very bright white lines in the atmosphere. if you have enough airplanes, do you produce a lot of reflectance of energy. we found therefore an impact. of course, cutting off all. if we have a situation like we had with irene where a fraction

of the airplane traffic is changed or canceled, then, it would be a smaller effect. but it does have an impact. and we are studying what that might mean in terms of the future. the other point that you made about was climate change. all of those airplanes are burning fossil fuel and carbon dioxide and other influence from the packs of the jet engines. as you say, at high altitude, the affluence tend to stay because there's nothing to rain them out. no precipitation at the high elevations. so we are also studying that. airplane traffic contributes considerably to the carbon dioxide increasings over time. it isn't the major player. the major players are power generation, and vehicle traffic on the surface. >> host: joe buck has this question on twitter.

>> guest: causes? >> host: i'm not sure what he's referring to. what are causes? >> guest: of climate change? >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: absolutely. climate changes all the time. in fact, the development of humans and civilization depends upon the climate being very, very stable as it has been for several thousand years. so we are in a period that happens to be a very stable period. if you look at paleorecord, very far back, we know the climate was more variable than it is today. we had and i'm sure many of the viewers are familiar with ice ages which is the last ice age was about 20-18,000 years ago, it was when the planet was covered with several hundreds to thousands of meters of ice.

so glaciers of north america and scandinavia. that was different and had nothing to do with airplanes or automobiles, or power generation. so we know that climate changes. and it changes for a variable of reasons. the main reasons that we are familiar with, first of all, the energy from the sun varies over time. another reason and that's over a very, very long time scales. the variations in human lifetime or in the period of the last few hundred years have been fairly small. we also know that the orbit of the earth about the sun changes over time. that maybe scary. but it changes slowly so that we observe the changes on something like 20-100,000 year periods. they are enough to change the amount of sunshine that reaches different parts and can give rise to ice ages. >> host: linda in tampa.

good morning. >> caller: good morning. first i'd like to thank you for sharing your knowledge. what do you think the effects are of the ph levels in the ocean are at this time? >> guest: that's an excellent question. increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is only half of the issue with carbon dioxide. we know that as we continue to pump carbon dioxide, which is odorless, and most people are not aware if it's around. but it's from the tail pipe, vehicles, power generation. that car borrow dioxide is being pumped into the climate system. some of it is showing up in the atmosphere. we see the concentration increasing over time. we've been measuring that in hawaii on the top of a mountain in a very pristine part of the middle of the tropical pacific for decades.

we have evidence that carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere. we also know that the carbon dioxide enters the ocean and it is dissolved. that chemical reaction associated with carbon dioxide dissolving in sea water is lowering the ph of the ocean. and it has been a measurable reduction in ph over the past couple of decades that we have been measuring it. and so that has a number of implications. one is that the number of organisms are sensitive to the ph level, which is the amount of acidity in the ocean. the number of organisms that force the calcium shells, on the seafood, those shells are very sensitive to the ph. as we lower the ph, the organisms are less capable to norm protective shells and they are dying off sooner in their

lifetimes and we see some extinctions of species. they are at the bottom. naturally as they become extinction or suffer preduction in numbers, we are going to see changes going up the food change. we may start to see other species of fish that humans eat or larger scale that would start to be damaged. >> host: james kinter is the direct tour for atmosphere studies. also a climate dynamic professor. one last phone call. it comes from russ in rochester, minnesota. good morning, russ. we lost him. here's a tweet though from c-span junkie. >> guest: okay. two questions there. so the global cooling idea which was prevalent in the 1970s had to do with a relatively

short-lived dip in the global service temperature of the earth. and there were some people relative minority of climate scientists who felt that might be an indication of future trends to downward and towards a new ice age or whatever. but that was relatively quickly debunked and it was just a short lived trend. the longer term trend that we've been measuring for more than a century, a century and a half is upward. so clearly global warming is taking place. it takes place at different rates and different decades. so we were currently since about 1998, we're in a relatively slow rate of increase. there is quite of bit of research on the topic and my group that we are working on that question, and we feel that what we are seeing in the global temperature record is a sum of two different effects. one which is an upward trend

that's probably associated with increasing carbon dioxide, and the other which is a variation from warm to cold, and back again that's taking place over multiple decades. and those two added together mean that for some decades, when the variation is going up, and the trend is going up, we see an accelerated increase in temperature, and when the variations is going down, and the trend is going up, they tend to cancel each other and we get relatively study temperatures. we're in a period like that now. we're expectation is to see it accelerate in a decade or too, and that it's being masked by natural events, as well as aerosols and other effects. >> host: james, thank you for being part of our series or tracking the weather. >> guest: my pleasure. >> "washington journal" continues the series on the weather tomorrow.

the focus will be on noaa. and friday the series wraps up with a discussion on the roll of the national weather service. washington journal is live every day starting at 7 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> watch more video of the candidates. see what political reporters are saying and track the latest campaign contributions with c-span's web site for campaign 2012. easy to use, it helps you navigate the political landscape with twitter feeds and facebook updates from the campaigns. candidate bios and the latest polling data and thinks to the media partners in the early, primary, and caucus states all at c-span.org/campaign2012. >> this holiday weekend, on american artifacts, the name conjures elegance and grandeur. from lectures and history on the

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