You're listening to the Bloomberg Sound On podcast. Catch us live weekdays at one Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
And Welcome to the Thursday edition of Bloomberg Sound On. I'm Joe Matthew in Washington. Welcome to Little Friday. The headline says it all as usual on the terminal Biden she meeting, delivers small wins and promises of better ties. This, of course, coming off the big meat yesterday. We talked about it here on sound On. We brought you the president's news conference last evening. We were up late last night,
weren't we. I'm glad that you were with us here because we walked through this whole exercise of the deliverables, what was accomplished, and at the very end of that, it always happens in the last question at these news conferences. Maybe you heard this already, Joe Biden being asked at the very end of his news conference, just as he's walking out.
Of the room.
Listen today, she's still before its press.
The assidates years to form any news earlier this year.
Well, look he is I mean, he's a dictator in the sense that he is a guy who runs the country that is.
Based on the sum of government totally different than ours. Let's get into it for a minute with Ian Marlow Bloomberg, senior reporter with us at the table here in Washington, meaning, great to see you, Thanks for coming back on here. I remember the last time the president used that word. This is why everyone stopped down, because it caused problems. President she doesn't like to be referred to as a dictator, even if it does meet the definition in the dictionary. Was that a calculated statement?
I don't.
I mean, it's hard to tell with with with Biden, some of the some of the gaffes that come out, but this it was a firm reminder that despite the agreements, despite the sort of general bonomis that you saw, these are still competitive rivals the US in China. There's no change there. These agreements were were interesting, and we can talk about that, but sort of surface level things that do nothing to really change the sort of worsening geopolitical
rivalry that you have between the US and China. And his remark is a sort of stark reminder of that it's also a stark reminder of the domestic pressure that he feels when it comes to the China relationships.
Well, that's where this was being aimed obviously, right, and President she had his own version of that if you read the readout that came from Beijing kind of scolding the US for Taiwan among other things. But let's talk about what was constructive here when it comes to counter narcotics, when it comes to military to military operations, the fact that they were even in the same room, all of those are kind of a big deal, are they not.
Yeah, there's been a really intensive, sort of six month process, starting with Secretary of State Anthony Blinkn's trip to Beijing back in June, which sort of unlocked all these cabinet level visits where clearly it seems they were saving up some of the big deliverables for the big you know, the meeting of the bosses to some extent, and what we saw was actually pretty interesting. I mean, on the domestic front, fentanyl and the opioid crisis in the US
is a huge issue for Biden in this administration. Blinken has made it a huge point of contact with his Chinese counterparts, and on the other side, the restoring military to military communications. This was something that actually, I don't think many people up until the last week when things
started trickling out, that many people expected. I think a lot of people thought China did not want to play ball on having the militaries work more closely together, because that means it would give the US confidence to sort of come into Asia with their military even more than they are already and just make sure that they can do it without causing a conflict. So it wasn't something that seemed to be in China's interest to do it.
So both of these developments are actually fairly interesting when it comes to that fascinating.
We appreciate your perspective very much. Ian. Let's get you in here a lot more often. Ian Marlow find his work on the Terminal and at Bloomberg dot Com. Appreciate the reporting and the perspective. As we add the wressman to the conversation, Jake Auchincloss joins now the Democrat from Massachusetts, who of course brings a unique view to what we're talking about here as a member of the China Select Committee. And we'll get to some other issues here as well.
Congressman that I know that you'll probably want to talk about here, but I wonder your thoughts having seen the president across the country and actually sit down with the leader of the world's second largest economy. Let's start with military to military communications. Will that prevent more close calls? For instance, in the South China Sea. How much progress did you see yesterday?
It's progress. Whether it prevents close calls is up to the People's Liberation Army. They're the ones who have been aggressive unprofessional in their behavior in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straight What it can definitely help prevent, though, is those close calls accidentally escalating into a shooting match.
Neither side wants war.
We need to reduce the chances for conflict, particularly inadvertent conflict, and having mill to mill ties not just at the political leadership level, but really at the field grade and general grade levels can reduce misunderstandings and allow these situations to be diffused. That's just good global governance for both sets.
Counter narcotics also on the agenda, I know that your state of Massachusetts, my former home, is no stranger to the impact of fentanyl. That is getting very good reviews here in an agreement to continue talks over the climate Congressman, should there have been more progress when it comes to climate or is that just a bridge too far in the first meeting in so long.
Well, China has recognized that reducing carbon emissions is in its own interests and has committed to taking bolder and more aggressive action. There's no doubt though, that the bigger near term win was the fentanyl accord. Now, I don't trust China on this issue. They have previously made commitments that they have not followed through on. But I'm somebody who commands a special operations mission to Panama working with
other countries to help with drug intradiction. I have seen firsthand the importance of having international assistance and combating drug trade, and it is critical that China cracks down on the export of basic ingredients for fentanyl production by the Mexican drug cartels. So even if they are only incremental or haphazard in their implementation of this agreement, it will still help stem the inflow of opioids and will save American lives. This is a win for the President.
I've got to ask you about the dictator remark before I move on because I'm guessing that there were on a lot of members, maybe including yourself, on the China Select Committee, who wanted to hear some language like that. Obviously we need to work together to some point, but we also want to keep a hard line when it comes to China. Was that a helpful remark or not.
It's a valid remark. Xijinging is a dictator. He is turning his country towards totalitarianism. He views individuals as ponds of the state. The United States recognizes the inherent value and dignity of individuals, not just in America, but in Ukraine and in Taiwan and in Israel, and we will defend democracy at home and abroad. There are clear divides over values that we will contest in the twenty first century.
So while we want to be smart in our competition with China, and we want to find those military to military de escalation points, we want to find those accords on fentanyl, on public health, on climate, We're going to be strong too. We're going to be strong too. We're going to be strong in our military posture in the
Indo Pacific. We're going to be strong in our diplomatic posture with South Korea and Japan and the Philippines in Australia, and we're going to be strong in articulating and defending our values.
Spending time with Congressman Auckin Closs here on Bloomberg sound On, just a day after the Senate voted to pass the stopgap measure, the Continuing Resolution that passed the House of Representatives without your support. Congressman, I know that you had a lot of concerns about the process looking for funding for Israel and Ukraine as well. What actually made you vote?
Know, in Washington, a member is only as good as his word. When I last voted to bail out the GOP from their dysfunction in September by voting yes on their Continuing Resolution, I said it was the last time until I saw clear, concrete, incredible plans to support Ukraine, and in the interim Israel has come under attacks. So now we have to support Ukraine and Israel, both of whom are fighting on the frontlines of the free world
against tyranny and against terror. And the GOP instead of putting forward robust funding to defend democracy, instead of just careening from crisis to crisis, so I could not put my vote towards this stop gap short term spending measure that fails to meet the moment, and the onus now is on the House Republican Conference and the Senate Republican Conference to negotiate in good faith on border security policy, on Ukraine AID so that we can unlock a bipartisan
and in Greece to get the whole package passed before the holidays, not just Israel, but Taiwan, Ukraine border security.
Altogether before the holidays is an important part of that statement, Congressman, that would be quite a maneuver. It might set a land speed record in the I believe twenty legislative days that we have left here between now and a potential government shut down in January. You think that'll be handled before the government is funded for the next fiscal year. Though we don't have to wait months and months to hear about Israel and Ukraine.
It should be Nobody should be breaking for the holidays until our allies have the materiel and humanitarian support necessary to continue defending their democracies. And it's doable. The Senate is passing paper back and forth right now. We understand what the unlock would be, and that is negotiations on border security policy. I have been early and strong in support of those negotiations. I understand that some Democrats are calcentrant on seeding anything on border security policy changes.
I see it differently.
I think that we really should be looking to upgrade and improve border security because it's not secure right now. Despite the President's best efforts, despite his actions within the bounds of law and humanity, the border is seeing crossings that far outpace the infrastructure it has to handle them. And we do need more funding. We do need to make changes there. It's going to be a compromise, but that's the point of Congress is to craft governance that gets to eighty percent answers.
You're here from your lips to God's ears when it comes to a number of these issues and the potential for Democrats and Republicans to work together in this new structure here. Congressman, you're a combat veteran. You know what it's like to walk with a rifle in your hand and lead an infantry division. Obviously, your experience in Afghanistan and you just mentioned Panama speaks to that. And I wonder if you could shed light on what's happening now
in Gaza. We've been hearing from the administration a message of restraint, of very deep concern about civilian lives, but also an Israeli army, the individual soldiers who are in great danger walking into Gaza city. What's your thought.
Military operations on urban terrain are the most challenging of any format to execute. And now the IDF is not just going door to door, it's literally going room to room, and it's going room to room having to discern between non combatants and combatants because Hamas uses Palestinian denizens as human shields. Hamas is holding hostages in underground tunnels. Hamas is storing munitions and command and control centers threaded through
civilian infrastructure like hospitals and schools. So the IDF has a daunting task before it. It needs to hold itself to the law of arm conflict, which requires distinction and necessity and proportionality. It also needs to aggressively execute its priorities, which are number one, rescuing those hostages. Number two destroying Hamas. Destroying Hamas, no cease fire, no truce with terrorists. Hamas
needs to be dismantled. And then number three is helping to architect just post war governance for Gaza, and I'm going to continue to be strongly in support of our ally as they defend the Jewish homeland and their citizens.
Well, you know, we've got a fascinating story from our Pentagon reporter, Congressman that the Defense Department is already ramping up military aid to Israel beyond what we've heard about in terms of the Iron Dome and the smart bombs from Boeing, but in fact, more laser guided missiles for Apache gunships, one hundred and fifty five millimeters shells, night vision devices, bunker buster munitions, even the new vs hum v's rather and Switchblade drones. Outside of all of this,
does Israel need more than that? What would the supplemental bring that it's not already getting.
I can't speak to the tactical needs of Israel. I'm
just not close enough to their operations. I have great confidence in the Pentagon, based on my briefings with them, that they are doing hourly assessments and close collaboration with the IDF based on long standing relationships of trust to discern what IDF needs, and so part of this is going to be sending aid ammunitions to the IDEF and part of it's going to be backfilling our own supplies to ensure that we are ready come what may, because as we see when the President had to deploy two
carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean, the nine to one one calls can come any hour of the day, and the United States needs to be ready to defend the global order.
Well, you know what that's like firsthand. And I have to ask you before you leave about Ukraine, because some would argue that the needs are in fact more desperate in Ukraine and if we roll into next year, their efforts to defend themselves could in fact be interrupted by a lack of funding. Is that how you see it?
The window of opportunity is closing. I don't want to put a date on it, but there's no doubt that the window of opportunity heading into an election years, the Republican Conference is increasingly subservient to the isolationism and fifth columnism of Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump. That we are losing the political capital and Congress to fund our ally and it's unacceptable. They are fighting on the front lines of the free world right now for about ten percent
of the Pentagon's annual budget. We have cratered half of Russia's conventional military capacity.
We have doubled NATO's border.
We've induced greater defense spending from our allies in Europe and the Indo Pacific. This has been a tremendous return on investment for national security dollars, and it has signaled not just to Vladimir Putin, but also do zijingping that America is always going to stand with right over might, and that message resonates. I assure you that they are watching closely congressional actions on Ukraine in Beijing as well as in the Kremlin.
You're listening to The Bloomberg Sound on pun Cast. Catch the program live weekdays at one Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa.
With all the gyrations and chaos we've seen in the House of Representatives the past couple of weeks, I've been known to say, look no further than the Chair of the Admin Committee if you want stability. His name is Brian Style. The congressman from Wisconsin joins us right now,
and it's good to see you. Congressman. You've been a reliable voice through this whole thing from your perch, not only as head of the Admin Committee, by the way, google it, you'll see how important that is, but also your service on the Financial Services Committee, the fact that you helped to tally the votes for our new speaker. I remember seeing you in the Speaker's rostrum on those important days. I wonder your thoughts today as your colleagues
head home for the holidays. The government's not going to shut down. Was this an important week in getting your conference together?
Well, another frustrating week, I think is to where we are in the House of Representatives in Congress writ large. The good news is is we were successful in keeping the government funded, open and operational. We could have seen another shutdown that doesn't actually help anybody, and at the end of the day, we actually spend more money to shut the federal government down than we do to keep it open.
And so it's been challenging times.
But the good news is maybe this Thanksgiving week ahead will give everybody a time to kind of calm down, and cooler heads will prevail because there's huge challenges facing us when Washington gets back to work.
Well, there sure are, and I don't have to tell you what everyone's saying. We just prolong the inevitable. We're going to shut down again in January. Are you worried that there's not enough time with this continuing resolution to figure all this out?
Well, I think there is sufficient time, But I think people have to come to the table and have an adult conversation and figure out how we're going to navigate this. And so the federal spending process has been broken for a long time on Capitol Hill, or trying to follow what we call regular order, which simply means following a law those passing nineteen seventy four that hasn't worked terribly well. What we need to do is get a little bit more serious here in Washington about what programs we can
actually afford to fund in which ones we can't. But also a broader conversation that's seventy five percent of all federal government spending is on autopilot. We're only having this part of the debate a federal government spending on twenty five percent of the total federal budget.
No business would operate this way.
And it adds a unique challenge here on Capitol Hill.
You know, I'm hearing more and more and more people talk about that, but when you talk to anyone running for president, they won't touch it. The Speaker might not be ready to touch that either. The last one certainly was not swearing off Medicare and Social Security and talk about prolonging the inevitable. At some point, we're going to have to get to this, Congressman, and if it were up to you, would it be part of this process starting next year? How long do we have to manage this well?
I do think Speaker Mike Johnson actually hit the nail on the head and was willing to bring it up. In his first speech as he became Speaker of the House, he discussed the importance of having a debt commission, bringing Democrats and Republicans together to say we need to get
serious about the fiscal challenges that we're facing. And I think the debt commission model actually works quite well, but it does take the political heft of everyone coming to the table to say we're actually going to get this done. What's the biggest driver of that. I think it's the rising interest costs on the debt, the carry costs if you're in the financial markets becoming more and more serious. Is we see interest payments on the debt approaching a trillion dollars.
I know you don't want to have this conversation, but there are two sides to this. You can cut spending or you can raise revenues. Does the Ways and Means Committee play a role here?
An absolutely critical role at Ways and Means. I wouldn't lose sight though, of the fact that economic growth is going to be a key driver. So if we look back coming into the pandemic, what we actually saw was economic growth driving tax tax revenue high, not by raising rates in taxes, but rather by growing the economy. That is our best path forward to grow ourselves out of this. That alone isn't going to solve all the problems, but it's got to be part of the conversation.
But don't make it a lot easier. Were you a fan of this idea of the laddered cr the fact that we're looking at two dates. I've asked so many people this Congressman, what the benefit is where that or how that advantages the speaker or the Republican Conference or maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way.
I don't think it's a massively significant difference. It maybe does give us an opportunity to break these apart and say, let's start getting some of the twelve spending bills across the line. Everyone that we get done is a step in the right direction. I would say the biggest win on this stopgap measures that avoids a Christmas Eve spending bill going through where every ornament is on the Christmas tree.
That's right. Well, you know that there's some big ornaments out there. I actually really probably shouldn't call them that because they're off the serious and I'm referring to the supplemental record. We talked about it earlier this hour with your colleague Jake Auchincloss from Massachusetts, Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, and border. You're probably getting tired of hearing guys like me rattle
this off. But I wonder if there will be an opportunity to pass these in one block, or if the Speaker has the right approach here Congressmen and vote on each of them individually.
I think we're best served if we break them apart. I think we have a true opportunity to get the Israel funding through to make sure that we're providing the resources Israel needs as it defends itself against the terrorist attacks that occurred from Hamas. I think as we look to the Ukraine funding, it's more likely that that it's the end of the day, gets combined with true border security.
Make sure that we secure the US Mexico border is of absolute paramount importance, and I think as we look at that opportunity, we may see that ultimately paired with the Ukraine funding, is a mechanism of forcing the Bite administration to truly change course on its border policies.
I almost wish we could have you on together because Jake Auchincloss, who is an ally of this White House from big blue Massachusetts, is very open to having that conversation. He told us on the air that Democrats need to come to the table on border security. It's about time, he said. The crossings are simply too high. So if you were sitting here now, where would just start. We hear from a lot of Republicans Congress and they say
the border's open. Obviously that's not literal, but how would you start to lower the flow of illegal immigrants crossing the border?
Jake's a friend of mine.
We actually discussed this on the House floor last week, so it's funny you bring it up. I think there's some pretty straight I think there's some pretty straightforward policies that we could move forward on, in particular, a stay in Mexico policy, which tells people who want to apply for asylum that it's better and safer to remain in
your home country when that application process goes through. What we do know is the overwhelming majority of individuals who have a claim for asylum, when those claims are finally a mudicated, they're found out to not be with merit. The challenges those claims are often not heard for three to four years, So a stay in Mexico policy is actually the right policy. That's the Trump Aero policy. The other piece of this is critical funding for border security.
The border patrol agents are currently understaffed, they're underfunded, and we need to get serious in those regards. And the third piece that I think should have some people being willing to come together is to say we need more judges to adjudicate the cases that are already here and in the pipeline.
People deserve their day.
Of course, they truly do have an asylum claim, there is a path for that, but again, the overwhelming majority of individuals crossing illegally don't actually have a claim that is validated when it's actually adjudicated on the merits.
So we've made some important distinctions here, and I would love to have you and Congressman Ackenclass join at some point here on Bloomberg to talk this out. Maybe we'll
move the needle on it a little bit. And I just wonder if there's a point in making the difference here distinguishing between border siksecurity and immigration policy, because this is obviously an incredibly tight labor market in this country, and we need immigrants from other countries, in many cases very smart people to help us in the high tech space, in other cases with manual labor that we can't get other people to do. Is that not part of this debate or should it be?
It's got to be part of the conversation because we have both a broken legal immigration system as well as a broken illegal immigration system. The challenge is that under the past two and a half years under the Biden administration, the broken illegal immigration system has gotten so bad that we need to address that before we can really have the conversation that is needed about fixing the broken legal
immigration system. And in many ways, as we look at what's playing out right now, our current asylum laws are being abused by individuals to the benefit of illegal immigration.
In many ways, the Mexican drug cartels that are now making money trafficking individuals in the United States of America, and so breaking that system of the illegal imigranation side is going to be absolutely essential before we can really get the political half to the work done to address the broken legal immigration system.
Well, we definitely covered some important ground there, and the fact of the matter is you can't get anything done without a convincing majority here, or at least it's a lot more difficult. And the Speaker Johnson mentioned recently in an interview on Fox that it might actually happen that you lose a member, that you lose a seat in an already thin majority, And I wonder if you're worried that that might be George Santas of New York we
heard from the Ethics Committee today. I'm sure it's not a fun thing to talk about, Congressman, but there seems to be another effort to expel the gentleman from New York, You think that's going to happen.
The Ethics Committee came out just a couple hours ago with their findings of fact. I think I owe it to the Ethics Committee and to the constituents in New York a full review of that report. But I can tell you the top line is incredibly concerning. The all submit a punishment that could be handed out as expulsion, and I'm going to review the report before finalizing that decision, but I can tell you the illegal actions that are set forward in this report are incredibly concerning.
Are you, colleagues, is he part of the conference? Do you guys see each other at meetings? Or is he in his office with the door closed. That's been the experience for reporters.
Yeah.
I don't have a deep relationship with him, and obviously he's occasionally on the House floor when we have votes, as are all four.
Hundred and thirty five members.
But again, I think people are going to review this on the merits, on the facts, and I think that's what we owe it to the American people, but in particular his constituents.
If the final decision is to expel him from Congress.
Understood, when you come back to town, assuming you're going to get back to Wisconsin at some point, Congressman, what's the first order of business you're going to have roughly twenty legislative days when you come back to the potential shutdown to the time this cr expires. How do you start by getting your arms around it?
As we look out coming back from Thanksgiving and Congress getting back to work, getting our funding bills, which are already behind the deadline. Getting those done is going to be absolutely essential. We've got to do that. At the same time is looking at the US national security situation. Particulars are relates to both Israel and Ukraine and US Mexico border policy. All of that has to be accomplished
before the end of the year to be successful. It's a lot on our plate, but getting the stopgap measure through this week, I think really improves our opportunity to be able to spend the time and attention as needed to address those when we come.
Back, well, I hope that it's a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving for you and your family in the first District of Wisconsin. Congressman, I hope you get home soon enough. Same goes for your staff thanks for being here for us to answer not only the easy ones, but the tough ones. Sometimes. It's good to see you, Brian Style with us the Congressman here on Bloomberg. Sound on It.
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Two years ago yesterday, I want you to just dial back in your brain. Where were you when Scores sat on a very chilly and bright north lawn of the White House. Actually, I guess it was on the south lawn for a massive signing ceremony in which President Biden reminded us of the prior administration and how we continued to try to celebrate infrastructure week. Well, now it's been infrastructure two years and joining us to get things started here before we bring in Secretary Pete Bodhajedge is our
buddy Jordan Fabian from Bloomberg's White House team. Were you on the lawn for that? Were you following the pull reports that day. You might not. I was not. I was spared the cold weather. Yes, was in the warm confinell One thing you did do was endure months and months of debate and wrangling over this thing. A lot of folks started to think it wouldn't even be possible. It ended up being a bipartisan an affair. I think
we can call it that. They're enough desent ours to call it that, but it's one that was not embraced by a lot of Republicans who've since been celebrating the arrival of money to their states. And I think President Biden might have predicted that, but that's the way Washington works. Is this the crowning achievement for this administration?
It's definitely up there with the Inflation Reduction Act and the COVID rescue plan that he passed early on.
That's the trinity.
Yeah, I would say those are the big three, if you will, Yeah, to make a sports analogy, and I think that the president you'll apply see him try to campaign on this as part of the way that he's going to try and convince Americans that the economy's heading in the right direction under his leadership. But it's not going to be easy, because wow, this is a big achievement.
A lot of these projects that were funded by this law are going to take months and years to get off the ground, and so Americans aren't necessarily seeing the byproduct of this law yet. But you know, five ten years from now, when Amtrak might be running smoother, the highway might have a fewer potholes, a new bridges in town. That's when you'll see the effects. But is it too late for him politically with twenty twenty four staring him down the way?
Here?
That's the real stuff, right, That's the stuff that people see and are impacted by. But how many years is the implementation? We can talk to the secretary about this in a moment. Do you have a sense of me? Is this over the course of the next decade you're going to see cranes popping up around the country. Absolutely.
Look for example, at the Amtrak announcement that he made. I believe it was last week you went to an Amtrak facility in Delaware announced sixteen billion dollars for rail reconstruction, new bridges, new tunnels.
That's all going to take a very long time to build.
But at the end of the day, and combined with that gateway project up in New York that's going to expand the train capacity, you could see a rail system that at least in the Northeast is running a lot better than it is now. But you know that could take five ten years, if not longer, to build, just looking at the track record of these kind of projects in the US.
Great to have you back, as always, Jordan Fabian, Bloomberg White House Reporter, hang out if you have some time, Jordan, You're always welcome here, as we welcome the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buddhajeedge is with us now live on Bloomberg. Mister Secretary, it's great to see you. I want to welcome you back to Bloomberg, and I guess I should start by saying happy birthday. We were joking earlier it was infrastructure week until it became infrastructure a year in your administration.
We were just discussing with Jordan Fabian, this is one of the big three crowning achievements of your administration, and I know that we've already started to see some of the benetts of benefits of that in terms of broadband connections in rural areas.
What comes next, Well, what's exciting about this stage is we are seeing more and more of the projects move into a construction phase. We have identified forty thousand infrastructure projects, the majority of them transportation related, that are getting benefits from this bill. And it's only been two years since the President signed it. It's a five year bill, so every month we're going to see projects added to that roster, and we're going to see them move through the process
toward completion. The thing that's been the most exciting and gratifying for me is the range of the projects getting done.
You know, some of them are multi year projects. I call them the cathedrals of our infrastructure, like I heard you just a moment ago mentioning the President's announcements, one of which brings the Hudson River Tunnel to a level of funding that makes it one of the biggest public works projects in recent American history, all the way through to some six figure grants that we're doing that are transformative for a rural community that needs a deadly intersection
to be redesigned, or even a municipal airport to be redone. So we're seeing things that are large and small rural and urban, And of course that was the president's vision in pushing so hard for this bill in the first place. That wouldn't just be a particular project, and wouldn't even be confoned to confined to one mode of transportation. It's transplanes, automobiles, and beyond.
You just mentioned a really important component here, and that is the five year lifespan of this bill, of this law. Will it be fully implemented in that time, Secretary? And do you wish you could frontload some of the stuff. That's going to take a couple of years.
Yeah, So that's how long we have to move the funding. But you know, the way the bill is set up is we can get some of it out the door sooner rather than later. So it's not just that kind of one fifth of the money moves each of those five years. And we want to do as much as we can quickly. Of course, the only thing more important than doing it quickly is doing it right. We're talking about taxpayer dollars. We're going through lots of steps to
make sure that they're spent responsibly and effectively. But you know, already north of two hundred billion dollars have moved and this is what it's going to take to really achieve that generational investment that the President was so focused on in pushing for this bill in the first place.
What's been in this two year period the biggest challenge of implementing this law. I know you've had Mayor Landrew criss crossing the country trying to put money to projects and implement what is a sweeping piece of legislation. What's the biggest hang up that you've faced.
Well, certainly, delivery is a challenge.
It's one thing to get a project funded, which is why most of these projects never got off the ground up until now, but it's another to see it all the way from getting funded to actually going into construction and then getting to that great day when we cut the ribbon and that new airport, that improved tunnel, that fixed up bridge, whatever it is is there for everybody
to use and to take advantage of. One of the biggest challenges has been workforce, which, of course, macroeconomically, is a much better issue to have, you know, where we're going to find the workers compared to the issue of where.
Are they going to find the work?
But it's still an issue, and it's one of the reasons why we've been very proactive on that. Our department's participating in a program that the presidents called for for workforce hubs to be set up around the country and getting creative things like a facility I saw in Pittsburgh.
They're doing a major airport project there.
There are a lot of working parents and working moms in particular, who are working in construction on that project who have a chance to do it because they set up a daycare at the construction site, a simple smart move that unlocked a new source of human capital and gave more workers access to these good paying, sometimes life transforming,
union construction jobs. So we're going to have to be creative to address some of those constraints in our supply side, whether it's workforce skill, raw materials, even But those are exactly the kinds of problems that we went into this line of work to be able to tackle because we're finally past the problem of there not being any funding out there.
Well, I know I'm not supposed to ask you this, and maybe you don't want to answer it, but I wonder if you worry about implementation of this bill being potentially interrupted if a Republican were to win the White House. Are you allowed to talk to me about that? What would happen?
Well, I guess what I'd say is that when politics interfere, it's never good. I mean, we've saw that recently with these shutdown threats that would have slowed us down or even stopped us on vital things like air traffic control hiring, which I think we all recognize needs we need to be doing more, not less right now, And it would have impacted at least some of the infrastructure work going on.
And you know right now, I mean, without getting into campaigns and elections, I can tell you that right now we have a congressional GOP in the House that is proposing major cuts that would cut our ports program, it would cut the program we've used to build safer railroad infrastructure.
So I do worry about that, But I also think we have a pretty strong defense against that, which is the fact that when these projects actually happen, when we announced them, even the elected officials who voted against the bill and fought the President at every turn, they seem to be perfectly happy to celebrate the projects with us, which I think is a good indication that this really is good policy.
You know I mentioned that before you came on in a conversation that we were having. Mister Secretary, what do you tell these Republicans who have railed and some still go on the floor. I think Tommy Tuberville was one of them, and then they go home and they celebrate the ribbon. Is that actually, like, is that a good problem for you to have because it sells the deal in the end despite the headache putting this together.
Yeah.
I mean, look, I have more appreciation for the handful of Republicans who crossed the aisle to work with Democrats and work with President Biden to get this bill done. But those who want to celebrate it after the fact, I guess, you know, welcome to the party. I mean, you know, these are going to benefit people. We don't have Republican roads or Democratic bridges. I mean, these are good projects regardless of politics, and they're going to benefit
people regardless of their politics. And you know, we're not going to let constituents suffer because their particular representative was shortsighted about this. We're trying to really push past the politics and just get the work done.
Well, it's not every day we get the Transportation Secretary on the air, and we are talking with Pete Buda Jedge here live on Bloomberg. We're a week out from Thanksgiving. My god, it's a week from today. I wonder what your team is working on and trying to anticipate in terms of disruptions or safety concerns on one of the busiest travel periods of the year.
Well, you know, over the summer, we saw numbers that broke records in terms of TSA screening showing us we had all time record high levels of passengers taking to the air. I think the same thing is going to be true going to Thanksgiving in the winter holidays too, And so it's the most important thing to me is that the airlines be ready to take care of their passengers and that our department is ready to have those
passengers back when they hit an issue. You know, compared to even one and a half years ago, there is dramatically better, stronger passenger protection that our department can enforce. People should go to Flight Rights dot Gov ideally before you, but I take it to learn a little more about what each of the different airlines is responsible for offering their passengers that again we can enforce if there's an issue. We're also trying to make sure that operational concerns are
being met. It's why we're aggressively working to modernized FAA technology, hire more air traffic controllers to support that increased demand. Economically, it's welcome to see more and more people returning to the skies because remember, since we're talking about anniversaries and what it was like a couple of years ago, you know, it was only a little over a couple of years ago, everybody was wondering if the airlines would go out of business. Now we have kind of the opposite set of problems.
We just need to make sure the system can keep up.
So no meltdowns, no big Southwest messages this year that we have to plan for.
Well, they're better not be.
And if there is a problem, the airlines know that we are going to be on it very quickly and holding them accountable. But look, we've seen, to their credit, we've seen them step up. We've seen a lot of improvement. The rate of cancelations is actually below what it was before COVID so far this year. I'm looking to the airlines to keep that up and we'll do everything we can to help them meet those goals.
Mister Secretary, I want you to know that your views are important to us around here. We like to walk out on policy on this show, so I'd love to see you again continue this conversation. Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buhage Edge, I hope you have a great Thanksgiving you too. Thank you, Thank you, sir for being with us as always. I'm Jill, Matthew and Washington. Thanks for being with us
on Bloomberg Sound On. Jordan's still here. I convinced him to hang out for a minute, and I'm curious Jordan, Phoebe and your thoughts on this from your perch at the White House. This is going to be the role out here for the administration. How did he do?
I think they have the right idea, which is to try and get this money out the door as quick as possible, but also making sure that you know that money isn't just being siphoned off or stolen. You know that it's going to the right.
To the right place.
But of course the struggle is going to be again going back to the politics of this, which you know he's limited in.
What he could talk about.
Yeah, you know, how does the president ensure that he receives credit. And you know, this is something the President talked about in the Obama administration. He still talks about it now that.
The saluce pitch, the sales pitch that.
You know they did that big stimulus project. I'm sure some Americans remember those tiger signs that were around on road projects about you know, fifteen years ago, no one.
Knew what tiger was. It was.
It was the Obama stimulus that funded those.
Your tax dollars paid for this, same for Obamacare. Right, he said they should have taken a whistle stop to around the country just to explain to people what it was.
Right. And so I'm interested to see heading into the campaign here. And you know Biden has done this a few times, but does he lean into it more where he gets a little aggressive, goes into a district or a state. You know, I could think of the Brent Spence Bridge in Kentucky and Ohio, like right at Mitch McConnell's backyard.
He showed up for it.
Yeah, like he showed up and made nice. But as we turned to twenty twenty four, does he go in there and throw some oultboats and said, hey, the reason this bridge is happening ain't because of you know, Joe Shmoe Gop.
It's because of me. It's because of me, the other Joe Jordan. Great to see you again, Jordan Fabian. He covers the White House for us and with us live on Bloomberg. Thanks again to the Second Terry. Thanks for listening to the Sound on podcast. Make sure to subscribe if you haven't already, at Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts, and you can find us live every weekday from Washington, DC at one pm Eastern Time at Bloomberg dot com