Transcripts For CSPAN Campaign 2020 Presidential Candidates Speak At Infrastructure Forum In Las... 20240713

[applause] united for infrastructure is a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization. It has been our honor for many years to convene and collaborate with leaders in business and government on this important issue. I would like to take a moment to say thank you. Thank you to the city of las vegas and the great state of nevada for hosting us. [applause] i would like to recognize a few local leaders from the community. Mayor john lee. Congressman stephen horse martin. Ethan robertson. Las vegas city councilman brian. And mayor eric garcetti. [applause] id very much like to thank our host committee, the organizations who created the vision for this event. Provider resources to make it a reality. Invited the candidates, and have brought hundreds of their members to nevada to be here with us today. You can see their logos on the banner behind me. Those organizations are in no particular order. The International Union of operating engineers, the American Society of civil engineers, the value of water campaign, the American Council of engineering companies, the association of equipment manufacturers, transport Workers Union of america. The American Public transportation association, Transportation Trades Department aflcio, the american road and transportation builders association, Airport Council International North america, build together, and north america is building trade unions. Give them a round of applause. [applause] i would like to thank our sponsors whose generositys made this possible. Our sponsor hntb, and autodesk, parsons and wspufa. Thank you very much. I would like to share a special things to the wall street journal for being our media partner. And the moderators of todays conversation. And for the immense amounts of work they have put into preparing for this event. To the press covering this and the viewers tuning in on cspan and livestream, thank you for joining us today, and for your passion on this issue. If you are following in the audience or online, please join us on social media at moving americaforward. I would like to thank our candidates for joining us today and treating this issue with the seriousness it deserves. Infrastructure is everything. Its how we experience our daily lives, for better and for worse. The quality of our infrastructure determines the length of our commutes, how much time we spend with our families, if our trucks, trains and planes make it to their destinations on time. The quality of water coming out of our taps and the help in our environment. To get our jobs and schools reliably, affordably and safely. It is a prerequisite for manufacturers, retailers and farmers getting her goods to market at home and around the globe. Its the dams and levees designed to protect us from flooding, drought and uncertainty. And for more than 70 million million americans, its our career. Operating our water systems, driving our buses and trains, and designing and building bridges and airports and seaports for the secure future. This foundation of our lives, our communities and economy is too often failing us. Too many of our policies are outdated. Our investments, insufficient. Our priorities, unclear. Americans are already paying the price in dollars, in missed opportunities, and in lives. American voters are asking for their leaders to act on this issue. Nearly 90 of swing state voters believe that a president and congress should make infrastructure a top priority. That is why we felt we cannot let this election cycle slip by without inviting the leading candidates for president of the United States, including President Trump, to articulate their vision and plans for building a better america by renewing our infrastructure. Four of those candidates will be joining us on this stage today. Vice president biden, senator klobuchar, mayor buttigieg and tom steyer. Please give them all a round of applause. [applause] it is my honor to kick off our program and introduce our moderators. Please join me in a warm welcome for the executive editor of wall street journal and the executive chief of the wall street journal. Thank you. [applause] thank you, zach. We want to extend the wall street journals thank you. This is an important topic. Infrastructure needs attention in this country and it deserves attention as a campaign issue. We will try to give that today. One in every five miles of roadway in this country that qualifies for federal aid is in poor condition. 235,000 bridges need structural repair, rehabilitation, or for or a replacement, that is four in every 10. Here is my favorite one, 47,000 bridges are classified as structurally deficient, if you placed those bridges and to and, they would stretch from chicago to houston. This is a problem for the federal government and state governments. Data shows that state spending on infrastructure dropped almost every year between 2009 and 2018. In fact, 2018 marked the lowest level of state Infrastructure Spending and share of the economy in 35 years. That is why we are here today. Thank you, i will echo zach, thank you for participating and coming here. Thank you cspan for sharing this with a broader audience. It is a terribly important subject for us to discuss. Our format today is that we will have 2025 minutes with each candidate. Jerry and i will field a few questions with them, then we will take questions that have been submitted by members of the coalition that has joined to put on this great event. And also, wall street journal subscribers. We thank all the people wapo participated, and we think we have a pretty interesting discussion and questions that we can bring today. With that we would like to start with Vice President joe biden. [applause] fmr. V. P. Biden hello, mr. Mayor. I guess they like you. [laughter] fmr. V. P. Biden i thought you said there is an election coming. [laughter] fmr. V. P. Biden you know i like infrastructure. Thank you for joining us. Lets start at the 10,000 foot level, so to speak. As we were just discussing, americas infrastructure needs work. The road, the bridges, the highways, airports and water systems. With the trillion dollar deficit , its hard to know where to start. But at the same time, every candidate thinks its important that the country move away from the fossil fuel energy and Transportation System to a more Green Climate friendly system. If you have a set of priorities, where do you start . Do you start with fixing the old infrastructure or moving on to a Climate Friendly Green Infrastructure . Fmr. V. P. Biden i think you do both. I think you start with fixing the broken infrastructure in a modern way. For example, every one of those bridges we are talking about we are going to spend billions more overtime as these collapse and you see people losing their lives. But also, we can modernize them in terms of making them energyefficient. What i wanted to for all of the existing highways as we repair, put in 500,000 new charging stations. When i say that to people, i know this is an infrastructure crowd, you get it, but ordinary people say, wait a minute. You go to the big city with all those scooters, they just plug in. There is a lot we can do to create good jobs, that are labor jobs paying 50 60 an hour, and at the same time increase the efficiency of all of the infrastructure while making it green. I know i only have a little time. That raises the second most important question, how do you pay for it . Taxes, how do you pay for it . Fmr. V. P. Biden we are so far behind the eight ball. You may remember we had a thing called the recovery act, 900 billion the president put me in charge of. He would love to go to a state of the union and say, joe will take care of this. Sheriff joe got to spend 90 billion in infrastructure out of that package. We did a great deal of work. We found a number of programs that for every dollar we spent, we brought four dollars off of the sidelines in private dollars state dollars. I heard you speaking in the beginning, what you have is, its not that infrastructure is republican or democrat thing. Republicans used to like infrastructure. What happens is, if you want to grow American Business and enterprise, you have got to have the most modern ports, the most modern airports, you have to be able to get product from your factory to the customer quickly. So there is an overwhelming incentive and a desire in the local areas, as well as among businesses, to want to invest. The way i started off with it is and i come from the corporate state of america, dupont, delaware. It used to be the eighth Largest Corporation in the world, it no longer is. We reduced the Corporate Tax to 21 . I raise it back to 28 and i think we could get republicans to support that. That raises 740 billion over 10 years. I have a 1. 3 trillion infrastructure plan that breaks out in a whole bunch of ways. Number two, there are a number of corporations that are not paying any tax at all. There should be a minimum 15 . When they report earnings to wall street to keep their stock up, whatever that number is, they have to pay 15 of that, no matter what exemptions they have. If they are paying a 21 Corporate Tax rate across the board, they dont have to pay that. But a minimum 15 is another 420 billion. I know you are looking at me like how will biden make that happen . Republican voters are going, wait a minute, you have this 1. 9 trillion tax cut that did not help me a hell of a lot if i am not the top couple percent. A lot of those folks are middleclass on social values and the rest. I believe the bandaid has been ripped off and people are ready to do rational things. Would that include the gas tax . Fmr. V. P. Biden i think we have to put in 50 billion off the bat on the gas tax coming from those additional taxes. I have tried this before. We are not going to be able to raise the gas tax. We may be able to index it down the line, but i do not think we can raise the gas tax from what it is now. It would allow you to do all you had to do in the first 50 billion to invest in modernizing those highways, not building new ones. One part we have not talked about is, i think the biggest sector, and i dont want to get him in trouble, mayor garcetti can tell you. More energy, time, wages are lost sitting on the l. A. Freeway. If we are able to use the technology that is on the cusp of being able to have, first of all, more transit, we are in a position where, for example, when i was asked to bill out bailout detroit, i was able to recruit any part of the government. We found out that 60 of the people lived in the city and their jobs are out of town but they did not have automobiles. We put in light rail. It modernized and made a fundamental change in the Economic Growth in that area. It didnt add more automobiles to the highways. Number one. Number two, if we take a look at what the president allowed me to do when we did the first part of the recovery act, we came up with i am a big rail guide, highspeed rail. If we took what we appropriated money for, including from new york, new jersey and the tunnels that had not been modernized since 1960, all the way from orlando to tampa, from tallahassee all the way across in the mississippi, these are highspeed rail areas where, you all know, you get people out of the car into a train and into another method if you can guarantee them they can get there in the same amount of time with the same amount of reliability. We can do that. Theres no reason why we should not be able to build what we have talked about, and it could go 220 miles an hour. Three curves from washington to new york, you could reduce the travel time. I have traveled over 2,001,000 miles on amtrak. Thats what the guys on the rail tell me. If you straighten out those few curves, you could get there in an hour and a half, fundamentally changing every single lane and highway. One lane, 20 million bucks. Do the same thing on railroads and youre talking about 4 million. You mentioned republicans and that there should be bipartisan support in doing the things you are talking about. One of the things republicans say, and donald trump says, fmr. V. P. Biden not a republican. [laughter] you can laugh. A lot of you are republicans and you know he is not the republican party. [laughter] [applause] this aint your fathers republican party. Thats true. One of the things republicans generically say is, one of the things these dont happen is the regulation is slowing down. They slowed down on infrastructure, they make it more expensive. The Trump Administration has tried to do something. Are they right . Fmr. V. P. Biden they are right but they had the wrong answer. Look what we did with the triborough bridge. We fundamentally eliminated and streamlined the ability to get through all of the regulatory requirements that were necessary. You see with happening in the new york airport at laguardia. Absolutely. We can streamline significantly without damaging the environment. I will give you a concrete example. When the president asked me to anyway, i was asked to put together a cabinet initiative on health care. I turned to one of the major cabinet holders and i said, when will you have your assistant, they said, we will have one by the end of the year. I said, if you dont have one by march the first, youre fired. He says, you cant fire me. I am not being facetious, a lot of it has to do with the knowledge, if not, you have to find a new answer. You have to make the priority to invest in that piece, whatever that piece is. We can significantly streamline regulations without doing everything from the endangered species act, all the way through generating more pollution. We have done that a number of places. I would have somebody in the white house at one job. Just one. Doing nothing but streamlining projects, but doing within the context of having people who know what they are talking about in terms of the environment. Most of it is just bureaucratic delay. You mentioned setting priorities. We have talked about new trains, and new projects that can be built faster if we streamline regulations. And yet, most jobs in infrastructure our maintenance. What a lot of people talked about are the crumbling infrastructure of america. How do you prioritize that . Do you fix the crumbling part, or do you just build all the shiny new parts . Fmr. V. P. Biden you have to do both. I dont think its either or. For example, if you are talking about our ports, you have to build ports that are ready to handle the ships. But it did not mean you dont have to go back and restore the docks, at the same time youre increasing the size, scope and capability that takes them off the docks. You need to both. Dredge, to go out and you would be able to find areas you provide for the spoils. That is old stuff. The new stuff is the new kind of cranes. The speed at which it happens. Access from the highway. We did that in South Carolina, we did that down in savannah, we are doing it in florida. I dont see them as either or. We have to maintain the only what we bring up to snuff that is out there that has not been maintained, but you have new initiatives that are going to be much more capable of sustaining longevity without this kind of intensive maintenance that has been needed in the past. Its called technology. I am not being a wise guy when i say that. I did not mean that in a disrespectful way. But the new technologies are capable of being able to do so much more. There is no reason why, at our ports, we dont have solar capacity to make sure we save a lot of energy, create a lot new jobs for people out there, just like here in nevada, go out to techno valley. They are building 600 megawatt capacity. We should be investing in high transfer of that capacity from here to the midwest. We have not invested the time, energy or money into deciding how you transmit lean energy. Clean energy, whether it is wind or solar. Honest to god, i have not seen that dichotomy. Last example, water. Water is a big problem. There is a lot of Potable Water in real trouble. We have to dig up those wooden pipes, that is true. But the new mechanisms we are able to put in should be much more resilient. The pipes have been grounded for over 40, 50 years. You cannot say i am going to just go new without dealing with whats there. We want to ask some questions that were sent to us by readers and members of the coalition. One of these touches on a subject that has not come up yet, which is airports. Here in las vegas, the county department of aviation is developing a second airport to serve growing southern nevada. House democrats released in an infrastructure framework, which, for the first time in 20 years increases the airport, passenger facility charge and indexes it to overcrowding and increasing delays on runways. As president , would you sign a bill to increase the passenger facility charge to modernize infrastructure . Fmr. V. P. Biden yes, i would. It is 5. 4 now. Yes, i would. The second piece of this is that, one of the things that will happen is let me give an example. On the east coast, every solitary airport from maine to florida that is within 50 miles of the water has fewer people getting on and off aircraft and amtrak every day. Lets just get something straight. We continue to subsidize the hundreds of millions of dollars on an airport in minnesota. Maybe you have to help that. But a lot can change if we look at the transportation net in a way that is different than before. A way to deal with it is not just to decide we will continue the same pattern of distribution and modernize it and make it real, but you are going to change the way in which Regional Airports were. Airports work. For example, in philadelphia, a big airport. Wilmington, delaware has a large airport that is mostly private. Whereappens is, that is air force one practices and takeoffs. I always that that was a good omen. All kidding aside, we should be figuring out a way in which we deal with roots. Why do we have the roots we have now in our major airports that are overcrowded . Because, not over my house. I get that. So you will be able to redirect, and its beyond my pay grade to know how to do it, but we should be able to integrate Regional Airports that are already there among the big Regional Airports to deal with the capacity and the overload. But i would sign the bill that raises that tax. Jim from knoxville has a question that has to do with what really becomes the friction between democrats desire to bring green jobs and green agendas to the table, but still maintain, in many ways, the old infrastructure of fossil fuels. His question is, would you consider National Tolls to reduce congestion and pay for maintenance . Or a congestion tax, or anything like that to try to get some cars off the road . Fmr. V. P. Biden you have to change the transportation structure, the network, the structure. If you had running through every major city a commuter line that was in the middle of a four lane highway going in and out of the city, you could radically reduce the number of people that are on that highway. You would save billions of dollars in lost wages. You would save billions of gallons of gasoline over time, but this suggests that what we have to do is keep the exact same System Network as we have it. I wish we had a big board up here that we could actually draw on the board the means by which you get from point a to point b. Its got to change and it has to change. When i did the recovery act, we got for example we had great problems in South Carolina and they had problems with the port and maintained the port. It turns out a significant portion of the things that get shipped out of the port get shipped to them from the midwest on railroads, but the Railroad System was backwards and not working well. We took money, we invested in that and the port of baltimore. We kept a lot of factories in ohio opened. We get from the products to the factories to the port by doing some imaginative stuff, taking and reconnecting Railroad Systems that used to exist but have fallen apart. Particularly freight rail. So, i guess what i am saying is, i think we keep thinking this. How do you maintain the old structure . 28th or 29th what, most modern infrastructure in the world, the United States of america . You will open up a new factory. You will open up in hong kong or baltimore . Will you open in San Francisco or another place that invested billions of dollars from getting a factory to ship it out . I think we have to think of it in a different way. It does not mean you ignore the past or walk away from it, but it means that instead of investing billions of dollars in things that no longer are viewed as the best way to get from point a to point b, whether it is you are a product, you can do it. When you rebuild it you can do it so its greener. There is no rationale to build any new infrastructure that is not green. The 300 trillion that i call for over 10 years in my infrastructure plan, 100 million goes into modernizing our schools. How many of you live in School Districts you are worried your kid will drink water out of the fountains or has us best dose . Or still has asbestos . Or have taken away tax credit so the wind comes blowing through your windows. You arent using more energy than you need to use. It makes sense. We can save a lot of money. We can create 6 million new union jobs. [applause] i want to make it clear for republicans out there, every single thing in my administration with infrastructure job will be good as bacon. I really mean it. That generates Economic Growth within community. They invest, they build, this ey stay. They build better homes. They go out and invest more money. We had a big fight in that 90 billion that i was in charge of, making sure we got it out. I insisted every single dollar had to be davisbacon. I think we think too small. We think in terms of when you spend money, you increase salaries, you provide good paying jobs that paid 5060 dollars an hour, plus benefits. That somehow that hurts everybody. The wealthy get wealthier, the middle classes able to sustain itself while the poor has a way up. That its what its about. Nobody has never shown me a model to suggest, that when you have hardworking people if all of a sudden every ironworker in america went on strike for or every ibw member goes on strike and quits for six months, or every wall street banker quits. [laughter] i am not being facetious, think about it, it would come to a screeching halt. We should pay these people. Business trying to take over apprenticeship programs, not on my watch. [applause] you got us off to a great start. We appreciate it. Your passion for the subject is really appreciated. I cant get those millions of miles on amtrak out of my head. Fmr. V. P. Biden there was an accident and my family and i started to go home every night thinking i would only stay for six months. But i have made over 250 miles a day. I have made thousands and thousands of roundtrips to go home. That is the only reason it went up. I got criticized for them naming a train station after me. They should name the whole damn line after me. Thank you very much. [laughter] so i think we are ready for round two. Yes . Anyway. The problem with Vice President biden is bringing him out of his shell and i think. Makes your job as an interviewer very easy, ill say that. Anyway, thank you all for being here, thanks to the cspan audience. We will move on to candidate number two, which, by luck of the draw, is tom steyer, who i think it is here and ready to join us on stage. Mr. Steyer. [applause] thank you. Thank you for being here. Tom my pleasure. Oute are trying to suss with all the candidates, the balance they try to seek when they look ahead at what their infrastructure priorities and agenda would be. We haveme president , water problems, we have wrote problems, we have all sorts of airport problems. With everything buried under the ,round for the last 50 years and everything that goes across water. You have limited funds. How do you balance it . Where are your priorities . Purdue you put the limited resources you havent your projects . Tom let me say this. There are different ways to do infrastructure in this world, is to raisehe ways tax money and spend it, and i think that is an important way to do it and we will talk about that. On the first day of my presidency, i would declare a Climate Emergency and start changing the rules under which private corporations are able to produce cars, and the building efficiency rules they have to operate under. Those are also infrastructure projects. Come under the budget of the United States government, and so i think on day one, i would declare a Climate Emergency and we would order those rules and we would prioritize them based on the impact they would have on dealing with our Climate Crisis, so those are not ones that would hit the budget of the United States or take congressional approval in order to have it happen, but starting on day one, we would move the country forward in terms of spending hundreds of billions of dollars through the private sector to onure that we start moving our Climate Crisis and send a message to the people in the country and the rest of the world that this is our top priority and we will get it done. [applause] would you move federal money away from traditional infrastructure, roads, bridges, potholes, to green energy . Do you think federal government should subsidize the production of electric cars to move the country toward the green environment you want to see . Tom let me say this. Going to do, are we are going to view from the wendpoint of climate, but have an infrastructure backlog, including roads and bridges that is really cutting into our efficiency as a country and making Rural America putting it at a huge disadvantage, but we have a jig antic housing problem in the case that we have 700 million to few Affordable Housing in this country. This also has to be solved from the standpoint of the federal government and climate, that when we build a 7 million new units, they have to be done in a Climate Smart way. Is no way to distinguish between the needs of the people and the needs of the climate because we have to deal with the needs of the people realtime, but we have to do it in a smart way. On the electric vehicles fund, would you use government ofources to further the use electric vehicles by subsidizing the production or the purchase . Tom what we have seen is over time, the cost of electric vehicles is coming down and it has to reach a point where it is comparable to internal combustion cars, and so the question is going to be how long does it take for that to happen and what do we have to do in order to make it price competitive for American Consumers . I dont think we will have to do that. That, in fact, the ingenuity of americans will get us to electric cars that are cheaper than internal combustion cars and will be safe when you taken into account. What i really think is going to happen is we will push for that to happen faster and if we have to subsidize things in the short run to get the good answer, the way we will spend money on this is most likely to help cut families with cash for clunkers. It is more likely the government ends up buying back polluting vehicles so people can go and buy cleaner vehicles without loss than it is to subsidize production. As much as you have made climate clearly the top priority projects that have been proposed in the past face great opposition from locals. We have the wind farm off cape cod, 16 years in the making, still not done, Eminent Domain remains an option for the is inl government that normal sleep on popular. How do you manage that tension . Should the federal government have more say in land issues . How would you balance the desires of the local community and aain unchanged priority of the federal government to change the country . Tom to the extent that we have a crisis in the federal government is going to have to exercise its authority but when you look at Eminent Domain, the real question has been how are we going to build the Keystone Pipeline of cross across a bunch of farms in nebraska or what are we going to do with the Dakota Access pipeline. What we are talking about in terms of clean energy is concentrated Economic Activities places, Public Transportation, building upgrades. It is the kind of you are right about the offshore windmills that people have fought from the standpoint of the views from their houses, but by and large what we have really seen is that clean energy is not has hadhat is had a huge impact in terms of Eminent Domain and i dont expect that it will. What we are really talking about is building america anymore fashion, pushing things together to make sure we have as much as as much clean transportation as we have public concentrated housing as possible. The real big numbers have to do with building upgrades, roads and bridges. Clean transportation and housing. A lot of the federal governments spending on infrastructure is financed through the gas tax, which replenishes the highway fund. It has been stagnant for a quarter of a century, the level of the gas tax. People argue for raising the gas tax for two reasons. Theis, it helps replenish fund, it pays for the infrastructure, and some would argue it discourages continued use of fossil fuels. With those things in mind, would you raise the federal gas tax . Tom look, i think what we have seen in california is that it is a super politically sanctity sensitive thing. What we are definitely going to have to do is raise taxes, and the question is, will it be on consumers or will it be on businesses . If you look at my actual plan, i have a plan to roll back the giveaways to big corporations and rich people. I have a plan for a wealth tax. The people from the wall street journal that i have a plan to treat Investment Income for the same people that i treat income. If you do that, you get trillions of dollars. My goal in this is not to do a regressive consumer tax, exact opposite. We have a regressive tax system right now. My goal is to have a much progressive more progressive tax to undo the tax giveaways of the last 40 years and to actually tax wealth in a different way, because we concentrated wealth and an in an unacceptable fashion in our society. [applause] tom yeah, look. My goal in this is to raise wages, have more money come in in a much more progressive fashion, and rebuild america in a way that Everybody Knows we have to do it. We can easily afford to do it, we just have to get over the idea that rich people dont pay taxes anymore. Testing the limits of your green agenda, would you consider imposing fuel standards renewable fuel standards on commercial airplanes, and would you right now, the pentagon is really the only agency that is doing big r d, because the needs they have, there are all of their planes. Would you invest more money into the Pentagon Program in order to get to a point where you could impose such a standard . Tom that is a great question, i will tell you why. Thank you. Tom it is a great question because in most areas of energy, we can see technologies that are either already cheaper than fossil fuel technologies, or you can look at where they will be cheaper. You can look at solar and wind and say it is cheaper than fossil fuel energy. You can look at electric cars and say, realistically, these can be cheaper, it will not be penalizing consumers. We are on the decline curve where you can see it will be more competitive. The place where it is not true, which is why i am complimenting you on the question, is on airplanes. We havent really seen any kind of technological breakthrough that will really change this. The question is, how are we actually going to deal with a large source of greenhouse gases, which is air traffic, in a way that we dont destroy it, but also charge People Fairly and push towards green. The easiest thing to say here, which you brought up, is that we will spend a bunch of money on research and development to come up with a substitute for gasoline. That is easy to say the pentagon is doing it and we should push hard on biofuels and whatever we can come up with as possible. The real question will be, if that does not work or we cannot see it work fast enough, how do we respond to that . Is that by charging people for a cost of their pollution and therefore putting a tax on gasoline itself, or what do we actually do . I think that is probably the easiest, simplest thing to do. To charge people for the pollution they are creating, but it would be a hell of a lot better if we spent a bunch of money on coming up with alternatives so we dont have to cut down on the actual activity. The transition to electric vehicles that you talk about requires a National Network of recharging stations. Is the construction of such a network the job of the government or the job of a private sector . Tom the question will be how it gets charged for. The truth is, gas stations are quite lucrative businesses where people basically charge and make money for every gallon of gasoline, then sell you a bunch of sandwiches and cocacola. The question is going to be, does that kind of activity work . Once you have electric vehicles, how long does it take to actually charge your vehicle, and how practical it is, and how do people end up doing it. To the extent it is like a gasoline station, then it will be private. To the extent it isnt and we end up with a different form of charging like at home, then the government will end up having to spend money. To follow up on that, if the government invests in creating this charging system, then, to protect that infrastructure, do you not have cyber worries . What would you have to do to make sure someone did not hack that system and bring the country to a screeching halt . Tom to be fair, that exists right now. If you are saying that basically having a series of electric charging station makes us vulnerable to someone hacking the electricity system so you can no longer charger vehicles, that is true of it right now. We saw what happened i think it was in ohio when a tree fell against an electric line and wiped out, like, three states electricity for a couple of days. We are very subject to that. I think as we get more technologically advanced, we get more dependent on the technology and the ability to hack it. It goes up. Some people think that forests and floodplains and Natural Habitats should be considered infrastructure. They are just Green Infrastructure. California classifies watersheds as infrastructure components. Would you spend traditional infrastructure dollars on Green New Deal projects like that and on Green Infrastructure . Tom look, i dont think there is any question that that is infrastructure. If you look around this country, wetlands and watershed and parks are infrastructure that is necessary for a healthy country. If you look at what it takes to have clean water and to have safe coastal areas, we are going to have to protect those. You can call it whatever you want, but its an investment in a functioning and safe america. I think we have obviously failed on infrastructure as a country. We have not spent the money to keep up our roads and bridges, or to move into the new things we need to do. And we are hundreds of billions of dollars behind in roads and bridges. Our estimate is 450, but my point is this. The good news is we need to do it smarter, we have to do it on an accelerated basis. It is going to be the biggest building project in american history, which means we will create millions and millions of good paying union jobs. And so, as opposed to feeling like oh, isnt it too bad that we are behind . Actually, now we can do it smarter than ever. Now we can build the kind of country we want to have and use it to revive our estimate is the highest percentage of union participation in the labor force since 1945. Wouldnt that be awesome . [applause] so we are going to switch now to some questions that were submitted by members of the various coalitions that put this great event together. And wall street journal readers. Tom great. This question comes from john here in las vegas. And he points out that 40 million americans, including 2 million here in southern nevada, rely upon the Colorado River, lake mead, and other reservoirs for their daily water supply. What would you direct to your secretary of interior to do to address distress presented by drought and Climate Change in the Colorado River basin and across the western u. S. . Tom water in the western United States, you dont get any more emotional than water fights. And the Colorado River is the center of those fights. Part of this is going to be an extreme need on our part to collect water more carefully, to use water more carefully, and to reuse water more efficiently. And we can see that actually, this is very possible. We have very primitive Water Supplies in a lot of ways and, in fact, what we are seeing in places that are very short of water, including los angeles, is that our ability to capture rainwater is much higher than we understand, and our ability to reuse water at new Water Treatment facilities is much better than we understand. Whereas the Climate Crisis absolutely is putting a huge amount of pressure on water and drought, and specifically on the Colorado River, what we also know is our capabilities and technology on water are far better than people understand and we are actually going to be able to solve this problem. Its true. We should understand, americans are smart. We are going to be able to adapt to this and i can see it when i travel around the southwest of the United States where people think los angeles could be water independent. That is an amazing fact. That is where we are. Of new orleans asks an interesting question that ties together several things we have been talking about. 15 years ago, Hurricane Katrina slammed into my city of new orleans, 80 of the city was underwater, 1800 lives were lost. We know extreme weather events are going to happen more and more and older coastal cities like ours are vulnerable. How will your plan help coastal cities improve their resilience to Climate Change . I would, as a footnote, are you prepared to tell people who live in the heartland of the country that they will have to help pay for Climate Change remediation on the coast . Tom so, everyone in america is subject to climate, including people in middle america. In fact, the best money we can spend is what im talking about which is pushing not to have horrible climate outcomes. The reason i declare a state of emergency on day one is so we dont get to the point where we have to spend unlimited amounts of money to protect people on the coast. Because when you really look about, what it would take to protect the coast of the United States or the interior of the United States in the worst climate outcomes, that is more money than anyone can imagine. Let me give you an example. Im from california and i was talking to somebody in san diego two months ago who is an environmentalist. I said, what are you guys doing . They said, we are talking about managed retreat. I said, what is managed retreat . He said, moving san diego. Moving san diego, that doesnt make any sense. How do you move a city . How do you move one Office Building . They are like, we are thinking maybe we will have to move to the interior. That is more money than anyone can spend. Anyone in the interior of the United States, anyone on the coast of the United States. Theres a reason i am declaring a Climate Emergency. Managed retreat is not really an option in this world. There is a death there is a i want to make sure that we act aggressively to stop this because you know the old american saying, an ounce of prevention is worth one pound of cure . In this case, i think an ounce of prevention is worth about 100 pounds of cure. If we get to the point where we have managed retreat in miami and san diego we have spent a 20 billion fixing up new orleans. It is a fraction the size of miami and it is a fraction the size of san diego. So if we get into that world, there is a reason i want to spend 2 trillion in federal Infrastructure Spending in a Climate Smart way. Because that is a great investment in this country. That is a great investment in a safe america and a prosperous future. That is great money for this country to spend, so we dont have to start moving Office Buildings from san diego to new mexico. Many of the Coalition Members and our readers talk about water, drinking water. It is a top priority for the mayors. How do you prevent another flint, because they are coming. We all know that those pipes have come to the end of their lives. Tom yes. Theres a reason im spending 2 trillion causing municipalities in states to spend trillions more. It is not just that we have old pipes. Flint was not a story about old pipes, just so you understand. Flint was a story about a state governor and a state administration switching a virtually allblack city from Safe Drinking Water on to the flint river. [applause] tom and lets be clear, they switched the city at one gm plant under the flint river and the gm called up and said the water is corroding our machinery. And they took the plant off the flint river, but left the kids of flint, michigan on the flint river. So we are going to have to spend a ton of money fixing up those pipes, thats true. But you have got to see that when you go around the United States and see who lives in flint, michigan, and who lives in denmark, South Carolina, and who lives in the San Joaquin Valley and east porterville, you get sick from drinking the water. We are poisoning black and brown communities at a completely different level than everybody else. [applause] tom and so, when i talk about climate, i start with Environmental Justice and i always have, because i know if we are going to fix the climate problem, we start with the water problem and the air problem. If we fix their problem and the air problem and water problem, the climate problem will be just fine. Im really, just so you know, im an Environmental Justice person. To me, climate is about protecting the people of the United States and i start with the people being poisoned the most which is black and brown communities. [applause] i think we have time for one more question. This takes us to a place we have havent quite been yet. Tom from st. Petersburg, florida asks, what is your vision to build a rapid rail system in the u. S. . The u. S. Is behind the rest of the world in this regard. It provides environmental benefits as well as faster and safer travel. How and where would you implement such a program . Tom as you know, we are trying to get this done in california and it is difficult politically. We need more Public Transportation and we need cleaner Public Transportation. It is a huge issue. [applause] tom one of the things i worked on that im very proud about is measure m in los angeles. Measure m was the blinding insight in los angeles that they needed a subway system. So that is going to create the original idea passed in 2016, the original idea think about the l. A. Traffic, what you are trying to get away from, and think about the cost of all that traffic. But then also note that it was originally supposed to provide 500,000 good jobs. And it doesnt have the word union in them, but they are overwhelmingly union jobs. The most recent estimate i have heard is 778,000 jobs. We are going to have to build more Public Transportation, the kind of things like highspeed rail is a really good idea. We cannot go and spend the rest of our lives depending on singlefamily cars. And so we can that is part of rebuilding this country. It will have more concentrated housing and more Public Transportation. And highspeed public rail is a great way for us to go. And we are going to have to move to things like that. We are going to have a more interesting life, but we are going to have to be open to changing some things from the way they have been. Tom steyer, thank you for joining us. I look forward to that interesting life. [laughter] you have been nice to share your vision with us. Thank you. Tom thank you so much for having me. [applause] i think next up on the list, i think we are about ready by the way, one of the Amazing Things about this topic, is it is sprawling. Transportation systems, there are so many aspects to it. It is unbelievable. We will keep rolling down the path with our next candidate, senator Amy Klobuchar of minnesota. [applause] sen. Klobuchar what a great group. They are warmed up for you. Sen. Klobuchar ok, good. I think you mentioned the operating engineers and the transcore union, but we did not mention though carpenters that are here, which is actually they have a major Training Facility that i got to visit near vegas. There is going to be a lot of openings for carpenters in the future. I want to thank them, as well. Good for you. Infrastructure is the topic. We were talking about what a sprawling topic it is. Lets start at the 10,000 foot level, which we have tried with all the candidates. Talk a little bit about priorities and principles. Infrastructure is a lot of things. It means fixing roads, bridges, filling potholes, making better airports, ports, but it also means what a lot of democrats think it should mean anyway, which is shifting the country to a more Green Climate friendly Transportation System and infrastructure. Is that limited resources, 1 you have got limited resources, 1 trillion deficit right now. As president , what is your higher priority, fixing the old or moving to a Green Infrastructure system . Sen. Klobuchar you have to do both. My over 1 trillion plan, i was the first candidate in the race to come out with a major infrastructure plan. A lot of that was actually because of my own experience. I will start out with that. I can see everyone im a little shorter than some of the other candidates. Mayor bloomberg and the president were going at it on twitter about the president , who said the mayor was 54 and the mayor said that is not true, im 58 foot eight. Im the only candidate who was 54. And willing to admit it. Sen. Klobuchar there we are. The infrastructure issue and the reason i led with that in the president ial campaign and the reason that i led the Senate Infrastructure bill for the democrats in 2011 is this, i actually live eight blocks from where that bridge fell down on the middle of a beautiful summer day, the 35 w bridge in minneapolis. That was not just a bridge. It was an eightlane highway. As i said that day, a bridge does not just fall down in the middle of america. But it did. When it falls down, we have got to fix it and we have to step back and look at what is going on with infrastructure in this country. That took me to that place that but the other piece of the story that has been always with me is what happened with our community when that happened. The whole world was watching, what did they see . They saw an offduty firefighter who tethered herself to the side of the river and drove in and out of that Mississippi River and that murky water among those 55 cars and trucks looking for survivors. They saw a tasty truck driver who had literally one second to decide what to do. Hes going down the bridge is collapsing, he can save his life by running to the back of the school bus or he can veer off to almost certain death. He veers off, saves the kids, but burns to death in that cab. Then there is the school bus that plummets 30 feet down, there is a guy named hernandez, a School Counselor who was on the bus, and he literally in the second the doors opened up in the back, he has one second to decide what hes going to do. He could have gotten off himself but instead he gets all 30 kids off that bus to safety. That is our country. [applause] sen. Klobuchar when we think about infrastructure and i know we are going deep in the policy details here, we have to also remember that our public works our public good is a part of who we are as a nation, and looking out for each other. That is one of the major jobs of government. The major job is keeping our citizens safe. And it is also shared prosperity. I think infrastructure is a great way to get there. In answer to the question, i think you have got to both fix existing problems like roads and bridges, the major part of my plan, but then make sure we are meeting what i call the remember when they had the Rural Electrification of our time . That is rural broadband. Right now, we can get Rural Service for not just cell service, but also highspeed internet on iceland witches on iceland with all of its volcanoes more easily than in northern nevada. That does not make sense. There is a lot of that has to be there is a lot of work that has to be done there. Our schools, and then Green Infrastructure. When i look at this rail, i heard my friend tom steyer and some of the things he was talking about, all good. But when we rebuild existing infrastructure, we have to make that climate resilient. When we build new infrastructure, that always has to be on our minds as well. It has got to be a combination of things. I think it is very important for any candidate in this race, if you are going to Start Talking about infrastructure, when we have a president that made a bunch of promises, i still remember that night on Election Night watching his speech. I bet many of you do too. Remember one of the things he promised . Infrastructure. That was one of the top three things. While congress has kept the funding going in so many areas, we have not seen the big Infrastructure Investment that he promised. Not one that keeps our country competitive, not only in light of Climate Change, but also competitive with the rest of the world when it comes to being this great nation that is supposed to make stuff and invent things and export to the world. You need transportation to get your products to market. Jeanne senator, that raises the second question that we have been trying to put to everyone. You mentioned your 1 trillion plan. The question is where does the money come from . We all know the Highway Trust Fund is being depleted and the gas tax, no one wants to raise it. How do you raise that 1 trillion to pay for everything that you would like to do . Sen. Klobuchar ok, so, once again, the reason we did not get a good infrastructure package is that the president , despite these promises, would not work to pay for it and get it done. He basically blew up a meeting with congressional leadership instead of facing the issue that you have to find a way to pay for it. He did the tax bill, the trump tax bill, and it would have been the perfect opportunity to combine that tax bill with some tax reductions, like bringing the corporate rate down some. But he went so far and basically sucked all the money out of the system that you could have used for infrastructure. And then after he signed it, he went down to maralago and said to all of his friends, you just got a lot richer. Were any of you in that room . I just wanted to make sure, i didnt want to embarrass anyone. [laughter] sen. Klobuchar this is how i would pay for it. I would take those trump tax cuts where the Corporate Tax rate went down from the mid 30s to 21 . Every point it went down was 100 billion. You could still have reduced it and use a bunch of money for transportation. I would take the first four points of it and get 400 billion out of that. Then i would take the International Tax rate, if you put it back to where it was under obama, that is 150 billion you get out of that. Now we are up to 550 billion. For the rest of it, i would do infrastructure financing authority. That is a bipartisan proposal that has long been floating around congress. In the u. S. Senate, it is a proposal between senator warner and senator blunt and it has a lot of potential to pass. We also want to make sure that it goes to get projects and that that it goes to good projects and that we distribute the money fairly across the United States. That would create a lot of a backbone for the backbone of our infrastructure. In addition to that, i would do the buy america bonds which again, in the senate, as well as in the house, in the senate, it is a bipartisan proposal between senator wyden as well as senator hoven. Why do i mention these names . Hoven is a republican from north dakota. I think having a president that knows who people are and has the experience to try to get that done is going to matter when we put together this package. And the difference between a plan and a pipe dream is not a plan, there is a way to put a way to pay for it and a way to get it done. [applause] jerry let me take you back to the internet, the broadband question. There is tension here between gigabytes and roads. Because there is limited resources. Does the government pay for that buildout . Im from kansas, you are from minnesota, and gets to places who dont get it otherwise. Is that the governments responsibility or should that be the responsibility of the big carriers . If it is the government that does it, who owns it . Does the government owns it or does it turn into those companies . Sen. Klobuchar it is a combination responsibility. In another life, i did telecom law. Private sector for years i represented mci when they were trying to bust into the local and longdistance markets and create more competition which helped to bring those rates down. That experience helps me to get this. I also serve on the commerce committee. I plan is to get this done by 2022. There is every reason to think we can do that, connect every area of the country, not to dial up slow speed, but actual highspeed internet. The way you pay for it is the combination of things. Part of the infrastructure plan i just mentioned, but two, some of the money can come from the universal service fund which is traditionally used for underserved areas. Whether it be impoverished areas, rural areas, and you want to pay for local service. Some of that money can go to broadband as well. One of the problems that i have identified spending a lot of time in rural areas and meeting with people in small Telephone Companies is sometimes that money is going to carriers that are not using it. Particularly some of the bigger carriers or midsize ones that are not using it to build out. You have this crazy patchwork situation where one town in one area will have highspeed internet, and the other wand. I remember being in a tribal area in minnesota where one of the houses had decided to pay for highspeed internet, which was very expensive because they did not have it on the reservation. And all of these kids every day would go to the guys yard to do their homework. [laughter] or the doctor who would who could get internet in the hospital, but he cant get it at home and you have emergency calls. He would have to, if he wanted to bring up an xray or look at other things, he had to go to the mcdonalds parking lot or the farmer, and farming has become increasingly hightech with the machinery and the like, who wants to contact customers has to go to drive miles to go to a target. That is what is happening. I think the answer is a combination of things like Everything Else if you are realistic. It is getting the direct funding through this infrastructure package. The funding for internet goes through the usda, as well as the commerce department. The usda handles smaller things. There are local government owned situations in the rural areas. One of them, the Blandin Foundation in minnesota has spent a lot of time working on this. I dont think it is onesizefitsall. The key is to make sure the money is not going to phone companies that are not using it. A senator and i, the republican from south dakota, had done work on this to try to get people with standalone internet Cell Phone Service to get Better Internet service. A bunch of things we could do. You have to have a president step back, look at these programs, and figure out that it is literally mapping exactly so that we have accurate data about where it is and where it isnt. And then we get the resources to where they are supposed to go. Jeanne to follow on this topic, is that the Big Companies that have seen the government coming, so they have gone into many states and passed laws that says the government cant come in and create a public owned broadband system. What do you do about those laws that would stand in the way of trying to get into some of these communities . Sen. Klobuchar there are always ways. First of all, you can create incentives, if that is the way we are going, that those states will not get certain resources if they have put those in place. The second thing is to do preemption, with some kind of Major National drive for broadband. I think it just depends, when the mapping is done and we get all the data, how we want the money to be spent and where we wanted to go. And where we want it to go. A bunch of money is going where it should end and there is not should not and there is not enough funding. Country at such a disadvantage. I see it because in minnesota, we can see canada from our porch. For years, we saw how the resorts in canada had Better Service so they were able to get customers and they were able to get people that could get those customers that we cant get in our state. We have made major improvements in northern minnesota on that front. Im sure you see the same thing in parts of nevada. Jerry so you are president , you get to do what you want. Do you want to build a highspeed rail network in this country . By the way, if you do, that is more popular in Populated Areas on the east coast where we live now than in the midwest and rural areas where you when i and i come from. Sen. Klobuchar you have not gone on that empire builder. Pretty popular. Jerry i have not. Sen. Klobuchar it is a rail it may not be highspeed, thank you one person, but that is from chicago and it is across the west. A lot of interest in train travel in the middle of the country as well and going to glacier and going to our national parks. It is a really popular thing. But on the highspeed, yes, that is going to be more of a need for major cities. I will say, lets say even where i just was, for some reason, in new hampshire, the manchester area has the highest density of an area that does not have any Commuter Rail at all. It is a combination of some of these shorter Commuter Rails which really are not as expensive as well as these highspeed rails. Because when you are on those highspeed rails which im sure a number of you have tried out in other countries, whether it is in europe or in japan or the like, you are able to see how efficient that is. Im a big believer in rail. I love it because it is one way my husband and i can travel where we dont have an argument about directions. [laughter] sen. Klobuchar i also like it because it is better for the environment and it is a good way to get around and of course, as the operating engineers and so many people out there now, creates good paying union jobs. [applause] jeanne as im sure you know, we solicited questions from members of the coalition and wall street journal readers. We are going to turn to those questions right now. So, camille asks, what would you do to speed up the process to get some of these new projects going . Are there regulations as the Trump Administration has asserted, that can be changed . Are there any you would set aside in the interest of saving money and speeding up the process . Sen. Klobuchar i am one that is always open to looking at rules and regulations to see if you can make them work better. However, im not going to mess around with safety or the environment or things like that. I think you have to look at each rule and say are there things that we can do to make it work a little bit better . But i will tell you, my background, my grandpa was an underground minder who worked 1500 feet underground and back then, the mines were unsafe. Sirens would go off and everyone would run to the mines. My grandma, all of the spouses and families, never knowing which miner had been killed or maimed. It was unions that made a difference. Because the safety rules were put in place. So that is something that is near and dear to my heart. [applause] sen. Klobuchar and then in terms of approvals and the like, you can always step back and look at things. One of the things that i would like to see, for instance, is a twoyear budgeting cycle. I think that would help us when we put money out there, that we would have another year to look back to see how it was spent, to make sure it does get spent instead of sitting there. I think there are things you can do that would speed things up. Like we did with some of the work we did with the stimulus bill. A lot of that money did get out there. And make sure the money is getting out for the projects to be built, in addition to looking at a red tape and if there is anything we can do to speed things up. I did want to mention one thing that is really important to me, and that is prevailing wages. When i actually was in local office, i had a fulltime lawyer that worked on prevailing wage for our biggest county which was over one million people, and that person helped other smaller counties to work on prevailing wage. I think if you are going to build whatever it is, whether it is a bridge or whether it is a highway or whether it israel, that you want to make sure that the wages are fair for our workers. The whole idea here is to allow people to share in their prosperity of our Transportation System. [applause] jerry let me take you to another infrastructure topic that we have not talked about, airports. Michael from raleigh, North Carolina asks this, u. S. Airports have not seen investments from federal funding or user fees go up in 20 years. At my airport in North Carolina, due to a slowmoving federal process, they airport is maintaining a runway one slab at a time. As president , would you support adjusting the user fee paid by passengers to allow for long Term Investments . Adjusting is a nice term for raising. Sen. Klobuchar a very nice word. I would certainly be open to that and it has not been raised for a long time. We would want to do it in a way that is fair. But i hate the thought that our airports are lagging behind. I think you see here, i was just on your train, it was very good tram, it was very good and works well. It went between the terminals. I have a hub in minnesota, so im well acquainted with the issues there. It has been a very successful hub, actually. Some of the issues they are of course for us, which im sure you have had in nevada is some of the tsa issues and not having enough workers there. At some point, it was so bad that i had to get the tsa to get a dog team from maui, the board the poor dogs had to go from hawaii to minnesota in the middle of the winter, to speed up our lines. Because we were having so much trouble. I think it is a combination of upgrading our infrastructure. That is one way to do it. The other is direct investment. As ive proposed in this infrastructure package, and just making it a big priority. You also have small and midsize airports that dont need all the deluxe things you might use like trams and some of the bigger ones. But i think we also want to make sure, and those are the rural airport issues, that we keep those going as well. To be able to have a rail Transportation System. I have worked on the Ranking Member of the antitrust committee in the senate, i know that sounds really exciting, but it actually there is a lot of issues with Airline Mergers and the like to make sure that we keep our small and mediumsized cities airports going. Because otherwise, their rates can go way up, skyhigh, if we dont have competition. It can be a real problem. There are issues related to airports and are airport system independent of the facility upgrades. I do think that we need to continue to upgrade our airports if we are going to be able to compete. Jeanne senator, just to touch quickly on one more issue that is very important to this audience. Kevin of milwaukee asks whether, as president , do you think the federal government can provide cities more help to address clean water issues, drink and water, and in particularly in disadvantaged areas . Sen. Klobuchar yes. Having been to flint and seeing that after all of this time they are still using bottled water in a number of the homes and a number of facilities in flint. I met with the mayor there and everyone has bottled water. That is so sad and by the way, that is just one example. These examples are all over the country. One of the interesting things about water projects is that they are not always the bright shiny objects for the political ribboncutting that you have with highway overpasses or with a brandnew Commuter Rail system. But they are just as important. Investing in Water Infrastructure, and by the way, in states like nevada, if you look at the water shortage, yes, it is about Water Infrastructure and the pipes and the upgrades. Especially in light of Climate Change. But it is also about looking at incentives for conservation, for water, as well as, by the way, water storage. So that we make sure the water we do get that we are keeping stored, the surface water and the like, so that we can use that. I think water in general is going to be a very hot topic and has not been addressed on the federal level as much as it should be. And it is something that me, from the land of 10,000 lakes, would be more than happy to make one of my priorities. [applause] jerry senator klobuchar, i know you have to use that infrastructure system. Roads, bridges, airports. Hit the campaign trail, again. But thank you for taking time to talk about it with us and good luck. Sen. Klobuchar thank you. Thank you jeanne, thank you, jerry. Thank you everybody. [applause] jerry i think before we move on to our final candidate, zack from united for infrastructure will join us for a couple more minutes. Zach thank you, it has been a great conversation talking about issues at the federal level. I just want to acknowledge all the work that is happening at the local level that mayors and City Councils and governors and county officials have been doing to make progress on this issue. I know it is something you guys have questions on. Took on in your research. What would you want to ask about how the federal government can work with state and local governments to make progress . Jeanne one of the most interesting things come ou that one of the experts were talking about is how local governments need so much extra help. And the money flows through the state and is parceled out, raising the question of whether more direct loans to cities and counties might be possible. Because people go on this great, federally owned highway, and then they take a really terrific ramp, and then they end up in the pothole. And those are the roads most americans are driving to the grocery store, to school. That is their primary experience with the u. S. Infrastructure system. I thought that was really insightful. We have a mayor coming up to talk about this, thankfully. Former mayor. One of the other things that becomes clear when you talk to people about this is that one of the issues that mayors have to deal with, is not the glamorous one. That sort of falls to mayors to deal with. To the one senator klobuchar was saying, was not the glamorous one but water and sewer. That sort of falls to mayors to deal with. And it is expensive, it is not popular, it is not fun. And the federal government probably is not providing as much help as it should and everybody goes back to flint. But it is not only flint, there are other places where you have similar problems. And so i think if the question is, what do mayors worry about . One of the things that struck me as we went through our research is that mayors worry about water and mayors worry about sewer because nobody else does. [applause] zach i know i am turning tables on the question aspect, but as members of the press, what is it you look for in an infrastructure story to help communicate an incredibly complex issue that is esoteric for so Many Americans and communicated to a broad audience, especially a readership like the wall street journal who works on these fundamental Economic Issues all the time, but it may not be for specifically infrastructure . How do you think about communicating on infrastructure . Jerry one of the reasons i rattled off some of those fun facts in the beginning is i think you have to convince people of the magnitude of the issue. Everybody knows about the bridge down the street that has been closed for repairs all summer. It really annoys them. But i think the way, if you are a National News organization, like the wall street journal, the way you deal with this is you turn it into not a local or a narrow or isolated problem but a national issue. That is what we are talking about here. I think that is the first step in explaining the process to readers. And we talked about this earlier, the other thing is to try to convey somehow the difficulty washington has. And we are both from washington obviously, so the difficulty washington has in figuring out how to come to terms with this. Everyone says they want to do infrastructure. It is one of the very few lines that President Trump state of the Union Address last month that got bipartisan applause. He said we should do an infrastructure bill. One of the few times that both sides sat up and applauded. People have been talking about President Trump, speaker pelosi, leader schumer have been talking about this since the transition to the Trump Administration but nothing happened. We have to come to terms with why . Why does and something happened when everyone says their needs to. Jeanne there could still be a piece of legislation that comes through but it will mostly be a highway bill. It is not the big infrastructure package that all of the leaders in washington say is needed for the country. When you talk about, writing about it, the thing that strikes me is an infrastructure story is one of the easiest to turn into a people story. Those are the most compelling, to write. Those are the most compelling to read. It is one of the reasons the flint story resonated so well with the American Public and the public demanded that something be done in flint. They wanted to know who was responsible because as much as it was a minority community, it could have been anybodys kid. They made a mistake, it was more of a financial problem than a pipe problem. We have had pipe problems elsewhere. These types are all aging. I think they are the kinds of stories you can draw our readers and in the sense that they can think, that could be me. Jerry we appreciate you questioning us, it is nice of you to do that. There is one more president ial candidate waiting period thank you for coming out. [applause] speaking of mayors, we have a former mayor right there. It is Pete Buttigieg of south bend, indiana. [applause] mr. Buttigieg good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to be with you. I will be brief, because i am looking forward to having a conversation together. I want to acknowledge and thank everyone who is so committed to making sure we take real steps when it comes to infrastructure because this is a mayors native language. I am excited to be with a group of people who care so much about wastewater. It is not always sexy, but it is so important. The infrastructure above ground, underground and the Digital Infrastructure that will help decide whether the future works for america or not. The governing image of my campaign is the image of what it will be like the first time the sun comes up and donald trump is no longer in the white house. I look forward to it, too. But, our political objective is to bring that they about. When the day comes, then comes the hard part. The sun will be coming up over and environment where we are facing challenges, some of which are barely understood. Doing it in environment characterized by division and Political Polarization we have not seen in modern time. One thing the American People agree on is the need for a major investment in the future of our infrastructure. The one area i admit i think the president had a lot of us fooled. It sounded like a good idea when he said he would do real infrastructure. It was popular in both parties, it would help the economy and then they come out with the vaunted plan and it turned out the plan was for state and local officials to do most of the work and come up with most of the money, which is how it already works. We have the chance to do Something Different and actually make sure it is the template for a better future. In order to meet our climate goals, our economic goals, we have to do this. We have to come together to make sure it actually happens. I have proposed a plan to make sure that will happen across every level of the infrastructure and do it with an eye toward equity. We know the racial and economic inequality we experience in this country plays out through the inferior infrastructure so Many Americans are expected to put up with and we dont have to do that anymore, if we are willing to come together, make the investment, change the way politics twists are infrastructure priorities and deliver on something the American People already want, expect and insist we do something about. I am looking forward to our conversation and thank you so much for having us together. [applause] thank you so much. We do want to ask everyone of the candidates, you have a limited amount of money in the federal government. You become president and you more than any of the other candidates we have talked to have dealt with part of the crumbling infrastructure that people talk about. Yet there are a lot of proposals for fancy new things. Where do you see the balance . How much of the money with the would the government really need to focus on fixing things first before creating a new highspeed rail . Mr. Buttigieg this is really important. As a political figure, you have incentive to create the exciting new things, but we have to get back to basics. Mine is the only infrastructure plan that makes sure federal funding the goes to states for fixing roads actually fixes we have in addition to adding new and exciting things. We cannot continue to add new pieces out there if we are not willing to look after what we have already got. We are seeing a Physical Plant that is not being maintained, which is part of how we got the crisis of environmental and Racial Injustice that is flint. We have to deal with the unsexy things first. It is possible to do that and add things like the rail. I am not asking for japanese level standard of train travel. I would settle for an italian level of train travel. It would be a hell of a lot better than what we have now and would be an important part of how to meet carbon goals. All of this has to be part of a smart mix to get us toward the goals we have toward 2050 jerry . I think in your plan you said you would inject 165 billion into the highway fund. That Highway Trust Fund is financed through the federal gas tax. Where would you get the 165 billion . Would you do that by raising the gas tax . In a more radical thought, when Interest Rates are as low as they are now, is this the sort of thing the government should not worry about paying for because you can borrow the money for next to nothing in that is where we should go in terms of dealing with the kind of money we are talking about with interstructure. Mr. Buttigieg i dont think we should be fundamentalists about the uses of debt finance for infrastructure because in a low Interest Rate environment, there can be virtue to Infrastructure Investments that unlike what we were told about tax cuts for the wealthiest have been demonstrated to pay for themselves. That being said, the time has come for my party to assert its ownership of fiscal responsibility. The other party that has talked about it all the time has reached new heights of walking away from, with this president putting a 1 trillion deficit in front of the American People without even bothering to explain about there might be a way to deal with it. I am not even talking about going back to eisenhower level taxation, i am talking about rolling back the trump Corporate Tax cut. I am talking about closing loopholes and making it possible for companies that earn billions of dollars in profits to pay less than i did on my mayor salary on income taxes, specifically zero. With the gas tax, we will have to graduate because we are going to have to graduate from the gas tax because we are going to have to graduate from gas. It is not a viable longterm funding mechanism for highways. We have time to make the transition. We can bring parties to the table and identify alternatives. Something that links to vehicle miles traveled is attractive only if we can answer some of the big brother dimensions of what it means to assess vehicle miles traveled. Jerry can those be addressed . Mr. Buttigieg we are already in a society where we have way too much of our personal data being tracked in way too many ways, so we ought to be smart about it, but i do think we can come together and find a solution. Jeanne you have also mentioned bonds. Action what are those bonds and what did they build . What do they build . Mr. Buttigieg the idea is to create a Financing Mechanism for investments that we know, at least in an environment of carbon pricing, will in fact have a meaningful return. There are so many worthy climate projects that dont happen because of a lack of financing. It is one thing to get an energy larize acontract to so Small Business or home it is , another for a Community Like mine to be able to lay out car charging infrastructure we would want to in order to move into the electrical vehicle future. There are so many things being put together at the local and community level. With climate, we think about this as a national and global issue, and of course it is. But so many of the innovations are happening at the local level. Not only would i convene make sure we rejoin the Paris Agreement on day one, i would convene a pittsburgh summit of local and regional actors, because the answers dont all have to come from washington. Maybe this is a mayors view. It is just more of the support and the financing should. Jerry let me take you back to the land of the mayor and water and sewer issues that got you a big cheer over here. Mr. Buttigieg the wastewater vote is not always as vocal, so i am enjoying this. Jerry i am pretty sure you locked it up today. I think as mayor of south bend, you took advantage of a Trump Administration program to ease some environmental requirements of the Obama Administration when it deals with wastewater and sewage flowing into rivers. Did the Trump Administration have it right on the subject and did the Obama Administration go too far . Mr. Buttigieg here is the problem with the Trump Administrations rollbacks. They are actually about lowering the standard of water quality. There was a problem in the old framework and the problem is this. It held cities accountable not for the environmental result you and back end but for how much money you put in on the front end. Whether you poor in a lot of money and a dozen quite work, or you pour in a lot of money and get the job done, the framework cant really tell the difference. What we did was use technology to create a system that would at a dramatically lower cost still be able to lead to less pollution going into the river. We do need the flexibility to do that but it is not about walking away from our commitment to environmental quality. It is about being outcome focused instead of input oriented. Jerry do you think the federal government gives mayors to too little flexibility . Mr. Buttigieg it is varied by the regions. I found i could often get the administration to listen, but sometimes those forms of innovation and flexibility were not always making their way through regional officers. It is one reason we need to set up our federal administration to listen to the voices of mayors who are solving these problems better than we are. Bringing that perspective into the white house, he will. Jeanne lets reverse the perspective for just a minute. Is the federal government and your administration were to have a Green New Deal as a high priority, should the federal government have more say in questions of land use . I raised this before, we have the cape cod windfarm that is over 16 years in the making and it is not there. Planners say to be really efficient, you need to put these new green sources of energy closer to where people are because you need to transmit to them. You are getting right in the heart of some local areas and cities. Should the federal government, should there be a different role for the federal government other than Eminent Domain . Some other change in the conversation and balance of power . Mr. Buttigieg a lot of those issues start to sort themselves out in the market if we have carbon pricing, which is why i think we have to make that move. Instead of trying to engineer every piece of it from a washington perspective, lets make sure the market signals are in keeping with the advantages in a world that prices carbon appropriately. Two things like wind power. The federal government should be encouraging greater use of Renewable Energy and Greater Development of innovative techniques. I think a lot of the federal role is upstream on the research side. Think of it this way, only private industry could invent Something Like the iphone. But only federal research could invent Something Like the internet. What we need to do is be putting more in the basic research on energy storage, Carbon Storage and Renewable Energy storage that market actors can take and run with. Jerry you come from a river city. River cities are worried about the effects of Climate Change. You have talked about this some. Coastal cities are worried about the effects of Climate Change. Should part of an infrastructure plan part of your plan be to , spend tax dollars to help river cities and coastal cities deal with the effects of Climate Change . If so, are you prepared to tell people who dont live in those areas that they will have to buck it up and have to spend some of their money to fix those problems . Mr. Buttigieg we do have to commit federal dollars to this. We create a lot of jobs we do. It is why we need to invest in funding to enhance the resiliency of river and coastal communities. We will need a defense fund. We will need to invest in regional resistance hubs that can deal with the local impacts of climates, whether river mine or in a city like wildfire risk. It is going to be different everywhere you go. When i was on the mayors water council, there were three kinds of mayors talking about water. Western mayors with no water, coastal mayors with too much water, and midwestern mayors like me with water in all the wrong places. The solutions are going to be different and that is ok but we , do need more federal funding. That is something that needs federal leadership. You cant expect the locals to handle all this on their own. Jeanne can i back up to your point about using the federal government for research and development . The pentagon is doing the most work in trying to create a renewable fuel source that can be used in airplanes. Would you be looking to set standards for renewable fuel standards for airplanes . Would you invest deeper in that research . Mr. Buttigieg we are going to have to in order to meet our goals. Us 2030 istelling the deadline to make a lot of changes. The real deadline is a political one of 2020 because if we dont have a president that believes in Climate Science by 2020, we wont make it. We have to look out to 2050 when we have to be Carbon Neutral to stay away from the most catastrophic impacts. That means we have to go through light transportation, heavy transportation and air travel and heavy industry by 2050. The military should be leading the way. Part of the trouble with climate is a lot of the very parts of our society that could be on the leading edge are not really being viewed as part of the solution. The military is an example. Farming is a huge example. The potential for Carbon Capture in soil is in normas. And Industrial Workers are another example. We are estimating between my infrastructure plan and climate plan, we will create 8 million new jobs. When you hear green jobs, you picture very exotic things someone finetuning a solar , panel or propelling down a windmill. Some of that is out there and that is great. I am talking about carpenters and electrical workers who will be needed for the building retrofits. Across society, whether we are talking about military, labor or farming, we need to make this into a natural mobilization where everybody understands they have been recruited to be part of the solution. Jerry we solicited questions from wall street journal readers and from members of the Infrastructure Coalition. With the last few minutes available, we want to turn to some of those. What priority would you assign and what actions would you finally take to fix the antiquated rail corridor, particularly the singletrack condition under the hudson river that millions of americans use every year . Mr. Buttigieg we have to decide whether we think it is ok for the greatest country in the world to have inferior transportation. It just doesnt make sense. I dont know why americans should be tolerating inferior service relative to fellow members of industrialized economies. Whether we are talking about the northeast corridor and the work that needs to happen there, or whether we are looking at the big picture nationally, we will need federal leadership to make sure the parties are talking to each other. If you have ever tried to get your calls returned by freight rail, you know how many steps will be needed to get different parties to talk to each other. It is the same thing in my part of the country where we are linking on dedicated rail. We are working to link south bend and chicago. These things dont happen without federal leadership. It is why we need to make sure we are bringing the parties to the table and why we need to grants. Illed build it is going right into our economy. It ensures federal funding is backing those federal expectations. Jeanne a question that is important to everyone in this audience, the dependence on the Colorado River and lake mead and other reservoirs for daily Water Supplies for 40 million americans, including 2 million who are here. He asks, how would you direct your secretary of the interior to address the problems presented by drought and Climate Change in the Colorado River basin . Mr. Buttigieg there will not be any easy solutions. This is another example of where not only do we need to engage the stakeholders, who are currently in a framework designed nearly a century ago, based on the realities then. We also need to be doing research on the kinds of conservation that can be done on everything from the management of cities to agriculture. It is part of why i would propose we create arpa i. That would be for infrastructure, creating solutions for everything from better use of Water Resources to what i think ought to be a Manhattan Project for a way to pave roads that last longer than 12 years or so. Every mayor who has gotten thousands of calls about potholes views this with a certain emotional passion. Because we basically havent changed the technology weve used for paving in a fundamental way in a few hundred years. These are the kinds of things we can lead the way even as we are doing this sort of intergovernmental and political work to make sure theres an equitable distribution of resources. The last thing i would mention when it comes to water, we have to do a better job of engaging tribal stakeholders. The idea of free prior informed consent needs to be taken seriously and enshrined in federal policy. [applause] jerry by the way, just as we go along here, i wanted to ask, do you think federal funds are to be used to build a recharging Station Network for electric vehicles or is that a private sector priority . Mr. Buttigieg i think we should be open to publicprivate models that might help accelerate what can be done with limited funds, but i do view this as potentially a form of critical infrastructure. Now, before we go too far making irreversible investments of capital in that infrastructure, lets make sure it takes into account the development of technology. What i mean is i remember a lot of buildings in the late 1990s that huge investments were made to make sure the whole thing, top to bottom, was wired with cat five and ethernet cable. They put the finishing touch on the building two years before wifi was a thing, right . So, lets make sure were tuning what were going to do with charging capacity to what is going to change in terms of Storage Capacity on board vehicles. This is why we need to make sure were doing this in an integrated way. Thats why we need policy leadership instead of expecting different stakeholders to solve it on their own. Jeanne mary marco, im sorry. Im sorry, marco, of utah. He says mayor pete, you recently released an infrastructure plan calls for creation for 500 billion or so 10 year water drinking assistance matching fund. Explain how that will help lowincome communities and americans as a whole. Mr. Buttigieg yes, so this is especially important for low income communities because of things like the lessons of flint. But to me, this is a question of freedom. Because part of your freedom depends on the fact that, chances are, even in this room full of people who like to geek out on infrastructure, virtually none of us got up in the morning wondering how and whether we could get a glass of clean, Safe Drinking Water. Its just there. The moment you can take it for granted is the moment you lose a degree of freedom because you have to worry about that, as has happened in communities that are almost always low income communities and communities of color. This is a question of justice. By making more dollars available to conduct upgrades on lead Service Pipes to overall deteriorating infrastructure at a municipal level, we cannot expect low income communities to foot the bill themselves. Remember, the water bill is just about the least progressive way of getting revenue for anything because its the last thing the poorest person will stop paying, even after cable and even after electricity. And i have seen this, governing a city where the poverty rate was not that far from 30 . We set up 311. It was my big Campaign Promise. We are going to create a 311 system. It was a nobrainer if your city doesnt have one. Its going to bring all your City Services together. I was wondering, what would the top call be . What would be the top thing once we have that system up and running, kept our Campaign Promise created a way to gather , the data, everything somebody is calling about, a dead possum in the alley to wondering what day their trash pickup is . And by far the biggest thing people were calling about was they were afraid their water was going to get shut off because they were always this close. And so will be talk about upgrading Water Infrastructure, we talked about assistance for that. We are talking about something that we disproportionately benefit the most vulnerable americans. It is all the more reasons we need to act and get it done. [applause] jerry in that vein, some people think Affordable Housing should be considered infrastructure. Would you spend infrastructure funds on Affordable Housing . Mr. Buttigieg in terms of our plans, we fund it in a separate plan, but they are undeniably integrated. Not just the fact that we need to build, my plan calls for about 2 million more Affordable Housing units to be built, and commits about 700 billion to making sure excuse me, 430 billion to make sure we have several million more families into Affordable Housing, including the 2 million built. Also, the way theyre built. How does it work . Are we encouraging cities to build in sustainable models . Are we giving the community the tools to do that in an equitable way . And when more housing is built, are we making sure were taking steps so that families that got redlined into certain arentrhoods, that they gentrified right back out of them when they become more viable on the market . Thats going to take intention and our housing vision. Were releasing more on our housing plans, knowing that the crisis is also an opportunity through the injection of federal funds to get some economies to scale to pioneer new technologies and means for sustainability. Jerry time for one last question. Jeanne paul johnson from orlando asks he says, some states and localities have been proactively investing in infrastructure, schools, roads, parks, through local funding measures and fuel tax, sales tax raising their own revenue. , how would you address the issue of fairness in federal funding between states and cities which have worked to improve areas of their infrastructure against those who seek federal funding for . Mr. Buttigieg i view this as a both and. Thats why theres a match for, to expand what could be done by local or state authorities acting on their own. We should be encouraging communities, as many have, to take the courageous step of voting to tax themselves to create something newer and better. But that should be over the floor. And the floor, federally established, should be that no american should live without the access to the basics of transportation and water and safety that is at stake in all of the infrastructure choices that we make. And by the way, the other reason why i think there is value to greater federal involvement, even when it is as a match to local work, is it creates the opportunity to raise standards of labor being involved. Among the many, many reasons it is disturbing to me that this administration has claimed to be a friend to working people, is the fact that they are using things like the shell game of state funding passthroughs to get around davisbacon and other basic wage and labor standards that we expect as a country to be upheld. The more we have a partnership, the more we can make sure state and local funds, as theyre applied, do it in a way that matches federal expectations that once again, on the labor side, as well as the outcome side, amount to a floor and not a ceiling. Jerry so mayor pete, i will say when we solicited questions from the united Infrastructure Coalition we got more questions , about water than anything else, so you are in tune with the organizing committee. And we want to thank you for coming by. Mr. Buttigieg thank you. [applause] mr. Buttigieg i love it. [applause] jerry so, that is it for us. I want to say thank you to all of you for coming thank you to , the cspan audience for being with us, and i hope we have shed some light and maybe excited a few more questions about infrastructure as the Campaign Goes on. Thank you all very much. Jeanne thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] today, wjbh tv in boston hosted a debate between senator ed markey and two of his challengers in the massachusetts democratic primary. Joe kennedy and shannon les cspan, watch live on or listen live on the free cspan radio app. Next, a discussion on the possible copyright implications for Software Development ahead of the Supreme Court case google v oracle. The Hudson Institute hosted this andt, looking at copyrights the importance of code being protected by copyright laws. It is an hour 10 minutes. All right, i believe we will now