increase in our overall gdp. critical transportation and energy projects have even larger multiplier effects. given this, i would like to ask you both, how are you partnering with the federal government and leveraging existing public transportation to upgrade roads, rail, ports and reinvest in the overall infrastructure in your states? >> you know, we do need to invest more in infrastructure. i did a special message last year on that topic to our state. roads and bridges for example i said we needed $1.4 billion more a year in investment in our state. and that's an important component. again, the issue is is how do we partner on that. i would like to compliment secretary lahood, he's been very good at developing a transit authority in michigan that we're

now asking for state legislation to move forward on that, detroit and metro detroit has been lacking in that for decades. so there's an opportunity to partner on that. what i would also say is, again, i would make the approach that there are better ways to do things than we currently do things with the prescriptive measures that you can find in some of the highway bills, though, compared to giving us more flexibility. we still have situations where we may be making a great investment in a rest stop that we don't really need as opposed to a bridge. and the ability to have flexibility in making those decisions would be helpful to our state. >> let me comment recently a community in our state, stamford, happens to be my hometown, received a grant in $10 million. that amount of federal government support will be matched 5-1 by the private sector. i will also tell you connecticut is spending more of its own dollars in rebuilding its train system on a matching basis than

any other state in the nation. i'm quite certain that if you send infrastructure investment dollars to the states we are capable of putting thousands of construction workers and private contractors back to work. >> the gentleman's time has expired. >> thank you, mr. chairman. governor snyder, thanks for here, and same to governor malloy. the state legislator in indiana has recently -- and this is a state issue -- taken up right to, woulto work. governor snyder, are there any discussions in your state which neighbors mine, concerning this type of action at the state level? >> it is under discussion. there are a number of legislators that are promoting it. in my perspective, it's not on my agenda. right to work is an issue that's a very divisive issue, people

feel strongly about, and i'm the relentless positive action person, so we have many problems in michigan that are much more pressing that i want to find common ground issues we can work together on before we get into divisive issues and we're showing great success. we balanced the budget, did tax reform, we went through a whole list. important items this year i would prioritize include the transportation package i mentioned about infrastructure and we have a package on public safety. we need to do a better job in that area in our state. right to work has its time and place but it's not appropriate in michigan during 2012. >> we've had to deal with that issue as you probably know on this committee as it relates to south carolina, and do you think that, i don't want to put you on the hot seat, but do you think there's evidence out there to show that it helps states compete, not only with other states within the united states,

but compete globally for businesses? do you think right to work-type situation is helpful? >> i think there's a lot of information out there, and one of the things i am interested in is trying to understand what's factual information and what's kind of perception. because in many respects, i would use some of the success in michigan as an example, the auto industry is a very competitive industry now in terms of their labor agreements and such. so on the face of it, i don't automatically have an answer, but i believe it's something we should all take the time to understand before simply people kind of revert to their traditional positions on it. >> thank you. i just want to make a final closing comment and thanks for your answer. you know, we hear a lot about the united states comparing ourselves with other parts of the world, and i'd just -- at this point, comparing what we do here to europe's probably not something i'd recommend, because even though i do have business

leaders also telling me that infrastructure is better in other parts of the world, their financial situation is dire, as you know. and in china, comparing or selves to china in a lot of areas, realize they're building their country on the american taxpayers. right now, we're paying tremendous amounts of interest on our debt to china, and they're using that money to rebuild their infrastructure. so i think until we can honestly address our mandatory spending programs in this country, and to have an honest discussion about what the direction this needs to -- country needs to go in financially, we're going to continue to find that we struggle to find money for things all of us agree we need to spend money on, including our infrastructure. i yield back. >> thank the gentleman. mr. scott. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i thank both of our governors for being with us today.

openings in michigan.entioned have you reviewed these openings to ascertain whether your workforce has the educational or other qualifications for those jobs or whether investments need to be made in education so there will be a match between the work force and the job openings? >> yeah. the 70,000 open jobs i would emphasize to you and i encourage you to go look, most of these are good jobs. you're talking like nurses, computer programming, accountan accountants, these are well-paying jobs and the skill trad trades one i always talk about is welder. if you're a welder in michigan you can get a job in about 20 minutes in any corner of michigan. this is the missing element, that's why i call it talent and connecting, we launched mitalent.org to make that connection. there's a mismatch of where people may be and where the jobs are. the second thing is, the site is

just not about transactions, which is finding a job, it's about career planning. and to go to your point about saying, if we have employers signing up to participate in this program that they see there's a lot of demand and we're not seeing those filled, we should be working with our community colleges in particular, our skilled trade unions, other programs to say, how can we get in alignment to get those people the proper training so they can succeed. >> i just would like to comment on that. it clearly, for a long period of time in our country, we failed to properly train a replacement workforce particularly as some of our states are rapidly aging. and anything we can do to support our community colleges in particular, which have the fastest turn-around as well as the ability to allow certification programs, would be greatly appreciated. >> we find employers can't find people qualified for the job openings? >> i think in precision

manufacturing, and i think the governor would agree, that is a particular problem. and unfortunately, too few of our schools became invested in training that replacement workforce. >> and so investments, what i'm hearing is investments in community colleges, to make sure that our work force can qualify for the job openings would be an important aspect of this committee's work. >> i believe that's true, as well as support of vocational programs in our high school level as well. >> yeah, one thing i would add is i would also encourage you to look at two programs we have in michigan, one is called shifting gears, the new version is called shifting code. so these are for very experienced workers that were in large companies, for example. shifting gears was geared for people middle level and i 00er in terms of professional managerial and technical in large companies. our goal is to encourage entrepreneurship. so we created this program and it has been very successful to say you can't ask someone from a large company to go join a

start-up overnight and have a chance to succeed. it's almost cultural adjustment training. because they have all the skills they need to be successful in being entrepreneurs or being parts of start-up companies. we've done that with shifting gears, and it's gone so well we're creating one called shifting code. there are computer programmer jobs, people my age, to get them successful in a new career. >> a couple years ago we had the recovery act that gave a lot of money to states. the only way the state can balance its budget is essentially to fire people or stop funding projects so somebody else can fire people. can you say a word about how much money each of your states got and what would have happened to your state budget, had you not gotten aid under the recovery act? >> well, in my case, the moneys that flowed to the state did in

fact replace state funds. obviously -- and i would argue that my government, in the state of connecticut, did too little to respond beyond using those funds. having said that, there's no doubt that we would have fewer teachers in our school system today if we had not received those funds. and that we would have continued a process of shifting the burden to local communities who rely almost exclusively on property taxes to survive. it's one of the reasons that in balancing a $3.5 billion deficit which was structural in nature, because all of the surplus funds from past years were being used, as well as the money was being used to displace expenditures i had to take a different kind of approach to balancing that budget. >> what i would say is unfortunately in my view, too much of those dollars were used for replacement dollars for operating government. as a practical matter, we faced the deficit when we came because

they weren't there and we cut the deficit. what i would have preferred seeing is those dollars could have gone to infrastructure or other investments, one-time funds that could have made the difference for the long-term. >> you would have had to cut your budget even more had you not had those funds, is that right? >> again, if you look back at the prior few years, though, i view it as a forgone opportunity. >> gentleman's time has expired. >> thank you so much, mr. chairman. thank you both for being here today. we appreciate your time. we know it's valuable. governor snyder i want to talk to you a little bit about medicaid, switching gears to health care. and as we know, the new health care law significantly expands medicaid and it's going to put a real financial burden, not just on the federal government, but of course on the states as well. and it's significantly underfunded, and many of us are concerned that states cannot

afford to devote these scarce resources to their medicare program. so i'm just curious if you can comment on any particular consequences that you see this current health care law having in michigan from your perspective in state government, and how are we going to pay for these increased costs, not just on the federal level, but how are the states going to be able to handle this, and have you talked to your other colleagues, governors, other governors as well, about medicaid expansion and the impact that's going to have not just on your state but all across the country, and with that i'll listen to your answer. >> i appreciate that question, and two dimensions in particular, i did health and wellness, because it's critically important to the quality of life of our citizens. there are things that i don't believe have been addressed enough while it's been a focus on other issues on medicare and

medicaid and in particular the dual eligible situation, if people were working better together there's an opportunity to provide better care at a much lower cost. the simplist thing on health and wellness is personal responsibility in wellness. i launched a program called four-by-four. i signed up to lose ten pounds, i gave all my statistics out on blood pressure and cles tholest. the point is really if you looked at it in the state of michigan, we have a dashboard where we show 32% of our population is obese. if we brought that down, if we dealt with obesity and overweight and did basic things on health and wellness that we have personal responsibility for we could cut health care costs in this country by half. so a lot of this should be us focusing on things we can all do together and playing a

coordinating clearinghouse role. >> and from a state budgetary, knowing this is the law of the land, what direction are you heading in preparing for the impact that these increased costs are going to have, despite the, you know, broad brush strokes of personal responsibility, but the specifics that can be done as well. i'm from the state of alabama and this is a huge concern for us, from our governor and our state legislator as they move into this next session about the negative impact that is going to have on our state budgets. >> it is a major question because it gets back to the concept of unfunded mand dates. it's the food chain question. and we are struggling with that because you have to make choices and have to be fiscally responsible for the long-term. that's really the question of. to help deal with that, we've

done a lot of reforms, like post retiree medical costs. but this will make it more difficult for us to operate. >> let me -- >> mr. chairman, i yield back. >> ms. mccarthy. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you for having this hearing. it's been interesting hearing from both governors. you agree on a lot of things and the way you work to get your people back to work and looking at different initiatives is, to be very honest with you, that's the initiative we need inform see here. and i hope that as we go into this new year that congress can work together to get things done for the country, not for political parties and i think both of you are perfect examples of that. governor snyder, i think one of the things you brought on constantly was to have flexibility to work between your state and the federal

government, which is important. and i know that, you know, we've been hearing an awful lot on some of the resources that we gave out to try to bring this recession back has been working. so i guess my first question to you on the flexibility point. do you believe the federal government, the intervention in the auto sector, infringe the on this principle, the principle meaning the flexibility and working totter in t thogether i partnerships. it is recognized as a success and one that did save jobs. would you characterize this particular program as a success? >> with respect to the auto question, which is critically important to michigan. i'm proud to say we are the auto capital of the world. if you looked at it in terms of perspective what i have said and what i believe is if it would have involved one individual company, it wouldn't have been

appropriate because that's what bankruptcy processes are for. this was a situation that merited additional involvement and attention because it wasn't about two companies. those two companies would have brought down the entire industry that i'm not sure ford would have survived if the supply base would have collapsed. it was a broader issue. then you get into the specifics of how it was done. and what i would say is one choice was taken, there are other choices that were viable, and i don't see any value from my perspective of trying to second guess or quarterback after the fact on those. it was important something was done and that our industry is viable now. and so that was a success in that regard. >> and i agree. listen, this particular recession i think caught everybody way off guard and some were looking at solutions that were done in the 1930s, that's not the world we live in today. it is a global economy out there so we have to work together.

the other thing that both of you have stressed is education. that's why many of us sit on this particular committee. the future, and you talked about and ifferent initiatives that s especially for those that are out of work. i spend a lot of time with my schools and unfortunately an awful lot of parents don't feel it's good to send their child to a vocational school. and when i saw the jobs they were training for mainly because they have partnershiped with the businesses in the area, where are the jobs going to be in three years, four years, five years, that is something i think we need to see a lot more done with that. but i also, reading the testimony, governor, i saw that you had said that consolidating programs or cut funding for programs simply to meet a deficit reduction target,

consolidation of programs can allow states more flexibility to meet the needs of our workforce but not if you cut overall funding. and i think that's important, especially as we're seeing the states right now, cutting back on education, making decisions on whether they're even going to cut back on school time. which this is not the time to do it. if you could address that, i'd appreciate it. >> as someone who has served in different governmental capacities for a number of years and frequently had to interface with the federal government i came to understand that the combining of programs normally was attached to the reduction of funds flowing for that state 'd purpose. if you're combining programs to create synergies and there's a desire to maintain the

the support of manufacturing in the united states is terribly important and i absolutely agree with the governor that the assistance given to that industry reverberates in all the state states. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and i want to thank both of the governs for being here today also, and i want to pick up on something that my colleague, ms. mccarthy brought up a minute ago. i had also highlighted that comment in governor malloy's presentation where he said, don't consolidate programs or cut funding for the programs simply to meet a deficit. if you or someone on your staff will read carefully the bill

which we have prepared, it shows very clearly that we don't intend to cut any funding. however, we intend to get a lot more value for what is being spent. and i think it's really important that we point that out. because there is no intention to cut the funding there. i will, though, also point out that federal dollars are not manna from heaven, they are taxpayer dollars which are simply brought to the federal government, a lot of them wasted, and then some of them sent back to the states. i believe that in most cases the money could be spent much more effectively if they were simply going to the states to begin with. but anyway, let me again thank you all for being here, and i want to say particularly to governor snyder i appreciate the very positive comments you made

about the new bill which has been introduced and which we hope will move forward in this session. i want to point out in the summary that i have about the bill that it mentions, allows governors, empowers governors all throughout that bill we do a lot to give much more authority to the states. we allow competitive grants, consultation with the governors. throughout, again, we've changed i think the entire perspective of how we would operate these programs. and i appreciate the fact that you've talked about talent development, or creating talent. because i rail against using the term job training, and training individuals, because my colleagues have heard me say often, you train dogs and you educate people.

and i like the idea of talent. and i think that's a good word we need to try to put into the bill somewhere if we can, along with the term workforce development. i like that perspective. and i would say to you we need a lot more accountants and people w who want accountability and fresh perspective to this issue. i want to ask each of you, and i know you're not prepared to answer this question today, but i was in the state senate in north carolina for ten years. and one of the things that the republicans proposed over and over was the consolidation of all of these workforce programs so that we could save money at the state level in administrative cost. and particularly governor malloy, i'd like to get some feedback from you when you go back to connecticut and from

governor snyder also, on how much money could you save at the state level with this consolidation, and what efforts would you see the state being able to promote that you're not able to promote now under the existing structure. because i want us to start this consultation with the governors right now. please give us your feedback. the state of north carolina would have saved a lot of money, even ten years ago when we talked about this, and so i'd like to ask if you -- would you, governor malloy, send that information back? governor snyder? >> sure. i'm sure my staff behind me has already made a note of your request and we certainly will attempt to do that. let me be very clear, i believe in consolidation. as governor of the state of connecticut i proposed the consolidation of 30 separate state agencies.

actually doing that by over a third. and in this budget that i'm presenting on february 8th we do it again. and i want to be very clear, consolidation for the pirps of identifying funds to attack problems that exist and to do away with duplicate requirements is something that i absolutely support. having said that, with respect to the program, we have used that program very effectively in a number of different ways around job funneling, job training, and talent acquisition. so i look forward to working with the congress of the united states on that very point. i think we can in fact do that. i'm not against flexibility, but i have to share my experiences garnered over a 25-year period of time. frequently when i've seen the federal government combine programs, it has led to reductions in moneys available to apply to local issues where i served for 14 years as the mayor

of stamford and now i fear on a statewide basis. >> i'd like to say thank you for highlighting the fact that there's 70,000 open jobs, because i think that's the case all over this country, and more needs to be said about that to show that we need to match talent and we need to educate people as to where the jobs are. and i think -- i hope you will continue to do that. >> the gentle lady's time has expired. i know governor snyder was itching to comment and i'm sure you'll get a chance coming up here. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you to both of our governors. i'm sorry i left, the science committee has just -- the republicans have just disallowed abc, hbo, and an independent news network from covering the fracking hearing. so as a member of that subcommittee it was important to go up and try to turn that

around. we did not prevail. so i'm sorry i missed your testimony. so governor snyder, michigan, thank you for having a successful independent state osha. and because, so does california, and i think our osha program is steps ahead of the federal program and the feds continue to learn from these state programs. i understand that while i was gone, that's why i told you why i was gone, chairman walberg, i'm the ranking member on his subcommittee, workforce protection, mentioned that there's an overlay of federal regulations over state regulations, and i don't know if he specifically referred to osha. but just recently he's -- he's said that he was in his

district, he visited one of his companies who had just been visited by the state osha program, and right behind that the feds osha came. we've done an investigation, i mean, we've tried to find out what company that was, and why they were there because that would not be appropriate. have you looked into that at the state level? i mean, why would that happen, why would we be wasting money in that regard, and do you know any more about it than i do sitting right here today? >> no, not that particular situation. >> well, okay. i think it's worth looking into. we've asked over and over for the chairman to tell us what the company was and so we can figure out how that all happened. so i think that would be an example of great waste of funds, and the wrong use of federal regulators. so, but thank you for responding.

governor malloy, you in connecticut are on the cutting edge in so many ways, and you have progressive worklife, you have progressive worklife policies and a new law that requires businesses to pay sick leave when employees can't work due to illness. i'd like to hear straight from you if the state economy has been compromised or if the state economy and health care system have benefited in regard to this sick leave policy. i mean, have you lost jobs? >> no, we -- since the passage and ultimate live the enactment of that law, we have actually gained jobs and lowered our unemployment rate in the state of connecticut. it is a special program, it takes a period