ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュの11/8/21: Press Briefing by Principal Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre & Secretary Buttigieg

Karine Jean-Pierre: (01:29)
Hi everybody. Wow. This is all for Pete. I know it’s all for… We like to call him Secretary Mayor Pete. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Good to see everybody joining us today. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who surprise, surprise, is here to talk about the President’s bipartisan infrastructure deal. I don’t want to steal the Secretary’s thunder, but as you all know, the once-in-a-generation bill is the largest ever federal investment in public transit, clean energy transmission, and electric vehicle infrastructure, and clean drinking water. It delivers for the American people by rebuilding our roads, railroads, and rail cars, bridges, buses, ports, and airports, all while creating good paying union jobs.
(02:18)
With that, I’ll turn it over to Secretary Buttigieg. This isn’t his first time at the podium as you all know, I think this might be his third time. But it’s his first time joining us as a father. So on a personal note, congratulations to you and Chaston on the birth of Gus and Penelope. And the news last week, which we really thought that was wonderful, great news. And so with that, I’m really happy to introduce you. Here we go.

Pete Buttigieg: (02:44)
Thank you. Good afternoon everybody. And thank you, [inaudible 00:02:52]. And thanks for the chance to address you. We are so thrilled, so excited. When our communications team presents me with a copy, I usually cross out the word excited because I think it’s overused and I often rub out the exclamation points because it’s not always my style. But we are excited with an exclamation point about what we’re going to be able to deliver. We are so thankful to everybody who’s played a role in this. Thanks to members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. President Biden’s historic bipartisan infrastructure deal will now become the law of the land.
(03:25)
And it couldn’t come at a more urgent time. I can tell you in the 10 months that I’ve been in this job, I have traveled the country and seen the state of our infrastructure firsthand. I saw mesh nets hung under bridges to catch pieces of concrete that fall off from time to time, century old tunnels corroded by seawater that hundreds of thousands of people depend on every day, roads where community members are installing memorials to lives lost in preventable traffic crashes, highways that have cut communities into. Infrastructure is so elemental to our society that when it’s not there to serve us in the right way, all of us are impacted. But when it is, when it’s strong, every community large and small, rural and urban, privileged and marginalized, every community feels the benefits. (04:12)
When combined with the Build Back Better Act, the bipartisan infrastructure deal, which collectively I like to think of them as the big deal, an answer to the new deal or the square deal before that, they’re going to create a generation of good union jobs. They’re going to make historic investments in equity and in the fight against climate change. They’re going to make sure that America can compete and win in the decades ahead. This is the largest investment in roads, bridges, and highways since the creation of the interstate highway system, including the largest investment in our bridges ever so that we can avoid devastating closures and disruptive collapses like we’ve seen, including what we saw in Tennessee and Florida and far too many other places.
(04:54)
It’s also the largest investment in public transit ever with funding that will expand service to communities of all sizes, including improvements for seniors and for people with disabilities. It’s going to replace thousands of outdated buses with clean zero emission vehicles and aging rail cars with state-of-the-art new ones. It’s the largest investment in passenger rail since the creation of Amtrak itself and transformative impacts in traffic safety will be achieved. And it’s going to strengthen our supply chain by improving our ports, our airports, and our freight rail.
(05:27)
It’s going to dramatically increase funding for major projects. Every year we have our discretionary programs RAISE and INFRA where we support projects that are vitally important for local economic development and the national supply chain. We’re going through the current round of applications for RAISE right now. And for every dollar that we have to give out, there are about 10 in impressive applications coming in. This allows us to grow those programs that we can use in very direct ways to address the issues of our time.
(05:54)
I’ll give you an example from the INFRA round of grants that happened earlier this year… I was funding for a project in Georgia. It’s an inland port to help goods move onward from the port of Savannah. It is to create a new 300 plus mile freight connection between the Seaport and the inland port that makes it faster to get the goods out of the port and then sort them so that they can get on the way to shelves. But like I said, for every good project like this, there are many more that are worthy, but that we can’t support. This helps us to change that.
(06:24)
Later today I’ll be headed to Glasgow and there look forward to discussing how this legislation can help ensure the transportation, which is the biggest sector contributing greenhouse gases in our economy can be a big a part of the solution. We’ve seen so many impacts of climate change on American lives, on our transportation systems themselves. And that’s part of why this plan includes funding to put people to the work electrifying our power grid, make our infrastructure more resilient to extreme weather, and build out a national network of half a million electric vehicle chargers, and expand public transit as I mentioned earlier, which is also a huge part of the climate solution.
(07:02)
And of course there’s a lot beyond our transportation elements of this: lead pipes, cleaning up pollution, broadband, and more. But what all of these investments have in common is that they will create jobs. Pipe fitters to replace those pipes, electricians to install those EV charging stations, autoworkers to build the cars that plug into them. We need mechanics maintaining transit vehicles, drivers operating them, construction workers rebuilding those roads and bridges. And most of those jobs will be available whether you have a college degree or not, which is why the President often talks about this as a blue collar blueprint for American competitiveness. And it’s a generational investment in every sense of the word. Something that means a lot more to me now as a new father because this is how we do right by the next generation before it’s too late. So thanks again and eager to take some questions.

Karine Jean-Pierre: (07:53)All right. Go ahead.
Speaker 3: (07:54)
Oh, I was going to say [inaudible 00:07:54]. Thanks for being with us. Congrats on the birth of your children. A question about the bill. This bill gives your department an unprecedented amount of discretionary funds, a hundred billion dollars in competitive grants. Can you spell out how you plan to prioritize that money and just give us a sense of what projects you see or we should expect to see getting money and getting started first?

Pete Buttigieg: (08:18)
Yeah. So our department has been gearing up hoping that this bill would pass and now that it has, we’ve taken it to the next level. I would break it into two parts. Part of it is handling increased funding for programs we already have like discretionary programs, such as RAISE, formally known as TIGER, and INFRA. There what you’re going to see within the framework, of course, that the law puts forward is an emphasis on projects that taken together, give us extra value in the priorities of this administration; economic strength, safety, climate, equity, preparing for the future. And we see a lot of projects that overlap in that sense. Again, if you look to what we funded with the last round of INFRA, that’ll give you a sense and you’ll see that when we announce the RAISE projects for this year too, but we’ll have so much more to work with.
(09:01)
Then there are areas where we have to stand up whole new programs, safe streets for all. We’ve never had a multi-billion dollar safety initiative like that. Reconnecting communities, which we’ve been talking about all year, responding to where sometimes it was federal dollars that divided a community often along racial lines. I think the intent of those programs is clear, but the mechanics of those, we’ve got to work very hard to make sure we get it right, that the criteria are transparent, that it is easy to understand how to apply whether you are a big city with full-time staff here in Washington DC or a small rural community trying to navigate that federal process. And of course, all those dollars are spent accountably because we’re talking about a lot of taxpayer money.

Speaker 3: (09:40)Sorry, just a quick follow-up. Do you have something in place to prevent mismanagement of that money and fraud?
Pete Buttigieg: (09:46)
Absolutely. Yeah. And that’s something that I know is also happening at the administration level. And the President made this very clear to us in the cabinet when the rescue plan dollars came through. We know that we’re going to be held to a very high standard by the President as well as the public. So we have an executive council with the deputy Secretary and under Secretary, as well as myself paying close attention to how we can make sure we have all of the right controls, the right rigor to make sure these dollars are spent well.

Speaker 4: (10:14)Secretary Mayor, could you give us the breakdown of the implementation of Justice40 with the infrastructure package that’s now passed and signed into law? And also, can you give us the construct of how you will deconstruct the racism that was built into the roadways as you talked to the [Brio 00:10:35] earlier when you broke that information with us? Can you talk to us about how that could be deconstructed?

Pete Buttigieg: (10:40)
For sure, yeah. So the principle of Justice40 is that at least 40% of the clean investments in this bill will go to benefit the communities that are overburdened and underserved. So part one of that is defining those investments that are eligible and that’s a lot of it. And we’re working to map out program by program, mode by mode what would qualify. For example, if we’re buying clean buses, how do we make sure in terms of where those buses go, but also looking at the business opportunity; the jobs that are going to be created, the businesses that will have a chance to compete for the business opportunities it creates. That too, I think, is a very important element of equity here that’s in the spirit of Justice40. And again, we have a lot of guidance and oversight from the White House since that’s an administration wide initiative. But we know that we’ve got to build our own internal ways of aligning and defining that inside the administration.
(11:32)
As to where we target those dollars, I’m still surprised that some people were surprised when I pointed to the fact that if a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a white and a black neighborhood or if an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach or it would’ve been in New York was designed too low for it to pass by. But that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices. I don’t think we have anything to lose by confronting that simple reality. And I think we have everything to gain by acknowledging it and then dealing with it, which is why the reconnecting communities, that billion dollars, is something we want to get to work right away putting to work.

Speaker 4: (12:16)But that’s such a heavy lift. I mean, you have to reconstruct communities that this happened to. As you said, some of these beltways and interstates and roadways were built before the Civil Rights Act, before the Voting Rights Act, and were meant to be racist. But how do you go about redefining and replanning these roadways and communities that are already settled in since then?

Pete Buttigieg: (12:40)
So what’s interesting is it’s going to vary by community and we have to listen to the community. Sometimes it really is the case that an overpass went in a certain way that is so harmful that it’s got to come down or maybe be put underground. Other times, maybe it’s not that way. Maybe the really important thing is to connect across it, to add rather than subtract. And that’s where we don’t want to impose a one size fits all answer from here. But when we were out in the Syracuse, for example, looking at I-81, we saw the local vision for how they want to get past those divisions. And those local ideas are going to be taken very seriously as we try to meet the spirit of this law.

Speaker 5: (13:10)Thank you, Secretary Buttigieg. You just said this bill and the passage of it could not come at a more urgent time. So do you know when President Biden plans to sign this bill?
Pete Buttigieg: (13:19)I’d have to refer it to my White House colleagues on that, but I’ll tell you that I’ll be there with bells on.
Speaker 5: (13:24)But he has not signed the bill yet, right?
Pete Buttigieg: (13:26)Not yet.
Speaker 5: (13:27)And can you talk about what the campaign to sell this bill is going to look like given it will take time for some of these projects to actually go into effect and to be completed and the White House is one year out from the midterms, of course, which they have tied this bill to?

Pete Buttigieg: (13:40)
Well, I expect that that’ll be led by the President traveling to show where the need is and where the action is, but I’m certainly eager to be part of that effort. I mean, look, a lot of this sells itself because communities never needed to be persuaded that they’re bridge needed to be fixed or that their airport needed an upgrade or that their ports needed investment. They’ve been trying to get Washington to catch up to them. But I do think it’s important for us to go out there, especially in communities where a member of Congress or the Senate played an important role. And as you know, members from both sides of the aisle played important roles in delivering this bipartisan win. And I can’t wait to be out there celebrating good news.

Karine Jean-Pierre: (14:17)Let’s take one from the back.
Speaker 6: (14:20)Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, [inaudible 00:14:24]. As you pointed out, this was a bipartisan bill. Was there any discussion of the President not letting Democrats oppose some of the Republicans who are running or giving them a pass in the next election?

Pete Buttigieg: (14:40)
Not that I’ve been part of. But what I’ll say is that we’re really proud of the bipartisan character of this bill. And the conversations that we had, it wasn’t transactional like that. It didn’t have to be because these investments were already so good for the communities that these members represented. There are times when you ask somebody to take a tough vote. To me, these provisions were rightly so popular that the only thing was tough was for some Republicans to stand up to those who wanted them to choose party over what was right for their community.

Speaker 6: (15:15)So there was no discussion from your side about the partisanship of it?
Pete Buttigieg: (15:20)
I don’t ever remember talking about when I was talking to any member of either chamber of either party, talking about campaigns and elections in that way. What we talked about was how it would be good. Now, of course, I believe strongly that good policy is good politics. And I think it’s going to reflect well on anybody who voted to deliver these big wins and these jobs for their communities. But I think that’s just clear on its face from it being such good legislation.

Speaker 7: (15:46)I wanted to ask about the money for ports in the bill.
Pete Buttigieg: (15:50)For what? Sorry.
Speaker 7: (15:50)The money for ports.
Pete Buttigieg: (15:51)For ports, yeah.
Speaker 7: (15:53)How will that help the supply chain issues that the U.S. is facing right now? I know that’s something that you’ve said often when you’re talking about the supply chain, is that help.

Pete Buttigieg: (16:02)
Yeah. Let me offer a couple examples. I mean, one is that we need to make sure our ports are as efficient as possible. And there are cases where more technology, sometimes physical technology around the ports, but sometimes it’s more to do with the systems that help the different players talk to each other. Remember, port’s not a single entity, you got the port itself, which is like a landlord. Then you got the terminal operators. Then you got the truckers. And all of them are interacting with competing shipping companies to try to efficiently move these containers. They need to be able to exchange and share data. We’ll definitely want to say support ways to do that. So that’s an example.
(16:35)
Some of it’s multimodal. If you see a backup of ships at a port, it might actually be because of something that’s not so much on board the ships, but inland. That’s why I was pointing to that example serving Savannah, where we have an inland port so you can rush those containers out of that precious port space and then sort them out. And then it’ll be more efficient and more speedy. So those are a couple examples.
(16:55)
Let me point to one third thing. The idea of the healthy ports initiative. So there are a lot of emissions around ports from the ships themselves, from the trucks, from the equipment. And right now, one thing that is tough is the neighborhoods that are close to them feel that impact including in increased asthma rates in what are, by the way, disproportionately black and Latino neighborhoods. The healthy ports initiative helps electrify them so that you don’t have to worry about the emissions. And to me, that goes hand in hand with those efficiency gains that we’re trying to drive.

Speaker 7: (17:23)I wanted to follow up. Also, you mentioned truckers. Have you thought about at all relaxing motor carrier regulations further to allow people 18 to 20 to participate and to be truck drivers?
Pete Buttigieg: (17:35)
So I believe there is a provision in this legislation. Yeah, exactly. But we got to be very careful about safety. And so the way the provision works is it’s a mentorship type, apprenticeship type of initiative that tries to manage the potential for there to be a safety trade off. We want as many people to be qualified drivers as possible, but never at the expense of safety. And we’ll always look at other steps we can take. But let me mention, we’ve got to just make truck driving a better job.
(18:02)
But let me mention, we’ve got to just make truck driving a better job. Truck drivers, there’s a reason the turnover is so high. And the way they’re compensated, they’re often not compensated for their time which means that their time is wasted freely. Sometimes when they’re waiting for a load at a port, for example. Truckers have not had the option to work from home on Zoom. They are the absolute backbone of a big part of our supply chain. We need to respect, and in my view, compensate them better than we have. [crosstalk 00:18:30]

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