for being with us. let me introduce our reporters who will be asking questions. richard rubin covers the budget for bloomberg news. >> i wanted to ask you, the news

next week is all going to be about sequestration. the president is going to propose ending it. it sounds like in theory something both parties can get behind. how do you think this is going to play out? is this doable for next year's spending bill? >> i hope it is. there is widespread agreement that sequestration makes sense. it doesn't say we should cut here and spend more there. it is an across-the-board situation, which should be done away with. obviously the debate will take place over the devil in the details. >> and the budget chairman, what do you make of his ability to work with you to get that in place? >> i like mike and i look for to working with him.

>> the president announced thursday he is not seeking to end just sequestration but his budget proposal will call for a 7% increase. is that going to be dead on arrival on capitol hill? >> you will have to ask the republicans who control the house and the senate. at a time when the middle class continues to disappear, when we have the highest rate of poverty in the industrialized world when millions of seniors are struggling to put food on the table and pay for their medicine when young people can't afford college, we have to start investing in the future of america. we have to protect most of vulnerable people in this country. the way you do that is -- the state of the wealthiest. you're going to have to start paying your fair share of taxes. >> there are areas where you can

find agreement on the budget. what are the areas of common ground potentially? >> i think one area of common agreement is there is widespread understanding. our infrastructure is crumbling. you name it. according to the american society of civil engineers we have to invest trillions of dollars to bring our infrastructure up to par. we are way behind europe and china in terms of what investment of our gdp we invest in infrastructure -- of our gdp we put into infrastructure. i have just introduced legislation which will call for a trillion dollar investment over five years, creating 13 million jobs. i would hope in that area we can come together and say we have to rebuild our crumbling

infrastructure and in the process we can create millions of jobs. that is one area i hope we can reach an agreement. >> senator paul introduced a proposal this week that would let companies repaid she ate -- if money comes off of that they would use it for infrastructure. what do you think of a place where the money could come from? >> the smith -- this is based on the fact that we have huge amounts of money from corporate america city in the cayman islands. that is a mechanism by which locker room -- blog corporations. it is losing about $100 billion per year. the idea being floated about his we are not going to -- the full

share of taxes, we will make them pay for substantially less. if you want to know how to raise revenue, a modest fee of all street transactions will help us but also raise a substantial amount of revenue. it is time when the top 1% have a phenomenal amount of wealth. it makes sense to me you have hedge fund managers making millions of dollars. there are fair and progressive ways to raise revenue. with that revenue i would put it into infrastructure, making sure our young people can go to college, and not be deeply in debt. >> infrastructure is one of the things both parties want to broadly work together on.

democrats want to come aboard on these new trade agreements how do you plan to handle this with your role on the budget committee? >> i think those are separate issues. i think there is no denial and it is not controversial to say that our infrastructure is -- infrastructure is coupling. -- is crumbling. today we are 12 place. the 50 states of this country we need a huge that huge investment to bring our infrastructure up to par. what i can tell you is if you do not invest in roads and bridges it ain't going to get any better. the trade issue is another issue. is when i strongly disagree with

the president on. you will find that trade relations with china have cost us millions of decent paying jobs. they have gone to china, gone to mexico gone to low-wage countries. $.56 per hour. frankly i don't think american worker should be forced to compete against people who are making her in the fleet low wages. these trade agreements benefited large corporations. our working people have paid a terrible price for them in terms of job loss. i think we should kill this agreement and come up with something that works for workers. >> have you started talking with

conservatives who share maybe not exactly quite the same approach, have you started having those conversations to build a coalition against fast-track? >> those conversations are taking place. i know they are taking place in the house of representatives. what bothers me in addition to the fact i strongly disagree with what i expect we'll be in the ccp, which is a continuation of pass trade policy, the lack of transparency in terms of this fast-track is something to behold. the truth of the matter is there something like 25 chapters. i believe there are thousands of pages, highly complicated legal documents. members of congress are allowed to see the documents but they are not allowed to copy the information.

there is very little transparency in terms of the fast-track. i hope for that reason alone the fast-track will be defeated. >> hillary clinton made the delay for her presidential campaign until the summer. do you see the opportunity to influence the democratic side during primaries? is decision process now? >> i think as people understand, this is not a simple decision. not just for yourself and your family but for the viewers. i have to believe in these extraordinary moments we are living in, which speaks to the american middle class and the of seen level of income and wealth inequality, which speaks to the

disastrous supreme court decision on citizens united, which allows the koch brothers and a few other billionaire families to be the wealthiest -- to be the most powerful political entity in america. we are looking at a billionaire family that will have more political power than either the democratic or republican parties. you are looking at climate change. unless we significantly reduce carbon domitian's -- carbon emissions this planet could be five degrees warmer by the end of the century. we need people to take on the billionaire class to prevent this country from moving in the direction of oligarchy. these are issues that have to be dealt with.

running for president of the united states who are private -- who are prepared to deal with these issues. on the other hand you are going to need an and list some of money to take on the koch brothers. how do you organize those people? i will not run for president if i can't do it well. so i will be in the hampshire this weekend. i will be in iowa again in a couple of weeks. we are talking to a lot of people. it is something i like to do but i can't do it. >> do you think you are the best person to take on the koch brothers? >> you will have to ask hillary clinton about that.

i'm not running against hillary clinton. i'm running against wall street and they have agreed to help destroy this economy. i am running against citizens united, i am running against those people who did not climate change. what hillary clinton or mitt romney had to say, we can debate those issues. >> let me say from a tactical standpoint the political playbook says she may not announce all the way until july because she doesn't see any primary challenge on the horizon. i'm not sure what that says about your potential candidacy. if you are the early one dared to get into the ring, how does that play out? >> if i'm the only one on the -- i don't know how it plays out. she will make her own decisions and i will make line.

>> thank you. family is there in another country out there that does all of those things well? what are some model policies you look to? >> there is no country that hasn't been hit by depression in recent years, no country that is not struggling with one or another issue. there is a lot to learn from countries in scandinavia which have far more egalitarian policies than we do. the united states is the only nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care to all people, and yet we spend almost twice as much capital on health care as the u.k. or countries throughout europe. maybe the function of private

insurance companies in this country is to make as much money as they can out of our health care facility rather than have us provide quality cost-effective health care. there is a lot to be learned from scandinavia. there's a growing awareness for this country. if you want to send your kid to college it could be affordable. very need to have the best educated workforce in the world that we have a large number of kids who can no longer afford to go to college. we have young people graduating medical or dental school. should we learn from other countries and say we want to capture the energy and ability

and intelligence of our young people? i think so. we spend a huge amount of money on defense. we spent almost as much as, not quite, as the rest of the world combined. at the same time make sure we are funding infrastructure funding education. our childcare is a disaster. there is a lot to be learned from a lot of other countries. we are going to make government work for the middle-class and working families of our nation. >> we have 10 minutes left. >> i want to get your impression of what the president did this week in proposing this repeal of the tax break. and then backing away from it. did he make the right move? >> he did the right -- he did make the right move.

it is no small thing for the president. you want to get two years of education, it is going to be free. my own view is we should brought him that, saying you want to go to any public college university in america? have the first two years free. i have popped the president for recognizing that it is insane so many people cannot afford to go to college. >> there were several amendments on climate change, which kind of split the republican party. what message did you receive from republicans, supporting some of these? what do you think about that? >> let me be honest about this.

i'm a progressive, my views are conservative. with -- i have to tell you what the republican party is in terms climate change, it is not just wrong it is an international embarrassment. from the scientific community's perspective there is no longer a debate on climate change. the overwhelming majority of sites is climate change is real climate change is caused by human activity, climate change is already causing devastating problems, the damage we are seeing now will pale in comparison to what we will see him years to come in terms of rising sea levels, drought floods, disturbances. i recognize the climate change

is real because climate change is always real. i'm not saying it is caused by human activity. i offered an amendment that we have a window of opportunity to transform our energy system that is said to be a to our country in the world. by the way, that takes us to the issue of campaign finances. the koch brothers make most of their money in fossil fuels. that is a very scary situation when you have a party, virtually the entire party, willing to reject buyers while receiving a campaign contributions from big energy.

>> did you not see any progress in the fact that five republicans did vote for an amendment that said humans are can cheating to climate change? did that surprise you? >> i suppose it is a step forward. a controversial position that climate change is caused by human activity. there is a minimal amount of progress. clearly it is an embarrassment. we can disagree about how you receive -- how you proceed.

we can disagree about how you do it. there should be no disagreement that carbon emissions and human activity is the basis for climate change. >> where do you drop that -- draw that line? who should be protected? >> i think the president is roughly in the right ballpark. it is not just the individual taxation. we have seen an explosion in terms of the increase of income of the wealthiest people in this country. at the same time we are seeing

the same decline in their tax burden. it is not just individuals, it is corporate taxes as well. you have major corporations like general electric and other wall street companies who in recent years have paid zero in terms of federal income tax. despite making billions in profit. that makes no sense to me. i think we need real tax reform so the largest corporations can stop paying their fair share. and we need to use that money to invest in infrastructure, invest in education and use it to reduce the deficit. we cannot continue down this path where so few have so much and so many have so little and these wealthy people end up paying a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than they used to. that makes no sense to me.

they're attempting to cut social security. there is a very simple solution to how you deal with that. you have some money making 10 million a year, some of the making 118,000 per year. if you lift that cap you can raise him up -- raise enough money to extend the life of social security and expand benefits, which is what i believe we should do. too many seniors in vermont and all over this country are struggling to pay for their medicine pay for their heat, pay for their food. they cannot do it on $13,000 per year of social security.

>> a lot of people would assume that you wouldn't work with republicans. you worked with senator mccain last year on a veterans reform bill. who do you get along with best? >> until a month ago i was chairman of the veterans committee. i worked very closely with senator mccain and with house republicans to pass what some would consider to be more important legislation. there are some very sensible republicans that i can work with and democrats can work with. lamar alexander is chairman of the committee. i look forward to working with him.

in terms of infrastructure, the need to rebuild our comfort -- our crumbling infrastructure, i suspect we can work with him as well. >> final question. >> what are you seeing in the republican presidential field? is general election matchup look like? them much for speculations. i think we have an american people who are demoralized politically. it was the fact that 63% of the american people did not vote. i would hope that we can restore

hope and faith in the american people, that we can start doing things that improve life for the mast the geordie of people rather than billionaire campaign investors. >> senator sanders explained that he is an independent, which is how he landed an assignment as the lead democrat on the budget committee. what kind of power does he really have in that spot? >> in a minority of the senate you have more power than you would in the house. he has a few tools in the senate you was a budget comes to the senate floor, if and when the republicans try to move one, he will have the ability to force. the amendment.

they basically have show boasts but there bodes everyone can point back to during the campaign to talk about. it really gives him the chance to make people go on the record and do that. >> as the new majority leader has called for a return to regular order and open rules how long before the republicans begin to regret how open the legislation is? >> just this week we started to see the senate democrat campaign arm on how they voted for some of these amendments. should the u.s. steel for the u.s. pipeline? have they voted on climate change? have they voted on any sort of energy amendment?

there is an opportunity for democrats to attack them. it really depends on whether democrats can keep these germane. i think you will see people offering for minimum wage. a lot of these goals are not something necessarily they will pass. this is why you didn't see this happen very much under harry reid's authority. he knew keeping these tough votes away from these honorable senators could be beneficial -- from these vulnerable senators could be beneficial. >> they are making the opposite argument. we are going to let our members compile a voting record. they had a lot -- they have a hard time distinguishing themselves. not that many things divided them.

they are going to have the ability to differentiate themselves from a party. the tricky part comes when you have items you have to pass. only three people can vote against it. who gets to do that? these must pass bills -- how do they manage that? >> we spoke with senator stan -- senator sanders about his presidential bid. how does that overlaid the agenda that he hopes to pursue from his budget position? >> he is looking for a soapbox to talk about the issues that are important to him, which are income inequality, climate

change, big banks, education all of these things. the ranking member of the budget committee is thankful. there is no way he will be able to persuade -- persuade republicans. he will be on the floor a lot and he will be talking about it a lot. he's really trying to walk this fine line and present himself. he seems reticent to do anything to damage hillary clinton before he is fully stepped in. i see him trying to thread the needle right now. i don't think even he knows how exactly this will play out. >> thank you for your questions. president obama unveils his budget request for 2016 at the

homeland security department on monday. that is scheduled for 11:45 a.m. eastern. later in the day we will hear from my house to director shaun donovan and other senior administration officials holding a news conference to discuss the budget request with reporters. that is life also on c-span two. >> with the sec focusing on that neutrality, we spoke with two industry executives of the consumer electronics show at las vegas. chris riley and hank holquist. >> we believe the accident need strong enforceable rules to protect net neutrality for the users. those need to include nondiscrimination and product management. and they need to be effectively enforceable.