Speaker 1: Wake that ass up in the morning the Breakfast Club Morning.
Speaker 1: Everybody is dj n V Charlemagne to God. We are
Speaker 1: to Breakfast Club. Angel RII is with us as well,
Speaker 1: and we have a special guess in the building, the
Speaker 1: US Secretary of Transportation.
Speaker 2: Pete Boody Judge. Welcome back. Thank you, Secretary Pie, it's
Speaker 2: good to be back.
Speaker 3: Good news here.
Speaker 1: Before you came in, I was talking about Secretary Pete
Speaker 1: about his cars, and you were saying that I see
Speaker 1: some way that he likes the new Mustang, the electric Mustang,
Speaker 1: and that you They said you were in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I thought we should practice what we preached.
Speaker 3: We're encouraging electric vehicles, and I thought we ought to
Speaker 3: do that too. So our security detail we had them
Speaker 3: get a Mustang Mochi, which is how I usually get
Speaker 3: around when I'm in Washington, and it's great. My favorite
Speaker 3: part is when they took delivery of it. Part of
Speaker 3: what standard. You know, they get the keys, they get
Speaker 3: the paperwork, and then they get a gas card for
Speaker 3: buying gas, you know, to reimburse that. And they're never
Speaker 3: going to need that because it doesn't need any gas.
Speaker 3: Electric taxpayers will never have to pay for a drop
Speaker 3: a gas going into that car.
Speaker 2: Question, does the Secretary of Transportation have to pay for transportation?
Speaker 2: Do you get free calls and stuff like that?
Speaker 3: Sure, it depends. So if I'm on personal travel then
Speaker 3: then yeah, obviously that's that's out of my pocket. If
Speaker 3: it's work travel or if there's you know, security you
Speaker 3: need to get around, then it's a little different. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean usually you know, you get free calls. I
Speaker 3: do not get free cars. No, Like I've like, we
Speaker 3: got a minivan that that you know, if I'm dropping
Speaker 3: the kids off daycare, that's just our our family car.
Speaker 3: You know we got I never thought I'd be a
Speaker 3: minivan guy, and then you got kids. We very much.
Speaker 3: It's actually great. Yeah, And it's it's a plug in
Speaker 3: that one plugs in too, so you can it's a hybrid,
Speaker 3: so you plug it in, you get maybe thirty forty
Speaker 3: miles off of the electric and if you go any
Speaker 3: further than that, like if we're on a road trip,
Speaker 3: then it switches to game.
Speaker 2: You can get a cooler car. You can get like
Speaker 2: an electric escalade or something. You got the electric suv.
Speaker 2: You don't have to drive a menis that out? Act
Speaker 2: like you're from Indiana all your life.
Speaker 3: Now I'm literally from Indiana and I'm literally a dad.
Speaker 3: We're Midwestern dads. I got two kids. I never thought
Speaker 3: i'd be a minivan guy, but I gotta say it's
Speaker 3: kind of that's kind of the right answer for us
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 1: I'm meant to ask this before we get jump into it.
Speaker 1: When you talk about the electric grid, right when it
Speaker 1: comes to all these electric CAUs they're hopefully focusing I
Speaker 1: guess in the next five years they want all calls
Speaker 1: to turn over to electric. Do we have a strong
Speaker 1: enough grid to hold all those electric cars and all
Speaker 1: the electric battery cause and everything that we need, and
Speaker 1: also when people are driving from state to state, is
Speaker 1: enough to make sure that these people won't run out
Speaker 1: of electric and be on the side of the roads.
Speaker 3: Right, So the honest answer is we cannot run tomorrow's
Speaker 3: cars on today's grid. But the other part of the
Speaker 3: answer is that's why we're upgrading the grid and the
Speaker 3: chargers so presidence goes. By the end of this decade,
Speaker 3: we want half of new car sales to be electric.
Speaker 3: We think we can get there. It's not for everybody.
Speaker 3: It's not for everybody. Overnight prices still need to come down,
Speaker 3: but we think we can get to half by the
Speaker 3: end of the decade. We also have to have about
Speaker 3: half a million chargers around the country by the end
Speaker 3: of the decade, and we're funding that. Part of what
Speaker 3: was in the President's Infrastructure Law is about seven and
Speaker 3: a half billion dollars that we're using to really do
Speaker 3: two things. One is where you're talking about, where you
Speaker 3: go out on a road trip, you know there's going
Speaker 3: to be a gas station. We got to make sure
Speaker 3: when you go on a road trip, you know there's
Speaker 3: going to be a charging station. But the other piece
Speaker 3: is we got to make sure there's community charging. So
Speaker 3: if you live in a single family home where you
Speaker 3: got a garage, then it's easy. You can just plug
Speaker 3: in your wall. At our house in Michigan, we just
Speaker 3: plug it in a regular wallplug. But if you're in
Speaker 3: an apartment building, if you're in a dense area, and
Speaker 3: especially if you're in a low or middle income area,
Speaker 3: then it might not yet be profitable for companies to
Speaker 3: put in chargers. So we've got to make sure that
Speaker 3: we accelerate that process, put a little incentive in to
Speaker 3: make the economics move in the right direction so that
Speaker 3: everybody has access because then they have a chance at
Speaker 3: the savings that come from not having to buy gas.
Speaker 3: So it's definitely a process the grid has to be
Speaker 3: upgraded to. But remember it's also complicated and expensive to
Speaker 3: move millions and millions and millions of gallons of liquid
Speaker 3: fuel around this country every day. At the end of
Speaker 3: the day, in the long run, it's more efficient to
Speaker 3: move electrons through a so to speak, through transmission lines
Speaker 3: than it is to move liquids around. But you know
Speaker 3: this is not going to happen overnight. It's going to
Speaker 3: be years. We're underway, we're working out.
Speaker 1: I have to one questions before we jump inc the
Speaker 1: electric cost stuff, because this is something that I'm into.
Speaker 1: They say that those batteries are just as bad.
Speaker 2: For the environment as gasoline and fuel. Is Is that true?
Speaker 3: No? But there are issues with them, uh, And a
Speaker 3: lot of the issues have to do with how the
Speaker 3: materials that go into them are extracted. So we've got
Speaker 3: to make sure that they are extracted under good labor
Speaker 3: conditions and their mind appropriately. We're trying to get more
Speaker 3: of that done in the US. Under the Trump administration,
Speaker 3: they didn't care a lot about electric vehicles. As you know,
Speaker 3: China got an edge, and China does not care about
Speaker 3: things like mining, environmental conditions, or child labor, any of
Speaker 3: those other issues. We do. And so we're working to
Speaker 3: make sure that we get more of these things sourced domestically.
Speaker 3: But it's a different set of problems, so that those
Speaker 3: are issues we take them seriously. But the problem with
Speaker 3: burning regular gas is it's causing the climate to change.
Speaker 3: That's not the problem that they were worried about on
Speaker 3: when it comes to batteries. Climate change is getting faster,
Speaker 3: it's getting worse. Is real. People can pretend otherwise, and
Speaker 3: I know there's a lot of oil and gas profits
Speaker 3: to be protected by pretending otherwise. It's just it's just true.
Speaker 3: We can see it all around us. And the biggest
Speaker 3: part of the US economy. Of all these sectors of
Speaker 3: the economy, the one that puts the most carbon pollution
Speaker 3: into the air is transportation. So to me is transportation sector.
Speaker 3: That means our goal has to be to try to
Speaker 3: be the biggest part of the solution, and part of
Speaker 3: that is cars, and big part of that is going electric.
Speaker 1: Last question I had was Elon Musk was very mad
Speaker 1: at you guys. Right, they said that he was giving
Speaker 1: you guys the middle finger, that he wanted some tax rebates,
Speaker 1: and you guys wouldn't give them the rebates, so he
Speaker 1: decided to take the money off of his cars himself.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That's when the Tesla's were at his lowest at at
Speaker 1: one time. What should your thought process on that?
Speaker 3: And Elon Musk, Look, what they have built a Tesla
Speaker 3: is extraordinary and that's part of why evs are available.
Speaker 3: Push the market forward, biggest maker of vvs in the country.
Speaker 3: Our job is to try to make sure that the
Speaker 3: industry as a whole does well, and we want to
Speaker 3: make sure that it does well in America with American workers.
Speaker 3: And obviously we care about workers having a free and
Speaker 3: fair choice to join a union, which some auto companies
Speaker 3: do and some auto companies do not. Past that, we're
Speaker 3: not out to put a thumb on the scale. We
Speaker 3: just need to make sure these cars are safe and
Speaker 3: we want any business on American soil with American workers
Speaker 3: making American cars to thrive.
Speaker 4: Mayor Pete, you know one of the things that Mayor
Speaker 4: Pete now, Secretary.
Speaker 3: Pete, I'll always answer to Mayor and I.
Speaker 5: Love that I think it really prepares you for where
Speaker 5: you are now. I want to just commend you on
Speaker 5: the fact that you've been one of the most consistent
Speaker 5: administration voices.
Speaker 4: That have been on this show.
Speaker 5: That's right, And I also think that it's really interesting
Speaker 5: that other than that, the most times I hear about
Speaker 5: you is when something went wrong in transport to and
Speaker 5: nine times out of ten, your responsibility is to hold
Speaker 5: the folks accountable. You didn't do it, for example, the
Speaker 5: railroad derailments earlier this year, and it would love for
Speaker 5: you to talk to the audience about how you responded
Speaker 5: to the railroad administration responded to those derailments, the fact
Speaker 5: that they happened regularly every day, but those in particular.
Speaker 3: Yes, the one that god the most attention was in
Speaker 3: February this year in Ohio there was a Norfolk Southern
Speaker 3: train who was carrying hazardous materials. It derailed and it
Speaker 3: sent up it in order to prevent an explosion, they
Speaker 3: actually burned off some of the material that was in there. Thankfully,
Speaker 3: there were no fatalities there, but it was terrifying for
Speaker 3: the town there, called East Palestine, and there was a
Speaker 3: lot of frustration, a lot of anger, and a lot
Speaker 3: of misinformation that really terrorized the community. And when that happened,
Speaker 3: over time, I realized that we had to change the
Speaker 3: way we approached these Normally, a Secretary of Transportation doesn't
Speaker 3: go to an active HASTHMAD site or an active crash site,
Speaker 3: not because people in this job don't care about the issue,
Speaker 3: but because we have a National Transportation Board Safety Board.
Speaker 3: It's designed to be independent. They do the investigation, we
Speaker 3: do the policy. But what I found was people wanted
Speaker 3: and needed to see a visible administration figure there, and
Speaker 3: honestly I was a little slow to see the importance
Speaker 3: of that given the misinformation that was going on. So
Speaker 3: I knew that I had to get out there and
Speaker 3: do something that was a little bit of a break
Speaker 3: from the norm but was very important so that the
Speaker 3: people who live in that community knew that they wouldn't
Speaker 3: have to wait a year for the NTSB report to
Speaker 3: come out to know that we cared about them and
Speaker 3: we were supporting. Now, to be clear, our department was
Speaker 3: on the ground from the first hours of that incident.
Speaker 3: It's not like we weren't present or like we forgot,
Speaker 3: but the information layer and the things that they were
Speaker 3: being told as they had very legitimate questions like is
Speaker 3: my house safe? Is the water safe? Which it was,
Speaker 3: but they needed a testing to prove that is the
Speaker 3: air safe. The community was so terrorized by that that
Speaker 3: we had to take additional steps to get good information there.
Speaker 3: But here's the other thing that's really important. When I
Speaker 3: went out there, I wasn't just there to show my face.
Speaker 3: I was there to talk about safety reforms that we need.
Speaker 3: That incident woke up a lot of Americans to something
Speaker 3: people didn't know, which is that all along we have
Speaker 3: had every single day on average to Arouilda, were about
Speaker 3: a thousand to rail onents a year in this country,
Speaker 3: and there's nothing new. In fact, it used to be more.
Speaker 3: They came down from many thousands a year because of regulations.
Speaker 3: People don't always want to hear about regulations. Regulations aren't
Speaker 3: always popular if they make us safer. And so right now,
Speaker 3: there's a bill sitting in Congress called the Railway Safety Act,
Speaker 3: bipartisan bill that would give my department more power to
Speaker 3: hold these railroad companies accountable. It would allow us to
Speaker 3: increase the fines to something that would really get their attention,
Speaker 3: because right now, a multi billion dollar corporation might not
Speaker 3: really care that much about the fines at the level
Speaker 3: that we're allowed to assess if we catch them in
Speaker 3: a violation other measures around the physical safety of the
Speaker 3: tank cars that these chemicals move in, And it's just
Speaker 3: sitting there, and some of the same members of Congress
Speaker 3: who couldn't wait to get on TV to try to
Speaker 3: make a part of an issue out of this still
Speaker 3: haven't gone on the record on whether they're four or
Speaker 3: against it. By February, it's going to be a year
Speaker 3: since that crash happened. And again, there are other derailments,
Speaker 3: thankfully usually not as serious, but there are other derailments
Speaker 3: happening every day. We need those enforcement tools, we need
Speaker 3: that stepped up action, and we're doing everything we can
Speaker 3: under the laws as it exists, but we need Congress
Speaker 3: to do more too.
Speaker 1: Is that a limit with the cars that the actual
Speaker 1: trains can carry, because anybody that lives in seventy five
Speaker 1: to seven Virginia knows that those trains are going for
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty minutes, So is there a limit that
Speaker 1: maybe we break it up so you wouldn't have that
Speaker 1: many disriyments.
Speaker 3: There's not, but we're looking at the safety issues of that,
Speaker 3: because now you've got trains that are a mile long,
Speaker 3: two miles long, three miles long. It is amazing. And
Speaker 3: this is another thing we're working on right now. There's
Speaker 3: actually no legal requirement on how many people need to
Speaker 3: be staffing that train. The railroad industry. Bobby has been
Speaker 3: pushing to have it be down to one. Imagine one
Speaker 3: person on a train that's three miles long. We see
Speaker 3: the back of it, no, I mean we take you
Speaker 3: an hour to walk to the back of it. So
Speaker 3: we were putting through a rule that would establish a
Speaker 3: minimum staffing standard. But we're also looking at some of
Speaker 3: the safety implications of trains being that long. Then you
Speaker 3: have the community implications when I'm in especially in smaller communities,
Speaker 3: and they have these railroad crossings and you get stuck
Speaker 3: behind it twenty minutes and it's not crazy for your commute,
Speaker 3: but sometimes that's an ambulance, you know, Sometimes that's that's
Speaker 3: a safety issue. Somebody really needs to get there. But
Speaker 3: we're also changing that. So we have another part that
Speaker 3: I love the Presence Infrastructure Plan is we have dollars
Speaker 3: for railroad crossing elimination. Now we can't get all of them.
Speaker 3: There's there's one hundreds of thousands of these, but we
Speaker 3: can go to some of the places. We were in
Speaker 3: North Dakota and forced North Dakota. They've been trying to
Speaker 3: get rid of this railroad crossing since I think nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety one. Everybody in town when we went there and
Speaker 3: knew about the spot we were talking about. I think
Speaker 3: it's forty first Street that just cuts off one part
Speaker 3: of town where the university is, from another part of town.
Speaker 3: And we're finally we brought the funding that's going to
Speaker 3: allow them to eliminate that crossing. We're in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
Speaker 3: You know a lot about orange We're with the Congressman
Speaker 3: Cliburn there celebrating work that's going to help there where
Speaker 3: you have highways and railways that cut people off. So
Speaker 3: in addition to holding the railroads accountable, we're also looking
Speaker 3: at the physical infrastructure here. Now I would be remiss
Speaker 3: if I did not mention that as we speak, House
Speaker 3: Republicans are pushing cuts to a program called CHRISSY, the
Speaker 3: Consolidated Rail Infrastructure Safety Improvement Program, which is one of
Speaker 3: the main sources of federal dollars we use to improve
Speaker 3: the safety of our railroads. I would argue that now
Speaker 3: is the time to double down on that, not to
Speaker 3: cut it. And you're going to hear me making a
Speaker 3: lot of noise about this as they're deciding how to vote.
Speaker 5: You know, the other thing you brought up East Palestine,
Speaker 5: which is not exactly the same as what's happening in
Speaker 5: the Middle East and Palestine is conflict. There are a
Speaker 5: lot of folks in the community who feel very strongly
Speaker 5: about the amount of four and eight dollars that are
Speaker 5: going overseas to support but aren't feeling that same type
Speaker 5: of aid and relief in our own communities. Department of
Speaker 5: Transportation is responsible for some of the relief that can
Speaker 5: be provided to the community. So can you talk a
Speaker 5: little bit about what you all are doing in that regard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're focused on what we can do with the
Speaker 3: federal dollars that have been entrusted to us to make
Speaker 3: everyday life better. It's part of why I'm here in
Speaker 3: New York.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we've got the Hudson Tunnel. This is a
Speaker 3: ton of hundreds of thousands of people count on this
Speaker 3: to get their communities from here to New Jersey and beyond.
Speaker 3: It's one hundred years old. And if there was a
Speaker 3: problem that took that tunnel out of.
Speaker 2: Service, it's one hundred years old than one.
Speaker 3: Hundred years old, I think it was. It was finished
Speaker 3: when Teddy Roosevelt was present.
Speaker 2: Connect new jurority dependentation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've probably been through it very very often, right,
Speaker 3: and you're going through century old infrastructure. We got one
Speaker 3: in Baltimore that that we're redoing. It will be known
Speaker 3: as the Frederick Douglas Tunnel. Right now, it's known as
Speaker 3: the Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel. Well, he said, the Hudson
Speaker 3: Hudson Yeah, yeah, East River Tunnel needs some work too,
Speaker 3: and we're working on that. So and this is a
Speaker 3: major I mean the Hudson Tunnel piece alone, that's gonna
Speaker 3: be one of the biggest public works projects in modern
Speaker 3: American history.
Speaker 2: The twenty ninety ten million dollars.
Speaker 3: That's just the start we've got. We've got billions more
Speaker 3: identified in our transit programs, and then we're gonna we're
Speaker 3: gonna have more announcements to make about that. It's gonna
Speaker 3: be billions. But yeah, this is two hundred ninety two
Speaker 3: million dollar piece that's gonna do the concrete casing around
Speaker 3: Hudson Yards that that's a big piece of it because
Speaker 3: we really need it. People count on it every day,
Speaker 3: whether they think about it or not. In fact, our
Speaker 3: goal is that people don't have to think about it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: if you're not thinking about infrastructure, if you're not thinking
Speaker 3: about whether there's a hole in the road that's going
Speaker 3: to screw up your car, or whether your train's going
Speaker 3: to be late because there's a problem in the tunnel,
Speaker 3: then you can think about whatever else you're dealing with
Speaker 3: in life. You can think about your job, you can
Speaker 3: think about your kids, you can think about your.
Speaker 2: Faith, especially when you all that traffic that is going
Speaker 2: to cause because of the construction while we're doing it.
Speaker 3: That's not what I had in mind.
Speaker 5: But the other thing is if you put back on
Speaker 5: your mayor p heat, it's not just folks getting to work.
Speaker 4: There are folks who are going to work on these projects.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and that's the because, look, some of these projects
Speaker 3: are going to take a while before they're done, but
Speaker 3: even during that period, you're talking about where things are
Speaker 3: you know, delayed or backed up. The jobs that that's creating,
Speaker 3: and we're working to make sure that that there's fair
Speaker 3: access to those jobs. We've heard so many stories from
Speaker 3: from communities and people who look at you know, the
Speaker 3: project finally comes to their neighborhood and they say great,
Speaker 3: but nobody working on this project looks like they're from
Speaker 3: this neighbor.
Speaker 4: My dad is the main one with the bullhorn, this
Speaker 4: bother yea.
Speaker 3: So we've got local higher preferences that that we're now
Speaker 3: able to do under the law. We've been working with
Speaker 3: project labor agreements and community benefit agreements. I was in
Speaker 3: LA their program called Higher LAX specifically for people who
Speaker 3: are from the same zip code as Lax to get
Speaker 3: into these building trade jobs. And some of them, you know,
Speaker 3: some of them had had been homeless in the past,
Speaker 3: some of them had had an involvement in the justice system,
Speaker 3: and we're now making good money educating their kids, buying
Speaker 3: a home. I mean, these are transformational opportunities when you
Speaker 3: get some of these construction jobs. So we're really excited
Speaker 3: about that. Will it take so some of the projects
Speaker 3: we can do in one construction season, that's going to
Speaker 3: be years.
Speaker 1: Four years more minimal casing, so the concrete casing we
Speaker 1: think they do in about three years other parts of
Speaker 1: it are going to go well into the twenty thirties.
Speaker 3: It's just that big of a vision when you talk
Speaker 3: about the overall connection of what's called the Gateway linking
Speaker 3: all the way there. But that's that's part of what
Speaker 3: we know you have to do. You have to have
Speaker 3: a portfolio of projects from ones are going to be
Speaker 3: done by this year to ones that you know some
Speaker 3: other Transportation secretary is going to get to cut the
Speaker 3: ribbon on one day. But that also means a pipeline
Speaker 3: of work you can expect, and you know, some of
Speaker 3: these are a long time coming. The other big one
Speaker 3: that we're excited about that were announcing the Second Avenue subway,
Speaker 3: extending that out to one hundred and twenty fifth Street.
Speaker 3: That neighborhood has been asking for decades to get that
Speaker 3: kind of subway access and we're finally able to get
Speaker 3: it done with this kind of fun day and it's
Speaker 3: I know that's going to change lives. Yes, the job's
Speaker 3: working on it, but also just the jobs that people
Speaker 3: are going to be able to have because they can
Speaker 3: take advantage of the Transit.
Speaker 1: Secretary p There was a rumor that that's been going
Speaker 1: on probably since I've been alive that in any state
Speaker 1: that you're in, if the roads are bad and you
Speaker 1: hit a pothole, you can send the bill to your
Speaker 1: local or state official and they were replenishing money.
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 3: I would not bank on that.
Speaker 1: I don't know why people say it every time, because
Speaker 1: if they say, if you get a flat tie, because
Speaker 1: if we pay for the roads and it is a
Speaker 1: pothole and image my tie, that there was a way
Speaker 1: to get your money back, But that's not true.
Speaker 3: Not in any place that I've ever worked as mayor.
Speaker 3: My sworn enemy was potholes. Right. Mayors hate potholes, Yes,
Speaker 3: because you see them and you get calls about them,
Speaker 3: and you're trying.
Speaker 2: To fix them, and I'll destroy your call.
Speaker 3: So one other thing, I got it, Yes, But they
Speaker 3: called the pothole tax, right, So sometimes people are paying
Speaker 3: so much in terms of the cost that you then
Speaker 3: have to take on because the road's not in good shape.
Speaker 3: You would have been better off, obviously, would all be
Speaker 3: better off if the roads were better, which is why
Speaker 3: we're fixing the roads. And the single biggest piece of
Speaker 3: all the funding we have across is trillion dollars. I
Speaker 3: think that the biggest individual set of investments ties back
Speaker 3: to the roads and the bridges that go with it,
Speaker 3: but also we're trying to make the roads last longer.
Speaker 3: We just cut the ribbon at a facilit We actually
Speaker 3: have a research facility inside of the dot. We're belonging
Speaker 3: to the dot. It's in Virginia. We have a few
Speaker 3: research facilities, but this one. One of the things I saw.
Speaker 3: There was a test bed where they've laid in different
Speaker 3: types of pavement and concrete. If you look at it
Speaker 3: from in a cross section, that's like a layer cake,
Speaker 3: and we have three hundred censors through it, and we're
Speaker 3: going to be able to monitor and measure how it
Speaker 3: responds to different weather conditions. They have machinery that can
Speaker 3: test an eyebeam or a piece of concrete until it
Speaker 3: fails by putting one hundred thousand pounds of pressure on
Speaker 3: it or simulating a million trucks over the course of
Speaker 3: years and years in an accelerated way. So we're trying
Speaker 3: to be smarter with the technology so that this stuff
Speaker 3: lasts longer. The big problem is in the spring. What
Speaker 3: happens is, especially if you're anywhere north of Well certainly
Speaker 3: anywhere like New York or where I come from. The
Speaker 3: freeze thaw cycle means you get some water, it gets
Speaker 3: into those cracks, then it freezes, it expands, it starts
Speaker 3: to crack the surface, then it melts. Then you get
Speaker 3: more water getting in there, and it gets worse and worse.
Speaker 3: We think we can be much much smarter with our
Speaker 3: materials and with our technology. I know this isn't considered
Speaker 3: the sexiest thing, but I love the potential of just
Speaker 3: making our pavement more durable because it means less potholes,
Speaker 3: and it means our taxpayer money goes further so we
Speaker 3: can do more good projects.
Speaker 2: Question about the Hudson Tunnel again. With those changes, when
Speaker 2: that increase the price of traveling, will metro cards go
Speaker 2: up again?
Speaker 3: No, at least not as a result of what we're funding.
Speaker 3: I don't know what the plans are for MTA or
Speaker 3: how they're thinking about their fares. I know congestion pricing,
Speaker 3: which is a state project, that's part of how they're
Speaker 3: planning to fund some of their work, but no, part
Speaker 3: of what we're trying to do is provide more of
Speaker 3: the federal funding because you couldn't raise fares high enough
Speaker 3: to cover the cost of these, I just can't do
Speaker 3: a you know, fifteen to twenty billion dollar project on
Speaker 3: the strength of the fares. There's there's a lot of
Speaker 3: money to go around people to stop. You couldn't keep
Speaker 3: using it. That's why there has to be a federal role.
Speaker 3: And by the way, I think it's fair game for
Speaker 3: there to be a federal role because even if you
Speaker 3: don't use that tunnel every day, we're all living in
Speaker 3: an economy where if that tunnel was out of service,
Speaker 3: that would impact the economy all the way back to
Speaker 3: our house in Michigan.
Speaker 4: One of the other things that I think is important.
Speaker 5: We of course saw the Supreme Court decimate affirmative action
Speaker 5: for higher education earlier this year during the summer. I
Speaker 5: know that a day program at SDA took some hits
Speaker 5: as well. This attorney that's on these cases is relentless
Speaker 5: about it. Are you at all concerned about the impacts
Speaker 5: on the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program at DOT and how
Speaker 5: that might impact even some of the companies who are
Speaker 5: working on projects around the infrastructure.
Speaker 3: I am. They're coming after our DV program too. Now,
Speaker 3: we believe that program is not just good policy, but
Speaker 3: it's legally sound. We're going to fight for it. We
Speaker 3: know that it's made a difference in terms of people
Speaker 3: getting access to these jobs and opportunities that come with it.
Speaker 3: Just yesterday I was speaking to the National Association of
Speaker 3: Minority Contractors. They are gearing up, getting ready, and by
Speaker 3: the way, what they want is a fair shot to compete.
Speaker 3: But these are businesses that have been you know, over
Speaker 3: the years, you look in the past, systematically excluded the
Speaker 3: whole basis of the dB program. The reason why it
Speaker 3: has legal footing is that there's been a lot of
Speaker 3: proof of the disparities that have opened up. And when
Speaker 3: these businesses do get a fair shot to compete, they
Speaker 3: can do amazing work and then they create jobs as
Speaker 3: they go. So, whether we're talking about AAA to A,
Speaker 3: which is a small business Administration program, or our own
Speaker 3: programs that go under the flagship at DBE, we're going
Speaker 3: to keep pushing because we believe in them. We're doing matchmaking.
Speaker 3: You think it's like speed dating between investors and businesses
Speaker 3: that want to grow in this way, we're doing matchmaking
Speaker 3: between people who are building transit and transportation projects and
Speaker 3: the businesses that hope to bid on it. And it's
Speaker 3: not just. It's not just you know, if you're in
Speaker 3: heavy construction, it could be you could have an accounting
Speaker 3: or legal services or professional services business that could benefit
Speaker 3: from some of the opportunities. We even upped our own
Speaker 3: goal for the federal contracts from our department, the DOT.
Speaker 3: We upped it to twenty one percent from a category
Speaker 3: called sdb's the small Disavantaged Businesses. And we beat that goal,
Speaker 3: and we're looking at what we can do to turn
Speaker 3: the diary higher. So we really believe in this work.
Speaker 3: I know it's coming under attack. I just don't think
Speaker 3: those attacks are legally sound. So we're gonna push.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you about some some political stuff
Speaker 2: going on. How do you feel working with the news
Speaker 2: speak at a house, Mike Johnathan when you hate Gaith.
Speaker 3: You know it's my job to try to work with anybody,
Speaker 3: so I will. It's kind of tough now, yeah, I mean, look,
Speaker 3: we're joking earlier about my minivan, like it's a strange
Speaker 3: feeling to be driving our kids are twin two year
Speaker 3: old to daycare, driving past the Capitol, looking at the
Speaker 3: dome of the Capitol, knowing that under it sits a
Speaker 3: speaker who thinks that my marriage ought to be against
Speaker 3: the laws. I mean not not just not being in
Speaker 3: favor of marriage, which most people in the country.
Speaker 2: Get now, but the anti gay conversion therapy.
Speaker 3: The conversion therapy, these laws. I mean, I don't I
Speaker 3: don't get it. But uh, but maybe he I don't know,
Speaker 3: maybe maybe we can get through to this guy. I'm
Speaker 3: not sure I've ever met him, so would you.
Speaker 2: Want to do?
Speaker 5: We haven't, Like, where did he even come from? Like
Speaker 5: fifty two rounds later.
Speaker 3: They went through a lot of different steps to get
Speaker 3: to this speaker. But but again, you know, my job
Speaker 3: is to try to work with anybody. Look, I was
Speaker 3: a gay mayor in Indiana when Mike Pence was the governor,
Speaker 3: and and I fought him on on those issues, but
Speaker 3: I also worked with him on other issues because working
Speaker 3: together on the economy was the right thing to do
Speaker 3: for the city. So it's, uh, he's got departmentalized.
Speaker 2: I think he takes it a step further than Mike PINNs.
Speaker 2: I mean he did. The criminalization of gay sex is
Speaker 2: what he talks about. He says, you know, homosexuality led
Speaker 2: to the fall of the Roman Empire, Like that's that's
Speaker 2: a bit different. I think that's a step further than
Speaker 2: Mike Pinnce.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he seems exceptionally committed to that ideology. And I
Speaker 3: don't know how you reach somebody like that, you know,
Speaker 3: I saw somebody ask him about his worldview and he said,
Speaker 3: you know, pick up a Bible and read it, and
Speaker 3: that's my worldview. But when I pick up, first of all,
Speaker 3: this country was established by people who didn't want to
Speaker 3: live under other people's interpretation of their own religion. But
Speaker 3: also as a Christian, I pick up a Bible and
Speaker 3: I get to a place like Proverbs twenty nine, the
Speaker 3: righteous man knows the cause of the poor, and the
Speaker 3: wicked regardeth it not. And then I'm thinking about the
Speaker 3: Speaker of the House who went out of his way
Speaker 3: to be against the child tax Credit, which when President
Speaker 3: Biden's American Rescue Plan expanded the child tax credit cut
Speaker 3: child poverty in half, and when they let it expire,
Speaker 3: child poverty doubled. So we know that it was a
Speaker 3: cause and effect. And I just Reverend Barber, William Barber,
Speaker 3: somebody I have a lot of respect for him.
Speaker 2: Guy.
Speaker 3: He sometimes talks about how you see some of these
Speaker 3: figures out there who have, As he puts it, they talk,
Speaker 3: they say so much about what God says so little,
Speaker 3: and so little about what God says so much. I
Speaker 3: don't know, but we'll see if we can get through
Speaker 3: to these folks.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interested though, right, because you're a politician,
Speaker 2: but then you're still a human at the end of
Speaker 2: the day. So that's what you gave was very politically
Speaker 2: correct answer. But when you and your husband are sitting around,
Speaker 2: the conversations got to be a lot different. I mean,
Speaker 2: the guy said that same sex relations are the dark
Speaker 2: harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even
Speaker 2: the strongest republic. Like, I'm trying to figure out, are
Speaker 2: there are any there anything that disqualifies you from being
Speaker 2: a politician nowadays? Obviously nothing.
Speaker 3: I mean I look at some of the folks running
Speaker 3: around that house Republican conference, were above and beyond you
Speaker 3: know that kind of stuff. But but yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: the thing I don't understand is sleep. That's our family
Speaker 3: he's talking about, you know. And I just got asked
Speaker 3: about this yesterday too, and I was thinking, you know,
Speaker 3: chaos is not a bad word to use to describe
Speaker 3: what it's like around bedtime at our house when we're
Speaker 3: trying to get our kids ready for bed and we're
Speaker 3: trying to feed them and there's spaghetti flying and uh,
Speaker 3: you know, one of them won't take their shoes off
Speaker 3: and U and one of them needs a diaper change.
Speaker 3: But like that's our family. Like that's a chaos that
Speaker 3: is rooted in love. It's not dark, it's as beautiful,
Speaker 3: it's it's and that is strengthening. I'm certain that every family, Uh, certainly,
Speaker 3: I'm certain that our family.
Speaker 2: Is part of.
Speaker 3: What we have in mind when when we talk about
Speaker 3: society needing protect people going about their lives, and I
Speaker 3: think about all the other families that that are terrified
Speaker 3: right now, and that that maybe you're not in as
Speaker 3: comfortable a situation as we are. Where where you've got,
Speaker 3: you know, a governor threatening to take away your kids
Speaker 3: because you took them to the doctor, to to to
Speaker 3: to see if you could support them, because they're they're
Speaker 3: questioning their identity. How terrifying that is. Do you lose
Speaker 3: faith a little.
Speaker 1: Bit when you think about all the things that you
Speaker 1: and your husband are thinking, and do.
Speaker 3: You lose faith just a little bit?
Speaker 1: Because this is our government, it's our government.
Speaker 3: It's the only one we got. So if there's a
Speaker 3: part of it that is disturbing or discouraging, you've got
Speaker 3: to respond to that with the part of it you
Speaker 3: believe it. I mean, I can't throw off my hands
Speaker 3: and complain about the government when I've been given such
Speaker 3: a prominent role in our government, right, I just have
Speaker 3: to figure out how to use it to do the
Speaker 3: most good for the most people, which is my job.
Speaker 3: And yeah, there are things that are discouraging. Then again,
Speaker 3: there are things that are incredibly exciting. Some of the
Speaker 3: projects that we're doing that people gave up on a
Speaker 3: long time ago, or I mean, we go to a
Speaker 3: lot of communities and they still don't believe that the
Speaker 3: money's actually coming even when we're delivering it, because it's
Speaker 3: taken so long that they start to give up. We
Speaker 3: even got this done bipartisan, I mean, I don't think
Speaker 3: we had I don't think we had Mike Johnson on board,
Speaker 3: but we had some Republicans who crossed over and voted
Speaker 3: with us to get some of this infrastructure stuff done.
Speaker 3: So have we solved every problem? Definitely not, Or something's
Speaker 3: going to get worse before they get better. Maybe, But
Speaker 3: I believe in what we're doing, and I see good
Speaker 3: things happening around.
Speaker 5: Us looking forward to the twenty twenty four election. You're
Speaker 5: in this role at dot Transportation Secretary. Have you thought
Speaker 5: about if you'd want to serve in any other capacity
Speaker 5: under another Biden Harrison administration. I know you're not supposed
Speaker 5: to necessarily answer this, but you are really smart, have
Speaker 5: a lot of skill sets that you developed in school
Speaker 5: as well as as a mayor. There are so many
Speaker 5: other entities and agencies that could utilize the way that
Speaker 5: you think things through. Have you thought about any other
Speaker 5: role that you'd want to serve in.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty absorbed just in the day job that I've got.
Speaker 3: I love public service, and I serve as the pleasure
Speaker 3: of the president. I know that, you know, the job
Speaker 3: I'm doing now is not the kind of.
Speaker 4: Job you can do forever answer my question, But.
Speaker 3: I also think it's it's got to be the best
Speaker 3: job in the federal government right now because we're building
Speaker 3: things that that we you know, we're building the things
Speaker 3: like my kids are going to be counting on fifty
Speaker 3: years from now. You know, fifty years from now, my
Speaker 3: kids will be going through the Hudson Tunnel. That that
Speaker 3: that we're going to be starting construction on today and
Speaker 3: being able to be at the forefront of some of
Speaker 3: that work is incredibly rewarding. So so yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: the only honest answer your question is, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Do you think Biden and Heareth is still a winning ticket?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean, I gotta be careful I talk about it
Speaker 3: just because I'm here as secretary, I'm not supposed to
Speaker 3: talk campaigns. But but what I will say is I
Speaker 3: believe in the President and the Vice president. I believe
Speaker 3: in the work we're doing, and I believe in the
Speaker 3: results that we're getting. I mean, the I I get
Speaker 3: that in so many ways, it's been a rough few
Speaker 3: years for everybody, and I get that we're still kind
Speaker 3: of coming out of some darkness from COVID to what
Speaker 3: was going on earlier with inflation, to just the political
Speaker 3: upheaval and everything that we're seeing in Congress and then
Speaker 3: the former president. But look at what's happened, like take
Speaker 3: aviation right right now, we've got a lot of frustration
Speaker 3: with airlines not being able to keep up with the
Speaker 3: tickets they're selling. By the way, it made a lot
Speaker 3: of progress this year, cancelation's down below normal, still very expensively,
Speaker 3: and yeah, but that's because the demand has been going up. Right,
Speaker 3: it was only two and a half years ago that
Speaker 3: the big conversation about airlines was are they going to
Speaker 3: go out of business? The big conversation was how much
Speaker 3: taxpayer funding do we need to put together to make
Speaker 3: sure that the US aviation sector doesn't collapse? And that
Speaker 3: was less than three years ago. It's you know, it's
Speaker 3: November right now, Folks are starting to think about holiday shopping,
Speaker 3: Christmas presents. Two years ago, that was just two years ago.
Speaker 3: We were looking at news stories of ships waiting their
Speaker 3: turn off the West Coast and the supply chains were
Speaker 3: so backed up. People were saying Christmas is gonna be canceled. Like,
Speaker 3: we figured it out, We got through it. We actually
Speaker 3: had an all time record high that year in terms
Speaker 3: of retail sales. But those kinds of things are happening.
Speaker 3: A thirty five dollars insulent for seniors, and if we
Speaker 3: didn't get blocked by congressional Republicans, it would be thirty
Speaker 3: five dollar a month insulent for everybody. And I think
Speaker 3: we can still get that done. So whether it's our
Speaker 3: transportation stuff or other sides of the house, like the
Speaker 3: administration has a lot to be proud of and also
Speaker 3: a lot of work today.
Speaker 2: Can we go back to Mike Johnson for one second.
Speaker 2: I know you got to go, but were you ever
Speaker 2: discouraged by Christianity because of the Bible's views on homosexuality?
Speaker 2: Because a lot of those guys like Mike Johnson, you know,
Speaker 2: they say they have those views because of what the
Speaker 2: Bible says. So were you ever personally discouraged? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think every Christian, definitely, every gay Christian has had
Speaker 3: to contend with the ways in which the Church and
Speaker 3: scripture have have been sometimes weaponized or or turned against people.
Speaker 3: But I also think that that at least as I
Speaker 3: spend time with scripture, there are parts of it that
Speaker 3: tell you about the wisdom of God, and there are
Speaker 3: parts of it that tell you about the values that
Speaker 3: prevailed at the time that it was written. We we
Speaker 3: we don't think it is outrageous to wear mixed cloth.
Speaker 3: We don't subscribe to a lot of things that you're
Speaker 3: going to see in Leviticus. Even the most devout people don't.
Speaker 3: Don't think that those codes or ideas tell us how
Speaker 3: we ought to live today. They tell us how it
Speaker 3: was viewed as what was viewed as the norm thousands
Speaker 3: of years ago in the Middle East. But the parts
Speaker 3: that that that most speak to to me have to
Speaker 3: do with with protecting those who need to be protected.
Speaker 3: They have to do with with infinite love. And Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think every Christian wrestles with with all of the
Speaker 3: different things and ideas and forces and and anditions that that.
Speaker 2: That are part of that.
Speaker 3: But and it's turned a lot of people off from religion.
Speaker 3: Right at our wedding, our pastor talked about how many
Speaker 3: people are walking away from religion entirely. Uh. And and
Speaker 3: yet I think that it can be such a force
Speaker 3: for good without ever believing that I push, you know,
Speaker 3: what I believe on anybody else, And while being adamant
Speaker 3: that no one in this country ought to have to
Speaker 3: live based on some other guy's interpretation of his own religion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you referenced with Mike Johnson said earlier about
Speaker 2: his worldview, So you wanted them a worldview. Pick up
Speaker 2: the Bible and it's like, could it be possible the
Speaker 2: Bible is an outdated worldview?
Speaker 3: Or you know which chapter and verse are you looking up?
Speaker 3: When you pick up though, right, he seems to he's
Speaker 3: fine with doubling child poverty, but he's got a problem
Speaker 3: with what goes on in other people's bedrooms. I mean,
Speaker 3: they're picking and choosing more than everybody.
Speaker 2: It's kind of hard. It's crazy to just like gain
Speaker 2: people so much. In your last name is Johnson. Shut up, man,
Speaker 2: I'm just saying you use that one pete, secretary p
Speaker 2: used that one file that away, use that you.
Speaker 4: Found it away, never to go back.
Speaker 2: You appreciate you for you know what you say? You
Speaker 2: say yo, you know what, Mike Johnson, he needs to
Speaker 2: look at the tip of the files.
Speaker 4: You know what.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: I gotta go cut a river, Secretary. People appreciate you.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Secretary, appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, Angela, I think you as well. It's
Speaker 1: the Breakfast Clove, the morning wake that up in the morning,
Speaker 1: the Breakfast Club,