Excited to have me here. I responded. Was that you . Good to see you in the world. Just to tread lightly and question the status quo partly for me what i feel is a visible position i am a private person, and i use twitter more for professional services, so you will see me tweeting things like we issued our transparency report. That is the kind of thing i want people to know about. I know there are a lot of other people tweeting about seeing their daughters first steps. My daughters first steps were experienced by me in the comfort of my own home and were not disseminated in this way, but that is up to each on their own. Dean lyons i tend to use it professionally as well as well but occasionally i will tweet about my kids, and it sounds authentic to them. I think they respond favorably. Gabriel it is lovely. It is lovely. As a user, some of those moments where i get to see this unvarnished look at people ive never would have had access to i love those experiences. To be able to be exposed to interactions between people i love those experiences too, and to the extent there is an appetite to see that unvarnished look at me, i am happy to catch up over a coffee at some time, but i am not putting it on display. Dean lyons are there any tweet mr. Stricker you tweets you regret . Gabriel that is a great question. Maybe because i am a cautious person no, there are none, but i stand by them. Dean lyons this is relatively recent i thought it was harmless, my daughter had a civilizations history textbook and i picked it up and started going through it and it mentioned that as best experts can tell, christ was not worn in the year zero. He was born in the year 5 bc, that was the best guess. I tweeted i just learned this, am i the last two . The last to know . The birthdate of christ is an important date for a lot of people in the world, and i got a response. [laughter] it was one of those things that got a little more response than i expected. [laughter] gabriel if it makes you feel any better, we had dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson out in the bay area area last week, and he came by the office and i was asking him about an extraordinary exchange he had it have seen the i think it was last christmas, and he tweeted out that on this day, december 25, we celebrate i will do a bad job of paraphrasing, but this is the spirit of it, for you factcheckers on this day we celebrate a man who was born, and by the time he was 30 revolutionized the world. Happy birthday, isaac newton. It turns out people assigned very special value to december 25, and he heard an earful about that, but to your question any tweets that we or others regret he certainly was unapologetic and having made that. You know, i think again, people are provocative in their lives. He is certainly a provocative member of our society, and i think he is probably just as provocative now as he was before twitter, it is just that we all get to experience it along with him. Those types of behaviors, i love seeing. Dean lyons that is part of why the university is such an exciting place. The marketplace for ideas is open, and that is why we love it here so much. Gabriel, thank you very much for being here today. Gabriel thank you for having me. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] dean lyons thank you you all for being here. Federal medications federal Communications Commission chair tom wheeler testifies on wednesday. We will be live with the senate commerce, science, and Transportation Committee at 2 30 p. M. Eastern on cspan3. Coming up here on cspan, a conversation with transportation secretary anthony foxx, and then remarks from labor secretary thomas perez about workers rights and safety issues. That is followed by the news directors of buzz feed and gawker discussing changes in the news media and twitters communication director on his companys impact on free speech around the world. On the next washington journal, steve king will discuss ongoing Iran Nuclear Negotiations and immigration. After that representative brad sherman of california talks about the israeli elections, the iran nuclear program, and request is military force against isis. Later, a conversation with daniel metcalf. He will talk about the personal email server used by hillary and what it means for transparency and availability Hillary Clinton and what it means for transparency. You can join the conversation with your phone calls on facebook and on facebook and twitter. This weekend, the cspans city store has partnered with viacom to learn about columbus georgia. Inside of the museum, the remains of an iran clad built here in columbus during the war. The oval shapes are actually the gun ports of the jackson, and the jackson is armed with six rifles. The particular rifle we are firing today is one of the guns still specifically for the jackson. It was cast at the selma naval works in selma, alabama, and completed in 1865. The real claim to fame is directly connected to the fact that there are only four ironclads from the civil war that we can study right now, and the jackson is right here. That is why the facility is here. It is first and foremost to tell the story of this particular ironclad, and to show people there were more than just one or two. There were many. Watch all of our events from columbus saturday at noon eastern on cspan3s book tv. Monday, josh earnest was asked about the senates delay in voting for attorney general nominee loretta lynch. Here is a look. Senator mcconnell laid out a timeline yesterday that suggested it could be mid april at the earliest before her nomination goes to the floor. Is that a timeline the white house would be willing to accept, and if not what is the alternative, or how do you get her nomination voted on earlier . Secretary earnest this is the responsibility of the United States senate to vote on the president s nominees, and there has not been a legitimate question raised about her aptitude for the office, so the delay is unconscionable. It is unexplained. And, the thing that i will that warrants mentioning here is, you will recall, as i pointed out ms. Lynch has been waiting 128 days to get a vote in the senate. The reason that time period has been so long is because the president nominated her back in november for this job, and at that time we saw senator mcconnell himself say ms. Lynch would receive fair consideration i think it would be hard to say he lived up to that promise he also said her nomination should be considered in the new congress through regular order. So you essentially had senator mcconnell in november telling the president he should delay submitting her to congress until the republicans were in the majority. I have been asked a number of times since november whether or not the president trusts senator mcconnell, whether or not senator mcconnell and other members of the Republican Leadership whether their word is good with the president. Senator mcconnell said the nomination should be considered in the new congress, but yesterday when senator mcconnell was asked on cnn about whether or not he would act quickly to confirm her, and to explain the delay, he said the nomination has not taken that long if you consider when it was actually taken up, which was this year. He continued to say the democrat majority in december had a chance to work on the nomination earlier, but decided to delay it until early this year. He failed to point out that was that his request and he is in position to delay her nomination even further, despite the fact and i will say it again, no legitimate question has been raised about her aptitude for the office. Despite she submitted despite the fact she submitted eight hours of testimony and answered written questions. There is no question republicans are playing politics with the top Law Enforcement official in the nation and it has to come to an end. Transportation secretary anthony foxx called on congress to pass a longterm transportation funding bill. He participated in a oneonone interview where he highlighted a 30year plan to update u. S. Transportation infrastructure. This is an hour. Good evening. We are pleased to have the secretary of transportation, mr. Anthony foxx, as part of our renewing america series, to discuss beyond traffic, and how the current state of our u. S. Infrastructure is so very important to our u. S. Competitiveness abroad. I guess you have been all given the housekeeping rules already. I guess i would add it is as important as ever to turn on turn off your phones or to vibrate, because it is on record and you would be on record as someone that failed to turn off their phone. So, mr. Secretary, welcome to the council on Foreign Relations. Secretary foxx thank you. I have seen you speak on other occasions and you are a very impressive speaker, so we are looking forward to this. Secretary foxx thank you. Before we take a deep dive into beyond traffic, this is a group of international enthusiasts and Foreign Policy wonks, maybe you could remind us why it is that our infrastructure is so important to us and internationally, our Competitive Position abroad. Secretary foxx thank you for the question. I want to thank the senate the council on Foreign Relations for having me. It is great to talk about talk to an audience who focuses on so many things happening across the world. To spend a little time talk about talking about the role u. S. Infrastructure plays in the global space look, we as a country where the inventors of the modern Aviation System, the automobile, and many other innovations that have occurred in modes of transit and transportation. So, just from the standpoint of america continuing to create and innovate within transportation i think the entire world has seen the impact of this countrys focus on that. Beyond that, we are very much a thread that as the Global Market expands, as goods need to move across the world in a timely, efficient, and safeway that American Transportation networks are going to be critical. Our rail systems and highway systems are sometimes referred to as a land bridge for International Travel because their goods literally, cross our surface systems to get to another point in the world. We have ports that are going to increasingly become important. We saw, just recently, with the west coast ports and the labor issues there, that what happens when some of our ports start to slow down and become less productive we also have challenges with east coast ports being drenched to a level of depth that will be respective to the vessels moving around the earth soon. We have an Aviation System that continues to evolve, and international standardsetting that now happens at iko, but innovations that continue to be worked through such as next gen and a lot of the discussion we have had because of recent flights that were lost, in some cases, about the use of technology and tracking planes. So, there is a lot of innovation that i think is still out there to be embedded in the world, and again, i think the u. S. s role is as an innovator, idea generator, bringing innovations into the marketplace, but just the sheer importance of our physical infrastructure cannot be understated because we literally help the world will. Mr. Slade well, mr. Secretary you have only been secretary now for a year and a half, but you have been a busy secretary. Lets talk a little bit beyond about beyond traffic, a very impressive document all 300 pages of it. There is a shorter version on the web. It is jampacked full of trends, impacts on our system. From those trends, you call them the choices we have to make maybe you can share the contents of that document, and what it is. Secretary foxx so, beyond traffic, is the latest effort to assess the condition of the American Transportation system and to forecast over a longer horizon than we typically have the ability to do on capitol hill and out our out in our communities, what trends are happening to us that we need to think about now and i just do. Just a couple of things we were able to find out in the course of doing this study first, we are growing. This country is going to have 70 more 70 million more people trying to move around in the next 30 years, so what i say to people is that commute that takes one hour today, get ready, it will be longer 30 years from now if we do not do more. In some cases doing more mean some of the things we have done historically which means adding lane miles to our highway systems. In some cases, there are areas that are more constrained now mostly urban areas where it is an practical, and you now need to think about doing Something Different with modal choices, adding pedestrian features, different choices, different ways of moving around so the sheer growth the country will experience is, i think, a troubling trend given how much we are investing and how we are investing today. There are generational differences in how each generation uses transportation. I am still from the school you know, when i was 16, the thing to do was to go get a car. That is how you got the girls. You know, that is what you did. Mr. Slade i am glad you got the girls. Secretary foxx some people did. Depending on what kind of car you had. But, anyway this generation, this millennial generation, has a totally different perspective on transportation, and many of them are not looking to go buy a car. Prickly, some of them are not even going to buy a house these days frankly, some of them are not even going to buy a house these days. They have a different relationship to they are more likely to be on the interior of an urban metropolis, use bicycles, transit facilities. This generation is looking for a quality of life, so to speak that allows them to move fairly organically between things, and they do not want to have a lot of accoutrements on top of that. Anyway the bottom line is i think that is a trend. We will have to see how long it sticks, but assuming that it does, we have some challenges with how we are spending because right now out of a 70 billion budget, we are putting 40 billion into a highway system, and if we have a generation of folks that will not be as focused on the use of that we still have commerce that needs to move that way obviously that may need we need to think about a balance that involves a little more transit too. Mr. Slade as secretary, you have responsibility over a lot of different modes of transportation throughout the United States not just highways, but airport rail, seaports. It would be unfair to expect you to fix everything in the United States right . As you also know from your period as the very successful mayor of charlotte, North Carolina, there are a lot of local and state authorities as well. So, could you talk a little bit, so we get the groundwork here, what are the respective roles of the federal department of transportation versus the state so that people do not set their expectations too high . It is secretary foxx it is a great point, and one way refer to in beyond traffic. By the way, this is a real page turner. It does not have cliff notes. Secretary foxx there is a cliff notes version. To answer your question squarely, how things are built depends on the mode of transportation you are talking about, so for instance, freight rail systems are largely privately owned. So, a lot of our engagement with the freight rail system is on private sector engagement. Our highway system is largely statedriven, so the states have a huge role to play in the maintenance, as well as the continued expansion of our highway system. Our transit systems are, yet again, a different level of governance because those are mostly local. So, the large transit systems across the country are largely a creature of local government, or some type of authority that except an area of local government. So, we are all over the map when it comes to how governance shapes transportation. I think that is one difference you find in the u. S. Versus another part of the world. A lot of places you know, france, they build french highways. They do not referring to a state. We do that, and that makes things more complicated. Mr. Slade yeah. One of the fascinating statistics were projections in beyond traffic is that in 30 years 75 of the u. S. Population is expected to live in these megaregions, the northeast corridor, the gulf coast, the chicago of hub, so that is going to rejigger this federal state divide even more, right . There will have to be even more state cooperation, but what you think the federal government can, or should be doing to facilitate that cooperation . It is really going to change the map. Secretary foxx the beyond traffic study does not say this because it is intended to be more of a descriptive document than a prescript to document, prescriptive document, but what i believe is the federal government actually, although government, is going to need to be all of government is going to be more attuned to these issues. I come from a city that is on the border near South Carolina and part of our influence was from South Carolina. The reality is the economy does not always tickets at two political jurisdictions. It focuses a lot more on workforce, assets within a given region, what have you. Unfortunately, a lot of our decisionmaking right now is just within political jurisdictions. So, another feature of all we have proposed last year in legislation was an effort to encourage local communities to organize their transportation thinking along a Regional Cluster as opposed to just one county or one city, starting to look at themselves as clusters of regional activity, and making transportation decisions that adjusted to that. I think that is a trend we will need to bend towards as a country to be as successful as possible. Mr. Slade i do not want to go off on a tangent, but recently in the press there was a governmental and side on the detroit crossing. On the one side we had the u. S. And she can, and the other canada michigan, and the other, canada. Would you use that as an example that it is tougher to get things done on our side than it is on theres . Secretary foxx i think we have many examples. There was a bridge project that was supposed to happen