Cspan, cspan2, cspan radio and cspan. Org. Anthony foxx testified about the highway Transportation Group and was joined at the Senate Environment and pubic works hearing on transportation and infrastructure funding. This is two hours and 15 minutes. The meeting will come to order. I say to my friend the Ranking Member that the whole right side back there is oklahoma. I came in last night and they were having a dinner i thought two or three people i knew gary rid ridley would be there, he always is. But it is all familiar faces. We have a concern there is a lot of things about what is the government supposed to be doing and quite often, and the reason i got in on this 20 years ago is because this is what we are supposed to be doing. Building america and infrastructure. We understand that in oklahoma. We have gone through a process and i recall over in the house, secretary foxx knew what the biggest problem was in the Highway Trust Fund . Too much surplus. That was the problem we had. We
That is why we sent you to grow america act last year and why we will send you a new and improved grow america act this year. We certainly know that the grow america act is not the only approach to solving the infrastructure and mobility challenges of the future. We look forward to fully engaging this committee and with others on both sides of the aisle to chart this path together. But we believe there are some essential principles that any bill must have. First were going to need a substantially greater investment. Were also going to need a greater level of investment over time. Not just six months, or even two years. If we want communities to build big projects they can take in some cases five years or more. We need to ensure funding for roughly that same amount of time. I think senator boxers analogy of trying to buy a house with a fivemonth loan is a great analogy. There are processes that neat to be dealt with. We believe we can do that while ensuring better outcome for the enviro
Great big mansion if we have the resources to build a hut. And i think that our system right now really needs a substantial injection of a longterm bill but also substantial growth to counteract the cumulative effect of the shortterm measures in the recent past. And one followup real quickly on that specific point. Is there a version of that proposal you are talking about that doesnt have the big tax increase on successful folks as part of it . Because going back to the spirit of my comments, im suggesting that, you know, we get real and we cut to the chase so we actually solve this in a meaningful way by may. So if were just talking about that version, in all due respect, i dont think that is meeting my test. Well, you know, the green book last year published three specific ideas about pro Growth Business tax reform that i think potentially would meet your test. One was eliminating lifo. Another was eliminating accelerated depreciation. And a third one was pulling some of the untaxed
Our system, all of it was customized and developed in the 50s and 60s. Weve replaced that system with those expenditures. But we still have over 50 applications that need to be replaced. But to show what weve been able to do that, that refund app got 200 million hits last year. 150 million returns across just 85 are processed electronically. That was not only not possible, it was inconceivable 15 years ago. We have made substantial strides. But the 300 million on the Affordable Care act are all challenges for us. Fortunately, the Filing Season this year has been implemented. We have 145,000 foreign Financial Institutions about to provide us data under the foreign account Tax Compliance act. All of those systems had to be built and rebuilt to obama sosh that data. If we could continue with the refund the resources we needed, wed get rid of a lot of these systems. Taxpayers would be able to go on line, as they do with bank of america, wells fargo or fidelity and deal with us without pape
Theres much that we can learn from this 13year experience in how to take a more comprehensive approach, and to recognize while kinetic actions have a value all of their own certainly and thats blatantly obvious, nonkinetic actions do as well. We can do much better at that than what we have done. Thank you. General matt is my time is up, but do you have any you want to add . Very quickly senator i would point out we have to improve the process assuming there is a process. Ive been unable to identify one recently. I think it starts with the assumption we must develop a sound strategy or were going to waste lives and our treasury and our countrys future. I think, too, we need to move thor back to the senate, and not concentrated in a small but mushrooming it at the same time natural security staff that does not have the Foreign Service officers and the trained military officers who can actually develop what you are looking for here. I dont think we can adopt one preclusive form of war far