that's former transportation secretary ray lahood., the goldman sachs business event, guests including lloyd blankfein. live from new york, this is bloomberg. ♪ david: this is "bloomberg markets: balance of power," i'm david westin. julie: and i'm julie hyman. shares of csra, surging after general dynamics announced they were purchasing the company. shares areamics mostly unchanged, recouping some losses earlier this morning. more now, taylor riggs. this will create an and government contractor, right? taylor: exactly. i'm really looking at this as a gigantic horizontal merger. they can go at it from both angles here. they are highlighting that this is a strategic merger, coming out and saying that they will have double digits in the with pretax cost energies up about 3% in 2020. aey really do portray this as strategic, targeted acquisition. it all comes down to share price for the viewers. you can see the relative underperformance of general dynamics to the s&p 500 aerospace and defense industry. csra will be acquitted to their earni

look at the ray lahood career. top staffer for bob michael, takes his seat, rises in the house, goes to be the transportation secretary under barack obama. when you talk about moderate republicans, that is the mold of ray lahood. he forged a relationship with rahm emanuel, they got things done, i think they also liked each other. that helps a lot in the political climate when you have differences and not like each other, which is how we are now, it is harder. he became a member of the obama cabinet. to this day, he is one of the leaders. when he was in office and out of of the movements for bipartisanship, which i think at the moment as a way to go. he was marvelous. it was not contrived at all, just get along with everybody. he was the kind of moderation i was referring to. more sensible. neither of the states two senators came up? lynn: in talking about illinois history, we should discuss the .istoric election of 1992 i first met her when she was a state representative in springfield. clarence: i met her when she

things ray lahood is talking about, meeting with governors and public officials. the president on this infrastructure plan and others. >> very exciting things to be talking about. things you've been waiting for a long time, for many, many years. and now, let's see how badly you want it if you want it badly you're going to get it but if you don't want it, that is okay with me. but we'll rebuild our infrastructure. i said this morning as of a couple months ago we have spent $7 trillion in the middle east. $7 trillion. what a mistake, and but it is what it is. this is what i took over. and we're trying to build roads and bridges and fix bridges falling down. and we have a hard time getting the money. it's crazy. think of that, as of a couple months ago, $7 trillion in the middle east and the middle east is far worse now than it was 17 years ago when they went in, not so intelligently i have to say, went in. i'm being nice. it is a very sad thing. the budget was recently passed, and the reason it was passed is because of our military. our military was totally depleted

the gas tax >> that's how he wants to fund the infrastructure >> maybe listening to a few like ray lahooday if you want a pot of money, if you want to build america, get back to being number one in infrastructure, you have to have a big pot of money. the pot of money that built the interstate system, highway trust fund it's broke >> but what you hear from people on both sides of the aisle is the highway trust fund has been raided for a lot of different projects how do you lock that money up? >> what i say to those people is that's been wrong. in order to assuage them, put it in a lock box. raise the gas tax 25 cents a gallon, put it in a lock box, it only goes for roads and bridges. you work with your governors and mayors to make sure that money is spent on american workers, american engineers, american contractors. it goes back into america. it doesn't stay in washington. what about the argument that this is a regressive tax >> do you do anything at all to make it less regressive? >> it's a user fee it's a user fee. that's what it is. if you use it for what it's intended, you will put pe

we will hear from former transportation secretary, ray lahood. ♪ david: from bloomberg's world headquartersew york, i'm david westin. julie: welcome to "bloomberg markets: balance of power," with a focus on the intersection of politics and the economy. our top stories. catching their breath, markets are up after a week of turmoil. are we through the worst of it or is there more still to come? holding america, president trump announces an outline for turning around the country's declining infrastructure, but some doubt that there is money left. big spenders, congress has given the president the green light on his $4.4 trillion budget today, giving us an initial sense of how he will spend the money that he has been given. julie: stocks are rallying, as david mentioned. abigail doolittle is with us. -- abigail: we did

charles: former transportation secretary ray lahood suggesting to neil cavuto that a gas tax would helpor infrastructure. to fbn's gerri willis if the math really adds up. >> yeah, charles. it is out there, the white house proposing to spend $200 billion to fix the nation's ailing roads and highways but haven't said how to pay for it. u.s. chamber of commerce has idea, boost the gas tax a nickel a gallon for next five years to total of quarter a gallon. that would ways 4 h $394 billion over the next 10 years, but as you saw many republicans are on board but is it that simple? to be sure the highway trust fund according to report from the con expressional research service, $14 billion in general fund money transferred to the highway trust fund in fiscal years 2013 and 2014 to cover expanding spending needs. that cap only getting worse. the congressional budget office projecting the gap between dedicated service transportation revenues and spending will average 20.1 billion annually between 2021 and 2026. so the funding pothole is getting deeper and deeper. rick gettis a professor at corn