events live or on demand any time, anywhere, on our new mobile video map. access top highlights, listen to c-span radio and discover new podcasts all for free. download c-span now today. ♪♪ congressman and dr. michael burgess back with us. he's a republican representing the 26th district of texas, a member of the house budget

committee. congressman, while waiting for that congressional budget office breakdown of the build back better act, but we're already heart hear reporting that the white house may be trying to brace for a cbo score that might show that this bill is not fully paid for. so if that is the case, what are you and your republican colleagues do that w that information and do you think that the fate of this bill hangs on a cbo score? >> well, thank you for having me on. it does appear they've put a lot of their chips on the cbo score. so when you ask the question what will republicans do, republicans were against this thing before the cbo score became the principle issue. so no republican is likely to change their mind and vote for the build back better act. now the question will be where do the so-called moderate democrats land. they have argued all along that they need to see the cbo score

and the president has affirmed time again and that this bill costs nothing. so i guess if he is reinforced in that position, then perhaps it brings his moderate democrats more eagerly to vote in favor. but you and i know it is not likely to be that clear-cut and it is highly likely that this bill costs significantly more than zero. >> the claim that it cost nothing and also as we heard from the president's top economic adviser that this bill could help fight inflation. i want to play a clip of brian deese from the sunday show from cnn on sunday. >> well, inflation is high right now and it is effecting consumers in their pocket book and also in their out look for the economy. but those concerns underscore why it is so important that we move forward on the build back better legislation, this legislation that the house is going to consider this week. this more than anything will go

at the cost that americans face. you talk about health care, one of the biggest costs in american family space, this will lower prescription drug prices put a cap on prescription drug costs for our seniors. childcare, not only a big cost driver for families but a big impediment for more parents and women to get back into the workforce. this will cut the cost of childcare by half. and housing a big cost driver, this will build affordable homes around the country to make it easier for families to afford housing and also to to places where the job opportunities are. all of these things go right at lowering costs for american families and this bill is fully paid for. it is not going to add toin nationary pressures, quite the opposite because we'll pay for everything in the bill by raising taxes on big companies, large corporations and the highest income americans. so there is an urgency to act. the house will consider this bill this week and we're looking forward to making progress and

getting this done. >> congressman burgees, your response. >> he just doubled down on the cbo score, that the bill itself is not going to cost anything and we know that is a fairy tale. if you're going to start with a story start with once upon a time. the problem has not just been the amount of money, but the repetitivity with which it is spent. the economy cannot absorb the excess dollars flushed into the system. barry summers an obama economist warned us about this in january or february when we had the first reconciliation bill, remember that was the one that would crush the coronavirus and didn't exactly work out as far as crushing the coronavirus. but it pumped almost $2 billion into the economy and now we're doubling down with a bill that probably is going to end up costing closer to $4 trillion

and these dollars have nowhere to go. they're pushed out in the economy and there is no place to absorb them. so what happen? that drives the price up. producers and builders say that there is demand and the price can be increased and there are dollars to fill that demand. well of course they're not going to -- nature is a vacuum and they're not going to let that vacuum exist. >> congressman burnles with us. democrats and republicans and independents. congressman, shifting gears through the infrastructure law. president biden on the road selling this law this week. one estimate said that this law could bring $35.5 billion in hard infrastructure funding to the state of texas. you voted against the bill when it was before the house. why vote against that kind of

funding for state of texas? >> wait a minute. let's be sure we have our numbers straight. $34 billion and yet the dollar figure that is affixed to the hard infrastructure that was contained in the infrastructure bill was $110 billion total. so don't tell me that texas is going to get a third of those dollars. of course that is not correct. we normally do a highway bill, we collect tax dollars from every gasoline purchase in the country, 18.4 cents per gallon and it goes to the highway trust fund and every five years there is a highway bill that is comes through committee and comes through the congress for the maintenance and the building of new projects as is debated and the highway bill is the typical way that those dollars in the highway trust fund are expended. so a highway bill itself is not -- is not an anomaly. what was the anomaly was adding

the other stuff to this bill. and, look, constituents in my district aren't that anxious to have a charging session every 40 feet on the interstate and the electric cars are the car of the future but not here yet and it is -- we have needs that far outstrip what the projects were in this bill. and then on top of that, look, if you live in the north east corner and you take amtrak a lot, amtrak is going to do pretty well from this bill. except that when amtrak was created back in the 1970s, remember it was supposed to be self-supporting. but now you've got billions of more dollars going into the maintenance of amtrak and this is something that they were supposed to be taking care of themselves by this time. >> plenty of calls for you already. get right to them. dale in annapolis junction, maryland. independent. good morning. >> good morning.

congressman, i'd like to -- you named a number of things that you are not for. but i'm just wondering is there anything in the build back better bill that you could support? i'm quite sure you probably would have liked to have had that money to build up the infrastructure on the power plants when you had that tremendous storm that came through texas last year. and when you had ted cruz going down to cancun for a week until he got caught. and also, i like to understand, you know, it seems like the republicans have kind of been stuck in not realizing, you just can't look at the present. you have to look toward the future. and the future of basically is going to be electric cars so why not get ahead of that right now. >> congressman? >> yeah. so it begs the question and i don't disagree that electric cars may very well be the future. the public may make that choice.

should be the consumers choice to make. and if that is the case, who should be funding the electric charging stations. well probably the manufacturers of electric cars or you don't just like gasoline stations find if there is a business model for selling the fuel that someone needs to move them from point a to point b. now that fuel may be electricity and the rapid charging outlets. but why would that not be a business plan that someone would ubd take and why does the government have to be the ones that fronts the capital for that. and takes ownership of it. look, the gentleman does make a very good point, it is hard to spend $4.5 trillion ant not have something in there that is worthwhile. so, yes, there probably are things that i could pick out in there that this is something that perhaps we should talk about. but here the -- and this is the

fundamental problem, this spending was from the get-go going to be partisan. it was -- there was no attempt to, well let's go the committees and let's open up it and have hearings and find out where the needs are and drill down on those and make sure we're spending the taxpayer dollars wisely and then make those assessments where there is broad agreement that this is actually necessary. we didn't do any of that. this bill sprung forward already written and created from the office of the speaker of the house. and yes, they have a five-vote majority in the house of representatives. so if they could keep all of their folks in line, they will pass this bill through the house. now, here is the bad news for them. the senate is split 50/50 and a bill of this nature cannot pass the senate with 50 votes unless it is under special budget rules

called reconciliation. but reconciliation has some strict parameters drawn around it. and if they violate those parameters, then suddenly they will have to achieve the 60-vote majority that you normally would to stop the filibuster. this bill will come back from the senate, if the house passes it and they may well today, tomorrow, next week, who knows, but this bill will then go over to the senate and when it comes back, it will in in way resemble the bill that was sent over there. but here is the deal. when it comes back, the house will simply have to rubber stamp it and send it down to the president for significanture. there not be a chance to amendment or fine tune anything or debate it. it is a take it or leave it proposition when the bill comes back from the senate. that is why it is so dangerous to go down this reconciliation road and they made that choice.

in january. that they would not involve republicans at any level. look, i also sit on the energy and commerce committee, we have broad jurisdiction over energy and energy projects. yeah, we might well have some hearings and looked at what the opportunities and what the possibilities were. but that didn't -- and the decision was made that the bill was going to be written by the speaker. we had a mark-up of a reconciliation bill but we couldn't change anything and anything republican amendment offered was voted down on party lines and as a consequence you got what you've got. but it is in in way a desirable product and here is the thing, you're going to spend that much money, you could have done all kinds of good things. but they chose not to go that route. >> time for republicans in fallon, nevada, this is joann, good morning. >> good morning how is everybody this morning. >> doing well. >> good to talk to you, michael

burgees. i am supporting you 100%. and i'm a conservative. love my fox channel because they're the only ones that bring the good news to you. and the true news to you, what is happening on our borders. i'm sorry for the people of texas having to put up with the crap that is going on down there. i tried to send money to you. i hope you build the wall and you've got all of my support. the one thing about this bill coming up, they keep talking about early childhood learning. well, to get mothers back to work. how are you going to get mothers back to work? three and four-year-olds can't get a vaccine. so you have teachers sitting there on our dime and nothing ever happens. i am so disgusted and kamala harris, are you kidding. first woman vice president.

no, do nothing kamala. i can't believe that democrats believe in this woman they talk about e verify. it was the democrat that took that out of the policy to do e verify. why was that? so they could keep the borders open and hire all of the deplorables coming across our border. >> you bring up a lot of issues. i want to give the congressman a chance to respond to one or some. >> well she was doing so well, i was going to yield her another 15 minutes. and it is good to know that the broaden viewing scope out from fox to include c-span and as we all know c-span is a valuable resource and people should consult c-span for the news. look, no secret, she and i agree on the border issues. i think in the previous administration president trump had done finally what was required to get control of certainly the border that we

share with mexico in the state of texas. and then all of that was jettisoned on day one of the new administration. and we see the result of that. people forget the other results of that is not just the television pictures of the people streaming across, there are probably double the number of deaths of people who have just simply run out of gas in the middle of the desert, run out of food and water and perished in the heat in the deserts in south texas. this is a dangerous undertaking. there is no way to know how many people have been lost on the trip from guatemala up through mexico to get to the southern border. the coyote, the child traffickers and the human traffickers that are -- they are making it a lot of money off of poor people who may be in a tough situation, who want a better life. you can't deny that that is not a noble goal. but now they are fleeced by

these traffickers, brought to this country, and they pay a lot of money for that. why we haven't done more to interrupt that cash flow, i don't know. i've argued for that. that may be a way to tackle the problem on our southern border is through the banking system. but nevertheless, we continue to fuel it. and look, it is frustrating when people see the stories day after day ab what is going on in the southern border and the answer really, the only logical answer that you could come to right now is this is a situation that is desired and encouraged by the administration. for some reason they see value in flooding the country that -- with people that are coming in without the benefit of citizenship or authorization. and the lady pointed out correctly that there are a lot of people who have been sitting

patiently in line, playing by the rules, and it does take a long time to immigrate under normal circumstances and it has to be frustrating and insulting for them to see what the position of the administration has been with allowing so many people in with basically no effort to stop it and then the united states has water -- water patrol gets them to the proper place so we are providing the transportation of the last mile of someone's journey. >> just about ten minutes left with congressman burgees. on the idea of yielding colors more time, i like the idea of running it like a committee. does that mean i have a gavel if be do it that way. >> you could have a gavel. >> i recommendationed your decades as a doctor and i want to run by you a survey that came out from the association of

critical care nurses. you know the importance of nurses. they what the survey found. 92% of over 6,000 nurses surveyed said that the depleted -- the number of nurses at the hospital, and 66% said that the pandemic experiences have caused them to consider leaving the profession. 76% saying unvaccinated threaten the unvaccinated threaten nurse's physical and mental well being and 67% say taking care of covid-19 patients puts them and their families at risk. your thoughts on those survey numbers. >> well, look, there is no question that these with the people that have been on the front lines through the pandemic. and i can't say that i would disagree that within any of those statistics that you've put up there. i don't know if this particular group what the vaccination rate was. you do sometimes see in health

care workers that there is a reluctance to receive the vaccine. i can't say that i fully understand that. i've been vaccinated and everyone in my family has. i feel very confident in the vaccines that are available and i think they have provided us at least one of the tools that we needed to get beyond this pandemic. but i do not think that mandating has been particularly helpful. and i think it is driven oppositional behavior. so i think the administration has really dropped the ball in that regard. and now of course we've got osha coming in and telling companies that employ more than 100 people that they have to be forced to comply and all we're doing is driving people away. we should be welcoming them in. and really one of the big mistakes i think at the beginning was not involving just regular doctors offices more in the distribution of the vaccine and providing the vaccine for their patients when they came in for whatever ailment would be a

great time to have a discussion about the importance of the vaccine and for perhaps someone to use that opportunity to get vaccinated. the difficulty with keeping people on the job in those situations is significant. and part of it, too, is the amount of money that was pushed out the door for coronavirus relief and what it did was really make it a buyer's market out there for people who wanted to work on -- as a contract employee. so many of the hospitals that were having trouble with coronavirus came in to smaller hospitals, rural hospitals in my state, and that is one of the things that i get complaints about is that not only can we not hire anyone, all of our existing is being hired away. and you can't fault them. they're being offered significant amounts of money to go work somewhere else.

but as the survey pointed out, there is a very high emotional cost with that as well. and now of course you're separated from your family and your support structure. we are not done with this virus. this virus has unfortunately been much worse than many of our public health experts thought it was going to be. but i do feel that we are getting beyond it and the news that pfizer has a true anti-viral, that merck also i believe has a true -- and pfizer will allow other manufactures to produce that product so there will be a worldwide opportunity for distribution. i think that is the way that we're ultimately going to get past this but until we do get past it, all of those statistics that were generated by the critical care nurses, they're probably not going to improve. >> rock hill, south carolina, this is russell, thanks for waiting. >> your welcome. i would like to ask michael a

question. he mentioned charging stations every 40 feet or every quarter of a mile. and i was just ask him is there going to be hotels there too becausepy research said a car could go about 200 miles on a charge. and then you take approximately eight to 12 hours to charge the vehicles. so will there be hotels at each charging station? what will people do for those hours while they're waiting and waiting and waiting. and -- >> dr. burgees. >> well the gentleman proposed a rather attractive business model that someone may want to seek the opportunity there. i will tell you that, look, i've driven a hybrid car since 2004. i like the hybrid technology. plug-in hybrids have not been available in my area because all of the ones that are produced go

to the east coast or the west coast. but i do think that the plug-in hybrid is, as that becomes more available, it actually makes more sense. yes, you're probably going to be able to build a vehicle that can go 600 mile on a single electric charge. but the battery in that vehicle will of necessity be massive. and so the weight becomes a problem. well what if you divvy that up into say four, six, or eight other batteries and put them in a plug-in hybrid, most of us, when we go through our normal work day, our commute is probably someone less than 100 miles round trip. so you could do your normal weekend day commuting. purely on a charge that you do yourself at your home at night. and then you do have the gasoline engine part of the car if you want to go to the beach on the weekend. >> well for the caller, in just

about five minutes or so we're talking more about electric vehicles joined by jeff gilbert, reporter at wwj news radio out of detroit. and we're going to dig in, into the electric vehicle market. >> i do need to point out, i was being a little bit hyperbolic when i said charging stations every 40 feet. but there is a lot of charging stations in the infrastructure bill. >> that is a heck of a lot of charging stations. time for one or two more calls. steven, baltimore, maryland, democrat, good morning. >> how are you doing? you mentioned how covid money would have to businesses but over a trillion dollars would have to large and small businesses for relief like for the buying of personnel. now a lot of companies use their money for buybacks and to give their ceo's bonuses. now we didn't hear one word from

republicans about that money that went to businesses, but when the democrat imposed spending money on average working people to make their lives easier then we all hear about how it is going to cause inflation and it is not possible. it is -- would you have an answer for that. >> sure. first off the c.a.r.e.s. act that passed the house of representatives in march of 2000, i think it was march 27th. the stipulations around that money that could be provided to businesses, both large and small, small business with payroll protection plan and large businesses with different scenario. but that money was actually not to be used, not available to be used for things like stock buybacks and in fact if there was forensic evidence that that had occurred, those dollars

would be -- would have to be refunded. and remember, those were set up originally as loans that could be forgiven and the very fact that they were loans meant that as far as the large businesses were concerned, that money would not be available for stock buy barks. and again if someone is aware of where that has happened, the department of treasury i'm sure would be interested in that. and may be interested in reclaiming those funds. i can't -- i don't recall hearing or seeing where executives got bonuses. in fact, there were a number of executives that were not taking paychecks themselves through the worst part of this. and anyone who has run a small business knows that those small business owners did not get paychecks, did not get bonused during the very worst part of the pandemic. the c.a.r.e.s. act also provided direct relief in the form of a

pack 3 fund to literally everyone who earned under i think $150,000 a year or maybe it was 200 how dollars a year. that was repeated in december. though i thought that number was small in december. and remember, the president, president trump at the time spoke out against that. and said you cannot be giving businesses all of these dollars and not providing relief to regular people and i was in favor of increasing that amount to come to the floor of the house in late december and i voted in favor of it. unfortunately the senate did not take it up and it never became law. but we do have -- and again, not to be argumentive, but congress's job is to really dig down into these issues, try to discern what the problem is, what the solutions are and then what the best solution would be and this is work where you're

supposed to do in our committees, commits like energy and commerce and ways an means and even the transportation committee. we are authorizers, to dig down and get the information and then the appropriators will come back and write the checks weather all of the coronavirus money, it just went out of the door. we just wrote the checks, we didn't do in the background information. now march of 2020, i submit it was important to do that. because the virus hit, it hit hard. it was incredibly destructive economically and as a consequence people were losing their jobs right and left and something had to be done to provide some immediate health and that was done. that is the whole purpose of the c.a.r.e.s. act. now it took nancy pelosi on the house side and mitch mcconnell on the senate side to come to a decision about what the next step in that relief would look like. and that is the bill that passed in december. and during that time my argument

was hey we're the energy and commerce committee, maybe we should hold hearings about how these dollars were divvied up and how they're being spent, maybe issues like executive bonuses could be more fully investigated if indeed that was a problem. and again if congress is doing its work, then those types of difficulties can be dealt with. but congress chose not to do its work. the speaker of the house simply wanted to spend money. and eventually in december that bill did pass. there was almost immediately then the new administration another bill. remember in december, it was probably about a -- $1.4 trillion that went to coronavirus relief and then another bill passed in february with no one looking back to see, hey, did we spend all of the money we just sent out in december?

did spend all of the money that we sent out in july, or i'm sorry in march of 2020. so that is been the problem. we won't do the work, the investigative work to find out have we spent dollars wisely and if more dollars are needed, where are they needed and why are they needed. >> congressman, quickly before you go, begin your day on capitol hill, want to ask you about something viewers on c-span might see if they're watching c-span later on the house floor, this from "the new york times" this morning. house democrats plan to move on wednesday to formally rebuke representative paul gosar, republican of arizona and strip him of his committee assignments for posting an animated video showing him attacking a congresswoman and president biden. >> no one should be doing anything that depicted violence or would be seen in any way to cause or insight someone to do something like that. but there were other ways of

approaching this. and there was never even a formal ethics committee investigation. they never formed an investigative subcommittee. this all happened relatively rapidly. the member in question put the video up and he took is right down at the request of our republican leader. probably hasn't apologized quite as effusively as some people would like but that i think would be a better route than further division and further antagonism in the house of representatives that is virtually dysfunctional right now or nonfunctional right now because of partisan rancor. >> congressman burgees, appreciate your time in the washington journal. thank you for stopping by. >> thank you. >> download c-span new mobile app and stay up to date with live video coverage of the day's biggest political events from live streams at the house and senate floor and key congressional hearings to white

house events and supreme court oral arguments. our live interactive morning program washington journal where we hear your voices every day. c-span now has you covered. download the app for free today. c-span shop.org, because tluroy collection of products, apparel, books, home decor and accessories. there is something for every c-span fan. and every purchase supports or nonprofit operation. shop now or any time at c-spanshop.org. >> jeff gilbert joins us now via zoom from wwj news radio 950 in detroit as well as wwj tv. good morning to you. president biden is going to be in the motor city today as he tens this tour to t