I know folks are proud to show up to work every day. I think we can do that together. I yield back mr. Chairman. Thank you mr. Chairman. Thank you gentlemen for your appearance and for your testimony. Many people voted for donald trump because he promised to make America Great again by growing the economy and creating high paying middle class jobs by rebuilding americas crumbling infrastructure, isnt that correct . Thats correct. Do you believe that we can make America Great again by rebuilding our roads, bridges and tunnels if we replace real federal gas tax revenues with Public Private partnerships . Do you believe one would be Public Private partnerships alone could do it . When i look to my left on this panel Public Private partnerships have existed for over 100 years. Well, recently the Washington Post and the wall street journal reported that President Trump stated that he no longer believes that Public Private partnerships will involve our infrastructure funding needs. Do you disagree with President Trump . I believe it is part of a tool in the tool box. It is not necessarily a funding method. It is one of the tools that might help particular projects in particular regions of the country. Well, my colleague from illinois, my good friend representative davis asked you all to raise your hands if you believe raising the gas tax alone with make problems with the Highway Trust Fund. It was dually noted no one raised their hand. None of you on the panel raised your hand. I want you to raise your hand if you believe the federal gas tax will remain viable for fixing our crumbling infrastructure given the fact that we have 253 million gas powered vehicles on the roads in the country today versus only 540,000 electric vehicles. Raise your hand if you believe that the tax the federal gas tax will remain viable to fix our crumbling infrastructure. I see four out of five not raising his hand and i would love to ask him about that in a second, probably for a reason unrelated to the answer to the question. Raise your hand if you believe the gas tax should be increased. I see three i see four i see three i see four. I see a maybe out of one of the fours. Mr. Mccarty . Yes. I think it has to be part of a solution. It can be part of a question and thats not my question. My question is whether or not you believe since 1993 gas tax has been at its current rate. Do you think it should be increased . Thats my only question. You did raise your hand. So do you wish to retract it at this time . No. I think it has to be part of the package. We are looking for something thats sustainable long term. Okay. Would you solve this mystery for us why you did not raise your hand . The state of washington just increased its gas tax. I have talked about the fact that Washington State is one that is actually piloting vehicle user charges. I think we need to take a hard look at what will be sustainable. One thing you will hear is Everyone Wants sustain blt in the program. And thank you for that response. I will ask whether or not these vehicle user fees are sufficient in rural areas. I think the debate goes in the other direction which is to say rural users use the roadways more by definition and then how long it will take a rural resident to get to church or a Shopping Center versus an urban resident, the thing i have heard is they will work a hardship. I dont know it will work in that case. Thank you. I yield back. Mr. Larson. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Being not on the sub committee, being allow today participate, i much appreciate that under the committee rules. I also appreciate what it was like to be a freshman once. It is what we raised in st 3 as we call it. And one of the issues that came up during that debate was about the federal obligation that we werent going to do all of it and taxpayers werent going to carry all of this. What our Financing Options can be we have said that we will get to lynnwood just as we will get to federal way and onto tacoma. It is the time frame in which we might get it. This is a very good example. We are not successful in securing dollars. There is some funding in the senate bill is that we believe would be eligible for so we have to really watch the needle carefully and watch each step in the process, work with the delegation and other transit agencies like ours. They are working very hard with trying to move forward with a reasonable federal so just to put perspective on that the federal government turned off the federal funding spicket. The obligation is still going with expectation there will be help. It is what we told the voters. You heard the complaint about being called out in the president s budget as reasons to terminate the federal participati participation. They also called out denver. The fact that all three passed local tax measures but the reality is all three of those had an expected federal component when we brought that to the voters. Expected federal component you had actually already talked to the federal authorities about. In the case of lynnwood we have been admitted into the engineering phase. It was laid out. Thats why the president s Budget Proposal came as more than a shock. You used it quite a bit. Thats in the fast act that we expanded the use as a nondirect federal funding mechanism. Can you talk about how you use it as a tool . Sure. It is a very valuable tool especially for agencies that have strong credit. We pride ourselves. We use it to lower the cost of borrowing the taxpayers. We have we believe what still may be the only master Credit Agreement with the d. O. T. For four loans wrapped into one agreement, that by itself over the course of four loans will save between 2 to 3 million in borrowing costs. What portion of that is mine and my wives . Divide it across all regional taxpayers. Great. And ill just note, when the i35 bridge collapsed when we had the i35 collapse in minneapolis it sort of triggered congress to write into the emergency bridge funding provisions in that next bill some emergency procedures which were first then used when the bridge collapsed in my district. They were used in georgia as well i think as part of that collapse. Is there from your perspective is it can be used as a lesson for some permitting streamlining as we try to craft a bill it was for 16 and 17. Thank you. There was 95 million available for looking at alternatives to the fuel tax. We felt that our neighbors to the left and the right were doing a pretty good job of exercising and we want to look at something else. We are looking at in missouri the motion of a fuel economy based adjustment to a Registration Fee. As another tool in the tool box, as another means of strengthening our own revenue base. The first round of the grant, we received a small grant to study the demographics of the registration database. That has gone very well. We should be done with that in december. We did get the very good news we would get the next round which is about 2. 7 million. Well be taking that information that we have gained from the first round and we are really looking at the registration database in the state itself and looking to implement that type of Registration Fee. It would be a big upgrade for the state. We had a lot of talk about sol van si and the trust fund moving forward. We believe well have to do something different. The gas tax is regressive. It will get more so and more so and more so. We are very interested in alternatives we can look at moving forward. Second round, i know he has a question. Go ahead and then he wants to finish. Thank you again, mr. Chairman. I appreciate that. I want to clear out what a couple of things meant. It was called a bipartisan bill. There are 120 california legislators between the assembly and the senate. One republican voted in the senate. If you want to call that a bipartisan bill i dont have a lot to say about that. In that individuals turned out and got a Railway Project for that district. 30 of the funding will go for other things besides roads like rail transit, bike ways, pedestrian parks and recreation, university research, Work Force Development programs. When we go to the you dont even ask the taxpayers. We have a couple more. Maybe they will get asked. Tell the taxpayers to pay more for their roads and you 30 going for other things. Youre really going to run into more problems telling california legislators to try to vote for a new deal. Again, 20 cents in diesel tax. Truckers are not going to see any improvement for their ability to move goods up and down the system. Families probably see 500 increase for a multivehicle family and have any work or school to get their kids to. There is real costs involved as we sit here and talk about increasing fuel tax and on everybody whether it is federal or state project. Finally they had to change the balance summary. He went to court and they had to change the misleading summary. It is what has qualified to go in front of the voters. There is a lot of funding business. So that said we are talking about who will bear the cost of the burden of paying for additional roads and the Highway Trust Fund or what have you the issue of electric cars has come up on the panel here. In californias bill there is an increase of 100. You cant track fuel cost for electric cars. It doesnt even kick in until 2020. Everybody else will be paying 175 or approximately that plus the gas tax. We cant even seem to even out the burden on the electric vehicles. Let me throw this to mr. Makenna. Subsidized by state and federal money. Some times several thousands of dollars cue due to incentives, contribute a small traction for using the same roads. What do you see mr. Makenna across the board besides delayed . What do you see to try to have these vehicles that were off of the highways and roads . Thank you for the question. Thats what we are trying to address with the Grant Program that chairman graves mentioned. We are looking at a fuel economy adjustment to the Registration Fee. If im receiving 40 miles per gallon and we both drive 10,000 miles, you know, youre paying double what i am. Our attempt through this Grant Program is to look at the ability to create a Registration Fee that would balance those two. All users would be paying the same. Okay. On one hand thats funny because we have been pushed and propertied into driving smaller more fuel efficient vehicles. Now that the money is running out it is going back the other way. How people watch what had we do wonder what they are supposed to do. With that ill yield back. I appreciate the extra time. Thank you, mr. Graves from louisiana. Thank you mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for having this hearing. I want to thank you for being here. I head to step out but i did hear your testimony earlier. As we move forward in building an infrastructure package ity its important for us to look at where we are stengd infrastructure dollars. I can go in and name areas like the corp. Of engineers but many others that are spending millions of dollars. Department of interior, hud and many others. Do any of you have in advancing an Infrastructure Solution . Does that make sense . Yes. We actually use multiple funding streams for almost every construction project we do large or small. A combination of federal, state and local funds. We have a Cost Share Program that can leverage actually local Development District let me clarify my question. Certainly youll be integrating federal funding streams because theres a cost share on many of these programs. Have you brought any other federal streams to the table . We do try to work with resource agencies. I cant think of any specific ones right now. But i know we have done that. Things like quality dollars from the federal highway administration. I think what youll often see is dollars from other agencies pay for some of the augmentation that surrounds our projects like cbg through hud and what it might do around our rail station. It is billed out of a structure and i think its critical we have a clear inventory of federal efforts that are underway now that are advancing different infrastructure objectives that arent as high priority as others. If we are spending money and making up something, if we are building recreational opportunities using an infrastructure is it advancing a federal objective . I think youre expecting to see this reign of federal dollars that will come into states. I think one of the first things we need to do is a better understanding of how those dollars are being spent and if they are advancing a priority and doing a better job at true tli Funding Initiatives as opposed to taking more of a shotgun approach. Let me ask you, i have written on a number of your rail vehicles in the seattle area. How do you do your planning . You talked about how youre able to project the number of cars coming off the roads and things like that. How do you integrate your planning to make sure that youre making comp pli men tear investments. . Its a great question. We have to go to ask for a revenue inkreechlts we knew what the states plans were. We have the added benefit he is a member of our board. We work with them because a lot of the projects we are running new rail extensions are actually happening over interstate right of way adjacent to i5 and building a fleeting bridge over irkts90. It will be clo cayed in our Office Spaces so we can work even better together. You know, we only want the taxpayers to pay for the benefit once. We are working hard to make sure that takes place. Thank you very much. I yield back. Absolutely. I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today and for your testimony. I would also ask unanimous consent that it remain open to such time as our witnesses and provide an provide answers and questions. I would ask that the record remain open for 15 days if no other members have anything to add the committee stands adjourned. Thank you. When i first went in i was barely able to get back to the surface. A bunch of them jumped in. Theres a picture which im sure youll show of them pulling me out of the lake. You can see my arm is broken. Then of course once they pulled me out they werent very happy to see me. I had just finished bombing the place. So it got pretty rough. I broke my shoulder and hurt my knee again. But look, i dont blame them. I dont blame them. We are in a war. I didnt like it. At the same time when youre in a war and youre captured by the enemy you can expect, you know, to have tea. 50 years after the vietnam war john mccain talks about the impact of the war on his life and the country. Sunday at 6 00 on American History tv on cspan3. Sunday night on afterwards. Over 90 of Sexual Harassment cases end up in settlements. That means that the woman pri pretty mitch never audiocassettes about that. She is gagged. We put in Employment Contracts which make it a credit proceeding. Nobody ever finds out about it. You can never talk about it, ever. Nobody ever knows what happened to you and in most cases youre also terminated from the company and the predator is left to still work in the same position in which he was harassing you. This is the way our seat decided to resolve Sexual Harassment cases. She talks about be fierce and take your power back. She is interviewed by Washington Post columnist. Watch tonight at 9 00 eastern on book tv. This weekend on American History tv on cspan3, a look at union and confederate generals starting saturday at 9 00 a. M. And sunday at 9 15 eastern. Saturday at 10 00 p. M. On real america, the january 1968 weekly series abc scope examines, resistance to the vietnam war. Lyndon johnson should be arrested for murder. There are no limits. I think should have the anger of vietnamese women dropped by american planes way up there in the sky. Thats the anger that he reflected. He has got to go into the streets. Itself got to use the tactic of destruction. We want our series on photo journalist. Zbli felt that i should accept their offers to be bethiend companies any time you see the president of the United States behind the scenes it is important. I can be there for you. Everything i see is important. American history all weekend welcomed every weekend only on c sbps span3. We are live for a hearing on the b this is the Senate Armed Services economy the hears should get under way early. This is in the and the debate thats over on cspan 2. Gol ks expected later today in the senate. About to get you shouldway looking at cyber warfare. I want to remind you john mccain was honored this week in philadelphia with their liberty medal. Whether we will bring you that over on cspan. We mentioned the u. S. Senate also in today for debate and late votes on the 2018 budget. They are expected to wrap up work on that later today