Infrastructure forum in las vegas. Caucusing started yesterday and runs through tuesday. They hold the formal caucus es on february 22. Good afternoon. Its my honor to welcome you to move america forward, the first ever president ial forum on infrastructure. [applause] united for infrastructure is a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization. And it has been our honor for many years to convene and collaborate with leaders in labor, business, and government on this important issue. As we begin, 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] zachary i would like to recognize a few local leaders from the community. Congressman stephen horseford. Mayor john lee. Mayor nathan robertson. Las vegas city councilman brian. And all the way from los angeles, mayor garcetti. [applause] zachary id very much like to thank our host committee, the organizations who, with us, created the vision for this event, provided resources to make it a reality. Invited the candidates, and have brought hundreds of their members to nevada to be here in the room 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 CouncilInternational North america, build together, and north americas building trade unions. Thank you. Give them a round of applause. [applause] zachary id like to thank our sponsors whose generositys made has made this possible. Our sponsor, hntb, and our forum sponsors autodesk, parsons, and wspufa. Thank you very much. [applause] zachary id like to share a special thanks to the wall street journal for being our media partner. And the moderators of todays conversation. And for the immense amount of work that they have put into preparing for this event. To the press covering this and event and to the viewers tuning in on cspan and on livestream, thank you for joining us today and for your passion on this issue. And if youre following in the audience or online, please join us in our conversation 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 and trains and planes make it to their destinations on time. Its the quality of water coming out of our taps and the help in our environment. It is our affordability to live in our homes. To get our jobs and schools reliably, affordably, and safely. Its a prerequisite for manufacturers, retailers, and farmers, getting their 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 17 million americans, its our career. Operating our water systems, driving our buses and trains, repairing our roads we built in the last century and designing , and building bridges and airports and seaports furthermore resilient and secure more resilient and secure future. Yet this foundation of our lives, our communities and our economy is too often failing us. Too many of our policies are outdated, our investments insufficient, our priorities unclear. And 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, led by our host community, felt that we could not let this election cycle slip by without inviting the leading candidates for president of the United States, including President Trump, to articulate their visions and plans for building a better america by renewing our infrastructure. Four of those candidates will be have accepted the invitation and 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] zachary now its my honor to kick off our program and introduce our moderators. Please join me in a warm welcome the former executive editor of wall street journal, and jeanne, the executive chief of the wall street journal. Thank you. [applause] jerry thank you. Thank you, zach. Thank you all for being here. Jeanne and i 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. Were going to try to give that today. A few points to illustrate that. 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 four replacement. That is four in every 10. Heres my favorite one. 47,000 bridges are classified as structurally deficient in this country. If you placed those bridges and end, they would stretch from chicago to houston. And you know, this is a problem not just for the federal governments. Its a problem for the state governments. Data shows that state spending on infrastructure dropped almost every year between 2009 and 2018. And in fact, 2018 marked the lowest level of state Infrastructure Spending as share of the economy in 35 years. So thats why were here today. Jeanne so thank you. I will echo zach. Thank you for participating and coming here. Thank you to cspan for sharing this with a broader audience. Its a terribly important subject for us to discuss. Now our format today is that we will have 20, 25 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. So we thank all the people who have participated and we think we have a pretty interesting discussion and varied questions that we can bring today. So with that, we would like to start with Vice President joe biden. [applause] mr. Biden hello, mr. Mayor. Jerry i guess they like you. [laughter] mr. Biden election . Jerry no, i said they like you. [laughter] mr. Biden oh, i thought you said theres an election coming. [laughter] mr. Biden you know i like infrastructure. Jerry thank you for joining us. Nks for having me. Jerry 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, climatefriendly system. So the question is 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 FriendlyGreen Infrastructure . Mr. Biden i think its a false choice. I think you do both. I think you start off with fixing the broken infrastructure in a modern way. For example, every one of those bridges were talking about you know, were going to spend billions more overtime as these collapse, cause problems. You see people losing their lives. But also, we can modernize them in a considerable way in terms of making them energyefficient. We can make sure, for example, what i want to for all of the existing highways as we repair, in addition to the new ones, put in literally 500,000 new charging stations in 2020s. And we can do that. When i say that to people, i know this is an infrastructure crowd. You all get it. But i say that to ordinary people out there and they say, wait a minute, charging stations. You go to the big city with all those scooters . They just plug in. Theres a lot we can do to create good jobs that are labor jobs paying 50, 60 an hour, and still at the same time increase the efficiency of the infrastructure as well as making it green. There are a lot more examples. I know i only have a little time i guess i will stop there. Jeanne i guess that leads to the second most important question, how do you pay for it . Taxes, how do you pay for it . Mr. Biden well, were 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. He never told me ahead of time. Joe will take care of this. Sheriff joe got to spend 90 billion in infrastructure out of that package. And we did a great deal of work. But what we did was we found a number of programs that, in fact for every dollar we spend, we brought four dollars off of the sidelines in private dollars, state dollars. I heard you speaking in the beginning when i was standing back there. What you have is, you know, it not a republican or democrat thing. Republicans used to like infrastructure. They used to actually build it, you know . Erieything from the eb canal on. But anyway, what happens is, if you want to grow American Business and enterprise, youve got to have the most modern ports, youve gotta have the most modern airports, you have to be able to get product from your factory to the customer quickly. So theres an overwhelming incentive and theres a desire in the local areas, as well as among businesses, to want to invest if they know the federal government is in. And the way i start off with it is and i come from the corporate state of america, you heard of it, dupont, delaware. It used to be the eighth largest in the world. It no longer is. The point is we reduce the Corporate Tax to 21 . I raised it back to 28 and i think we could get some republicans to support that, as well. That raises 740 billion over 10 years. I have a 1. 3 trillion infrastructure plan that breaks out in a whole bunch of ways. We can talk about. Thats number one. Number two, there are a number of corporations that are not paying any tax at all. So, there should be a minimum 15 . When they report earnings to wall street to keep their stock up, well, whatever that number is they report, they have to pay 15 of that, no matter what exemptions they have. Now, if they, in fact, are paying a 21 Corporate Tax rate across the board, they dont have to pay that. But a minimum 15 is another 420 billion. Again, one of the things that has happened, i know youre looking at me like, how will biden make that happen . I am pretty good at getting those things happening in congress. Republican voters are going, wait a minute, man, you have this 1. 9 trillion tax cut that didnt help me a hell of a lot if im not the top couple percent. Middleclass is getting killed. A lot of those folks are class republicans and conservatives about social values. I believe the bandaid has been ripped off and people are ready to do rational things. Jeanne would that include the gas tax . Mr. Biden i dont think we have to. I think we have to put in 50 billion off the bat on the gas tax coming from those additional taxes. But i dont think ive tried this before. Were not going to be able to raise the gas tax. We may be able to index it down the line, but i dont think we are going to be able to raise the gas tax from what it is now. Had it beend be raised for inflation. It would allow you to do all you had to do in the first 50 billion to invest in modernizing those highways, not counting building new ones. And one part we havent even talked about at all is, i think the biggest sector, and i dont want to get him in trouble, mayor garcetti, he can tell you. More energy, time, wages and are lost sitting on the l. A. Freeway. If were able to use the technology that is on the cusp of being able to have, first of all, more transit, were in a position where, for example, when i was asked to bailout detroit, that was one of the jobs i was given, i was able to recruit any part of the government. What we found out was 60 of the people lived in the city and their jobs are out of town but they didnt have automobiles. So we put in light rail. It modernized and made a fundamental change in the Economic Growth in that area. And 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 im a big rail guy, and highspeed rail. If we took what we appropriated money for, including from new york from new jersey and the tunnels that hadnt been modernized since 1916, all the way from orlando to tampa, from tallahassee all the way across into mississippi, these are all highspeed rail areas where, you know, and again i know there is a lot of transportation people out there, 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 shouldnt be able to build what identified,dors we and it could go 220 miles an hour. We cant do this now, but the three curves from washington to new york, you could reduce the travel time. And ive traveled over 2,100,000 miles on amtrak. Thats the gods truth. Thats what the guys on the rail tell me. If you straighten out those few curves, which would be a lot now, you could get there in an hour and a half, fundamentally changing every single lane of highway. One lane, 20 million. Do the same thing on railroads , and youre talking about 4 million. Jerry let me ask you you mentioned republicans. And there should be bipartisan support for doing the things youre talking about. One of the things republicans namednd a republican says. Trump mr. Biden not a republican. You can laugh. A lot of you are republicans and and you know hes not the republican party. [laughter] [applause] mr. Biden this aint your fathers republican party. Jerry thats true. One of the things republicans generically say is, one of the things these dont happen is the regulation is slowing them down. They slow down infrastructure. They make it more expensive. Particularly environmental regulations. The Trump Administration has tried to do something. Are they right . Mr. Biden theyre right but theyve got the wrong answer. We fundamentally eliminated and streamlined the ability to get through all of the regulatory requirements that were necessary. You see whats happening in the new york airport at laguardia . Absolutely. We can streamline significantly without damaging the environment. Ill give you a concrete example. When the president asked me to deal with anyway, i was asked to put together a cabinet initiative. It was on health care. And i turned to one of the major cabinet holders and i said, when will you have your assistant . This is on february 7. They said well have one by the end of the year. I said if you dont have one by march 1, youre fired. He says, you cant fire me. I said, go talk to the president. Im 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. And weve done that a number of places. And i would have somebody in the white house at one job. Just one. I mean, this is silly. Doing nothing but streamlining projects, but do it within the context of having people who in fact know what theyre talking about in terms of the environment. Most of it is just bureaucratic delay. Jeanne you mentioned setting priorities. And weve talked about new trains and new projects that can be willed faster if we streamline regulations. And yet, most jobs in infrastructure are maintenance. And what a lot of people talk 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 . Mr. Biden well, you have to do both. I dont think its an either or choice. For example, if youre talking about our ports, you have to build ports that are ready to handle these ships that are available. But it didnt 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 cranes that takes them off the docks. You have to go out and dreads. Youd be able to find areas you provide for the spoils. But thats old stuff. But the new stuff is the new kind of cranes. The speed at which it happens. Access from the highway, the interstate highway, to the port. We did that in south carolina. We do that down in savannah. Were doing it in florida. I dont see them as either or. We have to maintain not only what we bring up to snuff thats out there that hasnt 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. Im not being a wise guy when i say that. I didnt mean that in a disrespectful way. But the new technologies are capable of being able to do so much more. For example, theres 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 a 600 megawatts capacity out there. We should be investing in how you transfer of that capacity from here to the midwest. We havent invested the time, energy, or money into deciding how you transmit lean energy. Clean energy. Whether its wind or solar. Honest to god, i have not seen that dichotomy. Last example, water. Water is a big problem. Theres a lot of Potable Water thats in big trouble. We have to dig up those old wooden pipes. Thats true. But the new pipes we put in, the new mechanisms were able to put in should be much more resilient. Pipes that have been in the ground for over 40, 50 years already. You cant say im going to just move without dealing with whats there. Time before we run out of we want to ask some questions , that were sent to us by readers and