and in the afternoon the house wayis and means committee looks at president trump's tax returns and other information from 2006 to 2015. that's live at 4:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3 as well. you can watch both online at www.c-span.org or listen on the free c-span radio app. senator tom carper, the ranking member of the environment and public works committee and representative bill shuster, chair of the house transportation and infrastructure committee talked about the challenges facing the u.s. infrastructure system at the association of american highway and transportation. from washington d.c. this is about 30 minutes. all right. because of precious time and a

busy schedules i'm going to introduce our first speaker. senator tom carper is the ranking member of the public works committee. a former five-term congressman from delaware. before joining the senate in 2001 he was elected delaware's 78th governor. senator, thank you so much for joining us today. [ applause ] >> do we have any veterans here? if you're a veteran stand up and receive our applause, please. veterans on your feet. [ applause ] . . >> i'm a retired navy captain, midshipman from ohio state. spent 23 years in southeast asia. as a p-3 commander up to the end of world war ii.

in different parts of the president's speech i appreciated. in delaware we have dover. where is the secretary? would you stand up and take a bow? we love our secretary of transportation. nice to see you again. thank you. i don't know if shalin is here? okay. i think he had his parole hearing this morning. [ laughter ] . if you see him give him my love. but one of the things he reminded us last night is the sacrifice of our servicemen and women. the remains of the fallen heroes come through dover air force base and we treat them and their families who receive those remains with great dignity. and that's one of my favorite parts of the remarks last night just to remember. he had been to delaware several weeks ago for the transfer of

remains of a navy seal and it stuck in his mind. i want to talk about transportation but i want to use a little bit of what happened last night to be my spring board. and one of my favorite things about the u.s. senate is the state of the union night. and the reason why is not just because of the speeches that we hear. and oftentimes they are very good and whoever wrote the one for the president last night did not write the one he gave at his inauguration. that is a good thing. [ laughter ] definitely upgraded. people have different kinds of expectations. before we go to the house of representatives we gather together for a dinner, the senators do. and it's kind of like a very nice covered dish supper and we have several rooms off the senate where they set up tables and we can invite special guests. and there is a lot of special

guests. and i invited a woman who is a cancer survivor, life saved last year by the affordable care act and her ability to get coverage when no one else would provide coverage for her. but before we get together and walk to the house of representatives there is a rush to the restrooms. and we want them to be pleasurable hours. so a bunch of us were in the head -- in the men's room, just right off the senate floor, about eight of us. not a very big room, and we're talking about what we are expecting. and marco said what do you think and he said 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. one of the things that jen knows

i love to do, back in delaware i love to do customer calls. i visit businesses all the time, how are you doing and what can we do to help? and i love to go to schools and especially enjoy town hall meetings with kids. they're a lot more pleasurable than some of the ones that my republican colleagues have been hosting. and even like little kids, third, fourth, fifth graders all the way up to college. every now and then one of these little kids in the q & a will say, what do you do? what do you do? i'm a united states senator. one little girl said, well what do you do? and i said do you have rules on your bus and at home? she said yes, and i said we have

rules in the country called laws. an i get help to make the rules for the country. a little boy raised his hand and said what else do you do? and i said i try to help people. i believe in the golden rule. treat other people the way we want to be treated and we try to tell people and he said how? one of the best ways to help people is to make sure they have a job. one of the best ways to strengthen families is to make sure that there is at least, if not two breadwinners in those families. if you have that going for you, the rest is pretty easy. the rest is pretty easy. and as jennifer knows and others who have heard me speak before. i love lincoln. we were in session all night and about 10:00 at night i wanted to go for a run. i love to work out every day. either run or lift weights or

ride a bike. it was my running day. and about 10:00 at night. we were going to go until 1:30 a.m. so i had some time to run. and it was a cold, windy night. i ran down to the lincoln memorial. it was really windy but the moon was out. you could see the stars. the lights reflecting on the reflecting ponds down there. i ran up the steps and there is mr. lincoln looking across the way at the washington monument and the capital. how many of you have been there? what about at 10:30 by yourself at night. i read the gettysburg address and the second inaugural address. all those great words and i stood in front of his statue and he was looking up toward the

capital and toward the washington monument and so was i and i said a few things to him and he didn't speak back. but one of the questions that he was once asked a long, long time ago is what is the role of government? and he said the role of government is to do for the people what they cannot do for themselves. the role of the government is to do for the people what they cannot do for themselves. there is great wisdom in that. and one of the greatest things we do in government, state, local, federal is to create a futuring environment for job preservation and creation. but what we try to the is create a neuroturing environment for job creation. and one of the things that we do

is bring folks out of our schools, high school, technical schools, the skills they bring into the work force, what the employers are looking for and what we need to be competitive as a nation. public safety is a big deal. clean air, clean water. access to foreign capital and foreign markets. protection of our intellectual property and against cyberattacks, all that stuff. we have some potential for consensus in the congress and this administration with respect to infrastructure, which is a good thing because as you know, on the transportation infrastructure we need help. and we've needed it for a long time. and we provided funding, i thought between you and me, shamefully, you know, it's, like, putting together some money and being able to limp along until 2020 doesn't solve the problem and doesn't even come close. but it's better than shutting

down and not having any money at all. blue when mr. trump spoke last night about infrastructure, and how we need to do more, one of the things in terms of paying for things he said we want to raise private sector money to do these projects and the public/private partnerships. rebec rebecca higgins are you hear? give her a nice round of applause. [ applause ] . she works hard for the money. so hard. for the money. but she is on the epw on the environment and public works committee. she is a point person on the infrastructure piece. she was reminding me on the way over here in the last 30 years there have been 30 public/private partnerships that

have led to major improvement. but to say that's going to be the major way that we're going the pay for this stuff, probably not. probably not. so how are -- the issue -- we can all think about stuff we'd like to build or do to talk about how many hours we sit in traffic every year and how much repair work needs to be done on our vehicles. i'm going the talk about how we pay for it. how do we pay for it? you've all heard the saying, there's no silver bullet? and i feel that way with respect to how to pay for this infrastructure at least the roads, highways, bridges side but also on the airport and port side. that needs help as well. clean water, clean -- waste water treatment as well. and we have had the use of the concept, the idea of the people and the businesses who use our

particular transportation infrastructure help pay for it. that's it. and we've been doing that for a long, long time. there is a reluctance in this country now to pay for pay for stuff, stuff we all know that we need. our republicans friends if they vote for anything that's a user feed, they get branded by a foal who's name i won't mention, it's like violating their no-tax prejudice. and primaries have the most radical people and you can lose a primary. it's hard for folks to agree to do that. i think there's -- the democrats on our side in the senate, a you people can weeks ago proposed something you may recall. they said we want to have a trillion dollars infrastructure package. i just want to to you a couple

ideas. we can come up with better ideas by working together. one of the ideas is public/private practices. our friends in the trucking industries are okay with new construction. so there might be some possibility there. american trucking association is a powerful lobby in this government. they are so good at working the house and senate members. i was amazed when i tried to get us to do increasing the diesel tax. in any event, they have their own ideas how we might move away from what is perceived to be a tax at the skpufrp move it upstream, if you will, closer to the well heads. i think there's probably something we can do there and it might give political cover to folks who are not as politically

foolish as i am. one of the things that might survive, we suggested that it commission was four currenents r for four years. we could have them index and had raise up, rate of inflation. that would be good. any of you been to or through delaware? yes, thank you. we have more five-star beaches than any state in america. we're open for business. april 1st, come visit us. we used to have tolling.

people would travel 15 miles and wait 30 minutes for the privilege of getting to the toll plaza. people didn't like that. we didn't have backups. the ability to do tolling. anybody from west virginia? my great, great grandfather was a founder of raleigh. seemed like we went about 12 miles and stop reach into our pockets, find a quarter, drop it into the bucket go to the next place and do it again and again. easy pass gets away from us. the idea of doing more tolling and giving states to do more tolling is part of the user fee approach and that can be used in conjunction with public/private

partnerships. we have a lot of opportunities in this country from the obama administration. a lot of multinational companies have money parked overseas and they're not binging it back because they don't want to pay taxes at 35%. they're waiting to lower the rates or give them a tax holiday. and president obama proposed a repatriation deal, lower the rate 15% or so and use that money pretty much as a one-time. it's not like the base load in the utility industry. coal, nuclear, natural gas, base load for providing electricity. we need a base load for funding for transportation. and the deemed repatriation piece the president liked and a buchlg of us in the senate and house including speaker ryan were naivl zpoefd toward that. the problem with that is it's not base level. it's a big one-time.

take some of that money and leverage other money and that would be a good thing. the last thing i want to mention, is something that flows out of the fast act. it's vehicle miles traveled. i'm a big car aficionado. we lost both our chrysler plant at the bottom of the great recession. 4,000 jobs gone just like that. the biggest plant. one of the cars i had a lot of interest is was the chevy volt. and it has the ability to run on battery for maybe 40 miles and ability to run on gasoline. pull it up to the pump, fill it up, and go. back in detroit auto show this year, they had the award for car

of the year. you know who won it? the chevrolet bolt. it doesn't use gasoline. it uses battery and it can go 200 miles. whoever drives a bolt, nissan leif and is stuff. they're not going to use a drop of gasoline or diesel fuel to help pay for roads, highways, and bridges. we need to make sure they pay their -- it's small in terms of volume. vehicles of that nature, but there's going to be more. that would be a good thing in terms of our carbon concerns and climate change. we put in the fast act stipulation that says less, not a thousand flowers bloomed, but see if he can get the states to do some collaboration and be the laboratories of cooperation we

need them to be. jen cohen and a number of other states, we're kind of at the epicenter on the east coast to see what we can come up with. anybody from oregon? road user charges? i've come up with a new term, i call it -- i love music by the way. i call it ruck and roll. let me hear you say ruck and roll. that's good. i think we might be onto something here. if we can develop autonomous vehicles that can drive themselves all the way across the country, maybe we can figure out a way to do vehicle miles traveled. last thing i'll mention, in states that voted, most recently, new jersey, pennsylvania, wyoming have voted

for rather substantial increases in user fees. mostly gas increases. somebody actually sit down and looked how the folks who voted for those increases and said how did they do in the re-elections and overwhelmingly they won. in washington people were scared in voting for these becau. we don't have ear marks anymore. i know ear marks can be abused. just to be honest with you, the idea to enable members to say i voted for an increase in users fee, as a u.s. house, senate member. we're getting for that money out in our county and state and sticht this is why i did it. in delaware as jen knows, we

have a lot of press conferences on things that are federally funded. 80% of the money is federal. and why we need to do more stuff like that. i don't know we're going to get ear marks back, but we've developed the idea for folks to get credit where they may have the political courage to do the right thing. we have states represents from across america. i went into the navy and saw the world. i feel really lucky to be in delaware. it's a state that actually works. we believe in the three "c"s, communicate, compromise, and collaborate. it works pretty well for us. it works for our nation. the last couple months people have said we're going to to hell in a hand basket. people are fearful. i hope what the president said

last night really means in his heart because the words were right and he was reading off the telepromter. but whoever wrote the words on the telepromter did a nice job. people may not believe what you say, but they believe believe what you do. one of our state treasurer, undergrad in economic, mba from delaware. i know a little bit about budgeting, eight years at governor. i was troubled last night by what the president called for, mass tax cuts. huge infrastructure program, massive buildup of our military, great wall along the boarder with mexico, that costs $25 billion. you're not going to believe this.

we spend more in this country, i'm saying this as a proud veteran. we spend more on military than the next ten nations combined. ten nations combined. two weeks ago, $400 billion in weapon systems caused overruns. to actually have clean financials, never had one in 60, 70 years, and the ability to manage their finances. before we pour a lot of additional money into that area, i hope keep that in mind. when people say i'm fearful to for the future of the country, here's what i say.

the chinese symbol for danger is a chinese symbol for opportunity. in adversity lies opportunity. we had a civil war in this country, brother against brother, family against family. at the end of the day war our president was saechbtd and his successor was kbeefd and somehow we got through that. and we can get through this. people who wrote our constitution are smart guys. and all the systems of checks and balances, it's worked pretty well for over 200 years. i think it'll help us get through here. remember the three "c"s. glod god bliss, thank you so much. [ applause ] . >> thank you so much.

>> did i take your stuff? ? >> yeah, i think you did. >> i almost walked away with his script. but i will leave my prepared remarks in case you need them. come and see us in delaware. take care. bye-bye. >> senator, thank you so much for everything you do and all the work that you do. i want to welcome house transportation infrastructure committee chairman bill shooster. he's a true champion of transportation working to enact the fast act among other achievements. he previously served as chairman of the subcommittee on railroads, pipelines, and hazardous materials. as chairman of the, theni

committee, chairman lav huge role in helping with the navigate transportation investments and policy, please welcome to the podium chairman shooster. >> the whole speech was great but of course the folks in this room and myself, he talked about infrastructure again. as i like to tell people, this is the first president that i can find that said in his any and all dress using the word infrastructure. this president's committed to it. at any folks in this room are committed to it. thank you for having me here.

>> i heard the senator mention his dot secretary so i thought i should do the same. leslie and i are on different sides of the political aisle, but when it comes to transportation there's not much daylight between us. it's about building america's infrastructure and we have a tremendous needs out there. again, the president last night said it. he said it again and again. i've been down to the white house twice in the last two weeks. i had small meetings with the president. of course i bring up infrastructure every chance i get. this president, he's a builder. he knows what it takes to get at a project done. there's a great example down in

pennsylvania avenue, the old post office. the trump organization got the bid and under budget. that's the type of thing this president's going to get done. let me focus on what we need to do to move forward with infrastructure. the president said a trillion dollars. it's not going to be a trillion dollars coming out of washington, d.c. there obviously has to be more money coming out of washington, d.c. how we get there, let me say something about where these other dollars are coming from. there are bulliillions and bill of private sector dollars. we talked about two pipeline projects, not the dakota access pipeline, not the keystone pipe. the atlantic sunrise. there are two pipelines in pennsylvania, $4 billion of private investment. and the core of engineers and

other government agencies are holding up knees projects. with the core signs off, we're talking about 4 battlefields private investment just in pennsylvania and into a couple other states that can be done. i was down in florida. there's a project waiting for the court to sign off. there's a $2 billion waiting in california for a portion of it. there are billions and billions of dollars in private sector money and the president is talking about these things. he has a great policy team i can't tell you how pleased i am that secretary chow is secretary of transportation chow. when a what's the criteria for any secretary? it's have the experience to run something big. she ran the labor department

under president bush. her work as a deputy secretary of transportation under first president bush and third, be politically smart. she's got all those qualifications. some of those are getting frustrated because for her and her team, you need 11 players on the football field. she's got about three on the football field. she's supposed to be the coach in she's be quarterback and doing it all. we have to make sure we get all the administrators on board. there's been lists out there there, 50 mega projects and i've said to the folks at the white house, telling me that's not the president's listing because 50 projects aren't going to get 535 members of congress, 50 governors and bodies to figure

it out. it should be like 500. and we should looking the a every state and say what are the projects that are going to bring a state along. probably 2/3 of the state. madam secretary in pennsylvania, 81 is one of those. those of you w4r068 in new york city 1 is the project that's important to the health of this economy. needs to go to two more lanes, not just in pennsylvania, but the whole span. when we're making lists and projects, we need to go to our state dot departments. what are the seven projects that can bring all 18 members of the house and our two senators to get and say this is important for pennsylvania, this is important for america. that's what we have to do. we have to get on board again. anytime you have an opportunity to talk to the secretary or

folks that are in policy positions, it's got to be a 50-state solution. it's got to be all 50 states on the playing field doing what we have to do. some of you in this room have done just that, talk to your legislators. it's working together, it's identifying those projects to bring legislators to the table to get the revenue. how do we get the revenue? it's going to have to come from a lot of different sources. everybody talks about the user fees, repatriation, cut spending here, move it there. it's going to take an array of those types of things in washington. there's no one silver bullet. i think everything has to be on the table. i'm proud of all the partisanship in washington, d.c.

one of the things that brings people together is infrastructure. whether it's delaware, pennsylvania, california, florida, maine, we all need to see that investment. how we get those dollars, i can't stand up here and tell you except it's going to be an all of the above solution. the house and the senate to address the problem, there is a problem to funding. look, i can talking about a lot of things we're going to to do in the committee. but the biggest thing is it's going to be an infrastructure package. and it will cover everything. rail, transit, highways, i have a vacation, pipelines, there's going to be some things that aren't in any jurisdiction there are going to make it into the by infrastructure, the electric

grid, broad band. erie going to have a big, broad bill. welcome to the transportation business. i welcome them all to get on board. again, you being here in washington is extremely important, making sure you're going to talk to your members. we have a couple round talkz with former state dot folks that have gone through the process of how they get the revenue kbreesz. they're going to be talking to those folks on my side of the aisle, sometimes we're a little bit more stubborn. but i think that everybody knows that it has to be an investment in our infrastructure. the president hit the nail on the head last night in a lot of areas when it comes to to infrastructure, he's there. he knows it and those of you in the room know it. take your message to the hill and i urge you again any time

you talk to somebody in the administration, i know self-interest in your own state, but you need 49 other states on board for us to get this done. i appreciate you being here. i'm keeping my message short. i have a lot to do today. we have a couple hearings and a lot of folks that want to talk about infrastructure. so thank you all for having me here. thanks for being here. secretary richards, i'll see you soon. sooner than you may want me to be. thank you all very much. appreciate it. [ applause ] sunday night on q&a. >> nationalists were rising up. so the big strategic question

that the u.s. faced was should it support britain against rising nationalizes are create a new order by immediateiating wean the nationalists. >> ike's gamble about the 1956 suez crisis and its aftermath. >> what he's trying to present is the soviet union coming in aligning with the nationalists, undermining the british and taking control of the oil in the middle east. we care about the oil because it was 100% of european oil that's correct from t-- that came from middle east. at least keep the soviet union out. that's the goal. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q&a. c-span's washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up tuesday morning, tax

foundation economist will frame the upcoming congressional debate on tax reform. then north carolina republican congressman walter jones and california democratic congressman john gar men did i will join us to discuss a bill they cosponsored call for complete withdrawal of u.s. troops from afghanistan. be sure to watch washington journal live 7:00 a.m. eastern tuesday morning. join the discussion. president trump's nominee for agriculture secretary, form are georgia sonny per do you testified before the senate agricultural committee. he was questioned about proposed white house budget cuts to farm programs, crop insurance, forest management, immigrant labor and farm bill reauthorization. this is