itself off the map. that's the wrong thing to do for the country. it's the wrong thing to do for our citizens. >> host: the. >> the u.s. senate downs to work the nominees. the head of the medicare and medication will be in charge of the $1 trillion on the spending and the children's health insurance program, and the insurance marketplaces that were created by the 2010 health care law. senators expected to vote on her confirmation a 5:30 eastern time. a couple of nominations awaiting senate floor action. senator dan coates for an spellens -- and david freedman for u.s. ambassador to israel. >> all right. >> senator tom carper is the top democrat on the environmental and puck works community and

joined the chair of the house transportation and infrastructure committee to talk about u.s. infrastructure. they discussed funding challenges during this event by the association of american highway and transportation officials in washington, dc. this is half an hour. >> senator, thank you for joining us today. [applause] >> you have the veterans here? if you're a veteran, stand up and safe our applause. please. [applause] >> i'm a retired navy captain. spent 23 years in the war in southeast asia,. and i -- different parts of the

president's speech lanight i appreciated. in dover -- where is secretary cohen? we of our secretary of transportation. >> i don't know -- is shane here from colorado? okay. he has his parole hearing this morning. [laughter] >> give him our love. but one of the things reminded us last night is the sacrifice of our service men and women. the remains of our fallen heroes come through dover air force base and we treat the families with great dignity and one of the favorite parts of the remarks has night. just to remember the events to the delware sever several week for the transfer of the remains of the chief petty officer and

it stick in his mind. i want to talk about transportation but i want to use -- what happened last night to be my springboard. one of my favorite thing about the u.s. senate is state of the union night. and the reason why it's not just because of she speeches we hear. often times they're very good. but the one for president last night did not write the speech he gave on his inauguration and that's a good thing. different kind offed expectations but we have -- we gather together for a dinner, senators do, and it's kind of like a nice covered dish super and we have silver rooms that they set up tables and we invite our spouses or somebody else. and so a lot of special guests and i invited a woman who is a cancer survivor, her life saved

last year by the affordable care act and get her healthcare coverage when nobody is would provide coverage. just before we get together at a -- talked down the corridor to go to the house of representatives there was a rush to restrooms and you're going to sit there a couple of hours ands we went to the -- a bun of us were in the head in the men's room, just -- agent -- eight of us. said -- we're talking about what we expect. and he says i just hope we're not at war with canada by midnight. [laughter] >> and i set my alarm to wake up at midnight. all clear. frsh. >> one thing is jim knows i love to do, and back in delware, love

to do customer calls. go visit businesses all the time. how re doing, what can we do to help? and the -- i love to go to schools and i -- specially enjoy town hall meetings with kids. a lot more pressurable than pleasurable than the town hall meetings of our republican colleagues and i even like little kids. third, fourth, fifth graders unup to college. every now and then a kid will -- in q & a they'll say like what do you do? and i say i'm a united states senator. and she said, what do you do? i said, you have school rules on your school bus and rules at home and i said we have rules for the country, laws and senators and representatives, i

get to help make the rules for the country. one little boy in the room that they -- raised his hand and said what else do you do? and i said, well, i try to help people. i try to help people who believe in the golden rule, treat other people be they we wanted to be treated and i help people. he said how? i told all of you -- one of the best ways to help people is make sure they have a job. to strengthen families is to make sure that's right at least one, hopefully if needed, two bread winner ins from the family and if you have that going for you, my job, my life, my world, maybe it's two the rest is pretty easy. and as general nor knows knows d other -- jennifer knows and others who heard me speak. i love lincoln. were in session all night and at 10:00 at night i wanted to go for a run. love to work every day. either run or lift weights or ride a bike it was my running

day and it was 10:00 at night. going to work until 1:30. a and i ran down to lincoln memorial and got there at 10:30, and it was really windy and -- cut -- but the moon was out and you can see the stars and the light reflecting on the reflecting ponds and ran up the steps of the lincoln memorial and there's mr. lincoln looking cross tell way the washington monument and the capital. how many have been there at 10:00 another night by yourself, on a cold, windy night. i read on the walls, the gettysburg address and the second inaugural address, things like with mall -- malice toward none and charity toward all and

i was looking the washington monthly. and i said a few things to him, and he didn't speak back. one question i asked, what is the role of government the said the role of government is to do for the people what they night for themselves to do for the people that they cannot do for themselves. great wisdom in that. and one of the thing that we do in government, maybe one of the most important things is to create a nurturing environment, for job creation and job process sir vacation. i think one of me most important thing wets do in government, state, local, first, is help create a nurturing environment for job creation and job preservation. created more jobs when i was governor but i didn't create one of them. we tried to create a nurturing environment for job creation and a big piece of that is high

schools, technical schools, community colleges, colleges, skills for their work force. what the players are looking for what about we need to be competitive as a nation. public safety is a big deal. clean air, clean water, access to foreign markets. protection of our intellectual property. protection against cyber attacks. one of the most important thing wes have potential for consensus in the congress and with this administration is with respect to infrastructure. which is a good thing. because as you know, our transportation infrastructure, we need some help and needed it for a long time. and regardless of the -- i thought just between me, shamefully, it's like scrubbing togethers' money and being able to limp along until i guess 2020. doesn't solve the problems, doesn't even come close. it's better than shutting down and not having any money at all.

mr. trump spoke about infrastructure and how we need do more. one thing in terms of paying for things we want to make sure we raise private sector money to do the projects and the public-private partnership, rebecca higgins -- haze raise your hand. give rebecca a nice round of applause. >> know rebecca from our days at dot. she works hard for the money. so hard. for the money. but she helps -- public works commit year, like a point person on infrastructure piece. she was reminding me that there have been over over the last 30 years, public-privatepaster inships that led to major improvements and there's some good stuff that can be done at that time way, and it's true.

but the toe say that's the major way to pay for this stuff, probably not. probably not. so the issue we can all think about stuff we'd like to build or do, to talk about how bad things we are, how many hours we sit in traffic, how many -- i'm going to talk about the stuff nobody wants to talk about and that is how we pay for it. you have all heard the old saying no silver bullet. and i feel that way with respect to how to pay for this infrastructure. particular through roads, highways and bridges. but also on the airport and be port side. all of that needs help as well. clean water, clean -- wastewater treatment. and that stuff, too. but roads and bridges. for a long time we had the -- we used the concept of the people in the beens who use our particular transportation

infrastructure help pay for it. that's it. and we have been doing that for a long, long time. there's a lot in this country that shy pay for stuff. stuff we all know we need. and our republican friends, if they vote for anything that looks like a tax, even user fee, they're branded by a fell you whose name i won't mentioned. violating tax -- and primaries have the most radical people on the republican side or democratic side and you can lose a primary because you take the position to fund the transportation industry. so it's hard for folks to do that. i have a couple ideas they might be worth mentioning. it's like a menu. democrats in the senate a couple weeks ago proposed, we want to have a trillion dollar infrastructure package and short on details how to pay for it but i just want to michigan to you a couple of ideas. you have ones of your open and

we can come up with better idea biz working together. one of the ideas is public private partnerships and some days it works better. our friends the trucking interest don't like tolling on existing roads and bridges. they're okay with new construction, and might be some possibility there. american trucking association are a powerful lobby on this stuff. so good at working the house and senate members. was amazed when we dish tried to get us to do four cents a year increase in the gas diesel tax. they had their own ideas how we might move away from what is perceived to be a tax the pump and move it upextreme and closer to the well heads and they're something we can do there and might give some political cover to folks who are not as politically -- foolish as i am to be out front talk about user fees.

but one of the ideas i think might survive out of the -- the former governor of ohio and i suggested to the simpson commission, which they deposited, four cents a year four four years and one piece that could survive is the indexing. we could raise -- deflater that will be good. any of your been to delware or through delware? thank you. we have early commercial, more five-star benches hanni state in america. we're open for business. come see us. if you dom to delware, going up i-95 we have a tolling, and used to be awful until we went to highway speed easy pass and then it's a lot better. used to be people hated, paying four or five dollars to travel 15 miles through my state and

wait for the privilege of get through the toll plaza and people at any time like that and we haven't not had backups since we went to the pass. i think the ability to do tolling is a lot better than it used to be. anybody from west virginia here? born in buckley? a raleigh county -- great, great, great grandpas is a cofounder of raleigh county. when i was a kid we'd drive on then west virginia turnpike and good 12-0 13-milesmiles and stod reached into our pockets and find a quarter and do it again and again. so highway easy pass gets us away from that. and giving the states more flexibility to partner with the user fee approach. and that can actually be used in conjunction with private and public partnershipped. we have a lot of -- from the barack obama administration,

last year two years, companies multinational companies have all this money parked overseas, tons of money and then not bringing it back because they don't want to pay tacks. lower the raid or give them a tax holiday, and the president obama had some kind of repatriation, bring the money back, marsh 15% or 20% and use the money as a one-time. not like the based utility, coal, natural gas for providing electricity. we need a base load for funding for transportation, and the repatriation piece the president like and a bun of us in the senate and house, including speaker line were favorably in favor of that but it's one time and it's a big one time and i can think of any number of projects we could help to use that money, take they money and

leverage other money from the state and locals and private sector. that would be a good thing. the last thing i want to mention, flows out the fact act in the -- it's a vehicle miles traveled. i'm a big car affection indiana dough. we build more californias and vans in delware than any other state in the nation. 4,000 jobs gone like that in the recession. but one of the cars if always had a lot of interest in is this volt, and the volt has the able to run on battery for maybe 40-miles and the able to run on gasoline, pull up to the pump and fill up and go everybody ever ride in a volt in they had the award for the car of the

ware, what won it, the chevrolet bolt, and it doesn't use gasoline. it uses battery and goes 200 miles. recharging station and they're on their way. whoever drives the bolt dish hope you by a lot of them. nissan leafs and stuffs. that if not going to use a drop of gasoline or diesel fuel. they'll pay for roads and highways and bridges. so we need to make sure they may -- a very small in termses volume, very relatively few vehicles but there's going to be more and that would be a good thing. in terms of carbon concerns and climate change. but if we put in tax factor, stipulation that says let's -- not a thousand dollars -- sigh if we can't get the city toes do some cooperation and laboratories of democracy we want them to be, and -- a number

of other states were one of the states involved and the epicenter of this. anybody from oregon? well,yer charge -- user charge. come up with a new term fork vehicle miles traveled. i call it rock 'n' roll. rock 'n' roll. rock 'n' roll. that's good. that's good. the might be on to something here. but if we can develop autonomous vehicled that can drive themselves across the country maybe we ick figure out how to do vehicle miles traveled the federal level and state and local level. folks in states have voted mostly in new jersey and pennsylvania, maybe last year, wyoming, vote ford substantial

increases in user fees, gas and diesel, and somebody actually sat down and looked at how to he folks, the legislators who voted for the increase, how did they do in re-election? overwhelmingly they won. in washington they're scared of voting for these because we're able to say vote for a penny increase in the gas tax and we don't have ear marks and ear marks can be abused but the idea that enables members to say i voted for anen crease in user fears as a u.s. house and u.s. senate and here's what we get for my in our county or state. our city. this is why. and in delware, we have a lot of press conferences, a lot of ribbon cuttings and

ground-breaking on projects that are federally funned and we make it clear in our little state that about 80% of the money is federal and where it comes from and why you need to do more stuff like that. don't know if we'll get ear marks back but hey of the ha have folks to give credit where they may have the political courage do the right thing of the. i want to thank you for your states repped here from across america itch was born in virginia, grew much virginia, went interest the navy and saw the world. real privilege and lucky to be in delware. a state that actually works believe in the three cs, communicate, compromise, and collaborate. we it works well for us and could work for the nation emboom are fearful. i hope what me president said he means in his heart but a the

words were right and whoever wrote the word oles the teleprompter rode good words. did a nice job delivering them. but the end defer there's an old staying in my estate. people anyway not believe what you say. they will believe craft -- believe what you do and one thing -- i've been grabbing the -- from delware and i know at bit about budgeting, eight years as governor. balanced budgets. but i was troubled last night but what the president called for, massive tax cuts. huge infrastructure program. massive buildup of the military. great wall. on the border with mexico. cost 25 billion. 'er not going to believe this. we pend more in the country on

defense than not just the next one or two countries combined but the one or two or the or four countries combined. we spend more money on defense than the next 10 nations combined. ten nations combined. two weeks ago the government accountability office but out the his of wasting money. the top was $400 million in weapon system cost overruns. the inability of the department of defense, up like any other major federal agency to actually have clean financials. never had one. in 67 years. and the able to manage their finances. so before we pour a lot of money into they area i hope we'll keep that in mine. let me close. when people say they're fearful for the future of the country, here's what i say the chinese symbol for danger it chinese

symbol for opportunity and this is opportunity. also remind them that 150 years ago we fought a civil war is in donety, hundreds of thousands poo died, killed, maimed, brother against brother, family against family. at the end of the war the president was assassinated and his successor was impeached. we got through all of that. and i think we can get through this. people who write our constitution are pretty smart guys and all the systems and balances and checks, three pranks of government. it's -- branches of government and has worked for 200 years and well help us here and keep in mind, the states, communicate, compromise, collaborate. keep those in mind. >> the u.s. senate continues to debate today on the nomination of healthcare consultant, verma and would be