let me make a point about defazio. he raised this in conjunction with job creation. it has nothing to do with job creation. if he wants to talk about job creation talk about that but don't talk about a tax on highways as part of a job creation bill. that's dumb. >> let's bring to the table, tracy. >> you pay 50 cents onhe gallon in new york. if any one has driven down 48th street you feel your intestines are coming out of your throat. i don't know what they are doing. if you could use this and fix the roads i would give you five cents extra. i keep giving but we can't trust them to spend it properly. >> kimberly, we use 138 or so billion gallons of gasoline a year. we give them a ton. >> that's the point. i don't feel like helping reward them by giving them more money that they are not going to spend properly. like we did with the hard working american taxpayers, giving a trillion dollars for stimulus, et cetera. where are the shovel ready projects? obama is like i guess they weren't so shovel ready, my bad. why are we going to do this? do more with what you have alr

. >> john: senator bernie sanders and pete defazio introduced a bill that would strengthen security. but the president's proposal does seem to weaken it. what do you think of barack obama's grand bargain proposal? should progressives embrace this, despite the cuts to insurance he seems to be offering? >> the president was re-elected on a promise to defend social security medicare and medicaid. it is something voters understood. it is one of the reasons why he did way better in the election than even his own people had expected. so americans want him to fight for these programs. i think that any kind of grand bargain that begins to undermine the programs is a very dangerous game. not just as regards to the programs but also politically. remember, george bush got in a lot of trouble when he said during a campaign, read my lips, no new taxes then he turned around and raised taxes. i think there's a lot of political danger if you say in a campaign you're going to protect social security, medicare and medicaid and then you start to assault them. >> john: john nichols you made me feel a lo

just today congressman pete defazio and i introduced legislation to make social security strong for thet 50 years on taxable income starting at $250,000. you do that, it hits the top 1 1/2%. social security is strong for the next 50 years. second of all, this so-called chain cpi, let me tell you what it would do, ed. if you're 65 today, by the time you are 75 you're going to be losing about $650 a year. now, if you're living on 15,000 bucks a year, that is a lot of money. but it's not just seniors on social security. if you can believe it, this chain cpi will make devastating cuts for disabled veterans. the men and women who lost arms and legs in iraq and afghanistan, the widows of people who were killed in iraq, it will mean significant cuts for them. do we really want to balance the budget on the backs of disabled vets and seniors making $15,000, 20 thousands a year on social security? i think not. >> senator, will republicans compromise on the budget if democrats don't offer cuts to the big three? and this really is cutting to the chase here. they say that there's no revenue. althoug

defazio, for ive minutes. mr. defazio: thank you, mr. speaker. as i speak here on the floor, the american society of civil engineers is releasing a report card for america's infrastructure. the gentleman who spoke before me talked about the legacy that would leave to our country and about growth in the nation. well, this is an incredible legacy we're leaving and creating which is an unbelievable deficit in our nation's infrastructure. we've gone from number one in the world, post-world war ii with the eisenhower era, national interstate program, to number 26 in the world. we're spending less of our gross domestic product on infrastructure investment than many third world countries. it's not only an embarrassment, it is hurting our economy and our growth. now, if your kid came home and said, hey, dad, guess what, got my report card, here it is. good news. good news. oh, it's good news. i went up to a d-plus. d-plus. yep, that's where america's infrastructure is. we have a projected deficit over the next seven years of about $1.6 trillion. now, tha

defazio, for five minutes. mr. defazio: mr. speaker, today i rise as a member of the safe climate caucus to talk about an important new report on climate change. of late the discussion over global warming has focused on temperatures the last 118 years when standardized record keeping began, primarily the best and most comprehensive research on temperatures has gone back overwhelm as far as 2000 years. climate change complain these studies have been shortsighted. they haven't taken into account warming going on today could have happened naturally thousands of years ago. they are a result of natural fluctuations, they say. there is some scientific basis for that claim. variations on how the earth is tilted in its orbit around the sun makes a pattern of warming and cooling phasing over thousands of years. in some cases the earth heats up. others it cools down. last week scientists from oregon state university, including two constituents of mine, sean and alan, joined with their colleagues from harvard university and published a st

defazio: address the house for one minute. yesterday i discussed the american society of civil engineers' score barred. our infrastructure is failing. a d-plus, costing us lost productivity, wasted fuel. we need to deal with that problem. there is an even bigger problem looming which is the already inadequate levels of investment in our infrastructure are about to end. the ryan budget takes us from a $40 billion investment in our crumbling roads, bridges, and highways to $100 million. $40 million, $100 million. transit, $10 billion to zeerrow. that's right. the ryan budget cuts our investment that's already inadequate in infrastructure from $50 billion a year to $100 million. that's about a million jobs lost in addition to the accelerated deterioration of the system. that can't be a serious proposal. this isn't a serious budget. it's balanced on phony premises. anybody believe we are going to go to zero spending and abandon federal investment in our roads, bridges, highways, and transit systems? if they believe that, that's ev

i chair the democratic position defazio, woolsey, mr. and dick gephardt at the time. it was to move americans from welfare to work and it worked. the legislation has been very successful in meeting that goal. welfare reform put people back on the work rolls, and welfare rolls have dropped by half and poverty amongst children have dropped as well. the administration's tanf waiver initiative continues on the success of promoting welfare to work. it's ludicrous for our republican friends to try to get in the way of people working by stopping this waiver initiative, an initiative, by the way, that republican governors asked for. bill well was a very successful governor of massachusetts on the issue of welfare reform. he wanted the waiver. he asked for the waiver. george at the tacky in new york, they -- george pataki in new york, they asked for the waiver, republican governors. the president is allowing the states to experiment. you think -- you would think our republican friends would be entirely in favor of letting governors experiment of getting people back to work fai