project, 2.4 billion was rejected by the government for. and they calculated there could be cost overruns as much as $3 billion. governor casey in ohio rejected another 85 billion for a passenger rail line to connect cincinnati and cleveland. the governor -- it would be a 50 dplrz -- an 80-mile trip would cost twice as much as driving. california, the 800-mile line to connect san diego to sacramento, $5 billion was awarded for the first segment, to connect amanderaa to bakersfield, basically in the california desert, maes its koothss has

grown -- as estimated by the state review board and the ridership numbers, according to the review board were to justify the projects were overblown and cost an alternative for the line, while it's exaggerated to make the line look better. so i know it sounds go to have a nationwide high-paid rail project. but at this point in history, we don't have the money and we don't have the possibility of anything close to paying for that plan and i just would say to you, i think that's the reality you'll face in congress. but we do understand that there are traffic jams in cities, some cities can use mass transit, some cities could use

improvements to their interstates. most of them could use high speed interstates throughout. i'll give you a chance to respond to that. thank you for your commitment to the program, we should have a person in this office that's committed to transportation, but i got to tell you, when you're talking about these kind of increases and these kind of programs, when we're running the largest deficits in history, you got to understand congress is not going to be able to agree to everything. >> i'm proud that during the 14 names, five of those names we had balanced budgets. and we still have priorities, one of the priorities is pay down the debt.

but we still had priorities, one of our transportation priorities was implementing passenger rail, when florida turned back $2.3 billion, we had $10 billion worth of requests. some of that came from republican governors. one in michigan that we just gave almost a billion dollars so he could hook up the track from detroit to chicago so they could get a little higher speeds. we have invested in the northeast corridor, which a lot of people use from washington to new york, to get to higher speeds, to fix up the cabin area lt and we're going to continue to make these investments because inns what america wants. >> and what will that do?

>> it will get new cabin area, buy new cars and get the tracks in a position where they go to high speeds. >> that's the electricification. >> fixing up tracks, identifying systems that are cost effective, i say do that and report to us and we'll see if it can be justified. but what you're talking about is, major rail systems, new ones across florida or some of these other areas, governors are running the cost totals. the ridership and the income is below what's projected and it would be a massive, colossal error to build a nation wise system at this time. >> mr. chairman, can i just say one thing? >> yes. >> america has always been about

vision, particularly when it comes to transportation. i'm glad that when president eisenhower signed the interstate bill, there were a few visionaries here in congress, and in subsequent administrations because what they did, they built large chunks of concrete that didn't really connect for a while, but there was a vision. to connect america, 50 years later, we have a state of the art interstate system because of visionaries like eisenhower and like members of congress, that's the kind of vision that president obama, some governors and some people in america have for getting to the next generation in transportation. for connecting our kids and grandkids, so they can get out of cars, so they can get out of congestion, so they can ride in a comfortable train that goes decent speeds. if we don't do that, we're going

to short circuit our ability to do what other generations did for us. >> we're doing seven-minute rounds today because we have fewer members here so we can do seven-minute rounds and still get done by known which we have promised to do with the secretary. >> thank you chairman, and thank you, secretary la hood for being here. i extend our best wishes to sam and your family. we're delighted -- wehomes home soon. i appreciate very much your genetjeanette jeanette -- energetic. that will in fact expedite the speed of trains coming through

rhode island and serving our boston and new york markets, the northeast corridor does go north of new york, and i appreciate that you recognize that. and i think that the boston to washington corridor is an area that is heavily used and should be a national priority to bring it up to speed and there's still many areas in which the rails need improfits. i know you're working on it but i want to express my appreciation for that. i know you want to speak at brown university, if you have a free moment, i would love to have you go and take a look just down the hill from the university which is a viaduct that go us through providence, right through the big providence

mall where people come and enjoy the new mall that we have. it was built in 1964. and when you go underneath it, you look up and you see there's planks across the i-beams, those planks are there to keep the road from landing on where you walk to go into the mall. and if you go to the am track, time thing, they've got the planks across the highway under the i-beams to keep the road that is falling in from landing on the track or from landing on trains. this is a very important project to get rebuilt, it is way overdue. rhode island is a small state with significant budget issues. there is zero shot that the state is going to be able to pay for it. in the bill that came out of the environment of public works committee is a vision for national and regional significance. the i-95 corridor going through rhode island is a project of

regional and national significance and i have no doubt that we'll be able to compete successfully for the funding in that authorization. but we don't presently have funding for it. so i would urge your assistance if you could, request your assistance to locate funding for that project. >> i will be happy to visit the bridge and -- >> we'll arrange that. >> i will be happy to work with you and your staff on maybe some opportunities to jump start this project. so we'll pay attention to it when we go there. >> i appreciate that, think the budget committee reflects a variety of different economic views, my economic view is that

when home corporate municipal and state economies are shrinking and collapsing, that's a good time for the federal government to avoid adding to the negative economic cycle and worsening the situation. i have seen reports that say if we had had a balanced budget act that will be replaced in the recent meltdown, we would have lost i think 17% of gdp. and we would have been in a serious cataclysmic depression. i don't think it's so easy to throw that completely over the side and say there's absolutely no truth to it and austerity is the way to help people when an economy is 24 a recession. and it makes sense to invest in

infrastructure at that point, because unlike something that goes out the window, you're left with something, you're left with a hard, tangible asset. and if you would have been smart about it, some assets are worth more than the muffoney that wen into it. >> that's the only thing we should possibly look at, and we should never look at the side of the balance sheet, we -- to get their goods to market, to travel safely and smoothly, to have a modern train system that can be at least the equal of what's being developed in asia and in europe. i think it is a misguided economic theory, both with respect to the counter cyclical value of spending and respect to the national value that solid

infrastructure creates. and we haven't talked about it, but one other place to look is water and wastewater. we have $600 billion of wastewater infrastructure needs in this country, that's clean drinking water for people, that's proper disposal of sewage, that's reaching for the growth in our population and we're pay behind the ball on that. i think the recovery act, i agree with the chairman on this, i think we had $6 billion out of $600 so we have 1% of the need. so thank you for your concentration on transportation infrastructure. and again my best wishes to sam. >> thank you, senator.

senator, can you help me, where there is other areas of the world where there is high speed rail, including where we have rail in the united states, has it been able to sustain itself? >> well, certainly on the northeast corridor it has, last year am track made its money. ridership is way up on -- >> between washington woo and boston, does it make money? >> in the northeast corridor, i'll put this in the record, am track on the northeast corridor, ridership was way up, and they made money last year. and ridership is up this year. >> that will sustain itself without any federal subsidy. >> it's subsidized by the

federal government up to about 43%. >> that's my question, can you tell me where we can sustain rail based on what people pay to use the rail so we dpochon't hao continually provide subsidies. >> my simple question is where do we have rail where we don't have to have federal subsidies to sustain it. does that happen anywhere? and to my knowledge, there are only two lines in the world where that happens and that's in tokyo and paris. nowhere else in the world can it pay for itself. >> you ore right about that. >> and so just to be clear, when we build these, we're going to have to continually subs died them going forward? >> just like we did on our

transit and on our highways. >> i just want to understand. you said in california as an example of a productive example of where we should build high-paid rail and yet the estimated cost of the program, cost of the program which would be the line as i understand it to connect madera to bakersfield, the cost has gone from $2 billion to at least a hundred billion in 2012. therefore the cost of building it have tripled three times of what it was estimated when this issue was put to the voters of california. i would just point out that there's serious questions that have been raiseded by california, by independent individuals who have looked at it including, the state auditor who have said that the

california bullet train project has become increasingly risky, because of fiscal issues with it. even the first phase, they're concerned about it. and with respect to california, the california high-paid rail peer review group which is an expert body mandated by state law, not a federal group, expressed serious doubts about it and concluded that it cannot at in time recommend that the california legislature arov appropriations for the bonds of it because the project, quote, presents an immense financial risk. why would we designate something hundreds of billions of dollars when it's an immense financial risk. >> i just met with the president, which is called the pro tem of the senate, and also

the speaker of the house. i just met with the governor, i just met with the two u.s. senators from california. this is what the elected officials in california would like to do for the next generation. they would like to have passenger rail in california. because california is one big traffic jam. >> so your asking -- >> you want to get people out of cars and into passenger trains? >> you're asking the rest of the country to put up billions of dollars for something that has been described as an immense financial risk based on the officials of one state. well we have to look at the entire whole and i don't think we should provide taxpayer dollars to something we are going to continually have to provide federal subsidies for, second that we're taking on immense financial risk. to's really the issue of high-paid rail. and if you look at the bills that are up right now, one in

the house, one in the senate. neither body included money for this purpose. so congress is concerned about, i think this issue as well, in terms of what is the financial measurement, what are the outcomes that we're going to get from the investment we put in high-paid rail? >> i think the fact that it is in neither bill, neither the house or the senate speaks volumes in terms of where we are on the issue. and that's my concern with it. i do have a question for you. does the president believe that we are going to be fighting the worst -- well, we have taken ourselves out of iraq, does he believe that we're going to be fighting in afghanistan for the next ten years? >> look, fighting wars is not in my portfolio. i have never talked to the president about this. what i know is that we provided a pay for in our budget this

year. the criticism for the last two years from this committee and committees on the other side of this capitol was, where's the pay for it? we provided one. in the absence of some indication that's going to. >> we weren't planning on being in iraq, so the notion that we were going to be be having a full contingency of iraq for the next ten years. particular any in afghanistan, this notion that you're going to use savings for something that we weren't going to spend in the first place.

the fact that the pay for the budget is a budget gimmick doesn't solve problems and to take credit for savings that were never going to happen. i can't go home and tell my constituents with a straight face that this is paid for. so i hope that we will be working on a real way to pay for the funding and you know what? i know that you said that we're facing a situation where you're concerned about the infrastructuring and we also have to look at these in a very serious fashion.

>> as you know, my brother has been doing work over there for the secular group to try to create stability, he's been there i think five times now, as we think about your son, we hope it all works out. >> absolutely. >> the pay for is the highway trust fund. in addition to iraq. the cbo has given us. >> this body has -- i have a lot

of problems with the cbo. i'm glad that 2014 is a target, if we get out by 2013, i think they're moving in the right direction. cbo has scored -- that's what helps pay for the project. i liked your phrase as a former mayor, the country, i think, i may paraphrase as one big pothole, i agree with you, and there's no better investment than the infrastructure of this country. when i was mayor in 5 1/2 years, we have built more roads in the last 20 years. you got to drive on some of them when you were there. also the work we did on the recovery money.

i can show you and you saw where we put that money to work building roads. roads that cleaned up congestion, which in turn made people more product tifr, because they got to work on time. that is the value when you improve the infrastructure of this country, just from my perspective of roads. you know, i'm a builder, i love to build anything, roads, verticals, whatever it takes to improve an economy. so i think it's important. let me ask you, specifically, within your testimony, you were asked or you noted the integration of unmanned aircraft into the air space. the defense authorization bill, an let element we offered, maki sure there's language in there and we started designating the areas. the first question is i'm

assuming the two are coordinating? >> absolutely. >> second of course being biassed, there's no better air space in the country, than what sirts in alaska. especially unmanned aircraft. what is your timetable, for the record you can can get it to me, the timetable that the faa is looking at the, okay, here's the four sights, two sights, six sights that will be analyzed. >> we hope to be able to name those sites this year. i don't -- i'll get it for the record. be -- >> just a schedule. >> the university of fairbanks is doing some research rather than this and we have an enormous amount of air space that no one competes against and no one to complain. i know we have had this discussion, the senate bill and

the faa reauthorization did not have the fee. i know we discussed this in generalive yags, i want to differentiate between, you know, learjets, big jets, and small, aviation. but generally, most generally the folks that i take e talked y understand, they got to participate, but creating a new permit system, or a $100 fee doesn't seem logical to them when they have tax, which they have all volunteered in the past to adjust. that basically there's a better mechanism to deal with revenues than another system. and i will 100% agree with him because i tried this when i was mayor, and i got my head kicked in, and i realized to do in. i worked with the aviation folks and we came up agains structures they already had in

place. do you have any comment on them? not the fee, but the method, f with the tax on that gas? any comment to that? or maybe you want to giver it to the record. >> i'm just going to have him comment on the process. >> in terms of the $100 fee, that was never proposed to be applied to sort of propeller general aviation, that was really sort of commercial aviation and sort of high end business jets, we have proposed that for sort of the lower end gm. >> so the budget you proposed is not there. in the transportation bill that we're now starting in theory to move through, as you know, i was one, of just a few that voted for it and there's a reason.

the indian road component. literally takes alaska roads and cuts them in half. and the amount of money that's coming through, about 21. very concerned because it's hitting the most impoverished areas of the cannountry that ca least afford infrastructure. we're working with the chairman of the committee and others to try to get something rational here. we recognize that budgets are tight. but a 50% is severe for our system within alaska as you experienced. i'm sir your folks will be asked a lot of questions about the distance and the variety of other things that calculate themselves. we have made that and now we --

they're doing the formula and realizing there's a problem. we know there's some reform that needs to be there. >> we're get in touch with the committee and try to provide some technical assistance on that also. >> and let me just close and sa mr. chairman, just to make 't h high-paid rail and the efficiency of it, but putting that aside, but your point and i want to emphasize it again, is we subsidize roads, big time, i know that the bonds that all the rest of my community paid for my city for a road that might be in a small little area, but the objective was to create a system, a network that moves people for commerce, transportation for individuals, very important. so i understand the senator's concern about high-paid rail, but the point that we -- do we

subsidize all of it, trains, roads, ferries, you name it, we subsidize it because it's good for business if we do it right. and when we get goods delivered by them, it's because we have paid for it with federal dollars. >> senator johnson. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i also want to express concern about your son. >> congratulations on your bridge by the way. >> thank you for your help in kind of breaking the logjam, hopefully we can get that in the house. >> absolutely. >> and that really is a prime example of how important infrastructure is, and i'll just start out with that, i certainly understand, government is the only entity that really can provide certain types of infrastructure. and