buckeye broadband supports c-span as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> wednesday morning, the attorney general testifies at an oversight hearing the senate judiciary committee. live coverage begins at 10:00 eastern on c-span3, online at c-span.org, or watch full coverage on c-span now, our new video app. >> president biden was in new jersey promoting infrastructure legislation and the build back at her spending agenda. this event was held at a new jersey transit maintenance facility.

[applause] president biden: hello new jersey. thank you. governor murphy, so many of the national challenges we are confronting are areas where you are already leading, and that is not hyperbole. whether it is making health care or preschool or college more affordable, providing paid family leave and replacing lead in pipes. in q4 showing the way.

thank you for showing the way. -- thank you for showing the way. thank you for showing the way. bill, we have been doing this a long time. thank you for the passport that can to jersey. [laughter] joss has been the best go-between i have had, getting all of this done, whether it is the build back that are portion -- better or infrastructure portion. tom and don and frank, i keep telling frank, we've been doing things together a long time. i know delaware is small and i know how important new jersey is, but delaware owns the delaware river to the high watermark in new jersey, you know what i mean? [laughter] one of my favorite members of congress, who i campaigned for and she won in spite of it. incredible person.

i want to acknowledge senator booker and menendez, who represent you so well in washington. they are down there trying to get this moving. i am here today to talk about what is fundamentally at stake for the families of new jersey, the whole region and our country. for most of the 20th century, we led the world by a significant margin, because we invested in ourselves and our people. not only in our roads and highways and bridges, but our people and our families. we are among the first to provide access to free education. 12 years of free education for anyone who is an american, beginning in the late 1800s and early 1900s. that decision to invest in our children and families is a major part, a major part of why we are able

but somewhere along the way, we took our eyes off the ball. our infrastructure used to be the best in the world. not hyperbole - the best in the world. today, according to the world economic forum, we rank 13th in the world. twelve other nations have superior infrastructure to us, and china has trains that go 230 miles an hour for long distances. and we got money to do that back in the administration of barack obama and joe biden, and you had a republican governor who didn't want it - didn't want any parts of it. and we used to lead the world in educational achievement. now, the organization for economic cooperation and development ranks america 35 out of 37 major countries when it comes to investing in early childhood education and care. thirty-five out of thirty-seven. we cannot be competitive in the 21st century global economy if we continue to slide.

my wife, who's a community college professor, says, "any nation that out-educates us will outcompete us." i'll say it again: "any nation that out-educates us will outcompete us." and that's a fact. that's why i resolved that we have to, once again, build america from the bottom up and the middle out. i've never seen a time in american history when the middle class did well and the wealthy didn't do very well. but i'm tired of trickle-down. trickle-down doesn't - hasn't worked so much for the last 15 years for working-class and middle-class folks. that's why i proposed two critical pieces of legislation being debated back in washington right now. these bills are not about left versus right, or moderate versus progressive, or anything that pits one american against one another. these bills are about competitiveness versus complacency - competitiveness versus complacency. they're about expanding opportunity, not opportunity denied. they're about leading the world or

continuing to let the world pass us by. first, the infrastructure bill. it's about rebuilding the arteries of america. and the portal bridge project is showing why investments like this are so important. when the portal bridge was built, it was state of the art - and it really was, but 110 years ago. today, it's been called something different: a "chokepoint," a "bottleneck," an "achilles heel" of the northeast corridor. since the portal bridge was built, it has become the busiest rail span in the entire western hemisphere. let me say that again: it's the busiest - busiest rail span in the entire western hemisphere. at peak usage, 450 trains pass over it every day; 200,000 amtrak and new jersey transit passengers.

the bridge opens over 100 times a year. and 15 percent of the time, something goes wrong. fifteen percent of the time. for example, if the rails don't lock back in place exactly yearo found the bridge was particularly responsible for 2,000 hours of delays. and 2018.

as one commuter said, they ground the train on the portal bridge and you better make other plans. it's an impediment, an impediment to america's global competitive this. we're in a worldwide race. things have changed. take a look. that's why what's happening right now is so important. today will report on a new bridge that will be higher of the water so it won't need to open and close, allow us to increase speed, safety, and capacity. it's going to make life a lot better for new jersey's computers. it's also going to. 8000 construction jobs in this area alone. this areas workers. 8000. [applause] union jobs. i pointed out not long ago that

-- i use the word union more than the last seven seven presidents combined. because guess what? it's a decent wage. it's about to make transportation the better choice. everybody up and down the east coast. so i can pause for a second, i apologize because some have heard this. i commuted every single day. 200 and 63 miles a day on amtrak. from the time i got elected united states senator. when i was vice president, i used to like to take the train home because my mom was very sick. i would come home every weekend to make sure i would take the train. and secret service, legitimately

would rather be polite because it is safe read too people can get on and off. i'm getting on one on friday, and one of the senior guys on amtrak, i got to know all the conductors really well. they became my friends. i fed them at my home on christmas and during the summer. and he walks up to me and goes, joey b, and i thought the secret service was going to blow his head off. (laughter.) i swear to god. true story. i said, "no, no, he's a friend." i said, "what's up, ang?" he said, "joey, i read in the paper - i read in the paper you traveled 1,000 - 1,200,000 miles on air force planes" - because they keep meticulous tabs of it. i said, "yeah." he said, "big" - i won't say the whole thing - "big deal." (laughter.) he said, "you know how many miles you traveled on amtrak, joey?" and i said, "no." he said, "the boys and i figured it out at the retirement dinner." he says,

"you travel 2 million" - i think it was 180, but - "2,200,000 miles." i said, "how did you get that answer?" he said, "well, 267 miles a day. we figured you traveled 119 days a year for 36 years, and then you traveled was vice president." and then he goes, "so, joey, i don't hear -- want to hear this about the air force anymore." this about [laughter] i'm a train guy, because it also is the single-most significant way we can deal with air pollution, the single-most significant way we can deal with global warming. it's going to help the region's vital maritime industry as well, by making - making the movement of ships and bridges safer and more efficient. look, with my infrastructure bill, we're going to make sure projects like this are just the beginning. across the country, there are 45,000 bridges in disrepair, some of them dangerously so; 173,000 miles of roads are in poor condition.

we're going to create them totally new. we're going to fix them. this is going to be good union jobs, a prevailing wage you can raise a family on, jobs that can't be outsourced. we're going to make the largest investment in public transportation in the history of america, replacing transit vehicles that are past their useful life and make the most significant investment in rail since the creation of amtrak 50 years ago. during peak periods when railroads are congested and rail carriers are more - have more passengers, rail is up to 10 times more energy efficient than a person driving. ten times. we have a huge opportunity here to provide fast, safe, reliable, and clean transportation in this country. all - every study shows - i won't bore you with them all because i've been working them my whole life - every study shows if you can get from point a to point b faster on rail and -- then you can drive your automobile, you take the rail.

the northeast corridor - we're talking about a $30 billion investments in major projects like the hudson river gateway tunnels and the portal bridge, which it feeds into. look, we're going to create jobs replacing lead water pipes so families can drink clean water - something new jersey and governor murphy have been leading on. we're going to make sure high-speed internet is affordable and available everywhere in america, including the nearly one in three new jersey families that don't have the internet subscription. how many times did you see people pulling up to mcdonald's, sitting outside during the pandemic so they could do their homework because they couldn't get - get it off of their - their line? we're going to create jobs laying thousands of miles of transmission lines to build modern, resilient - an energy grid. and we're going to invest in strengthening our infrastructure against the impacts of climate change. the governor and i were talking a little bit earlier. you know, just this year, we've - global warming has caused over $1

trillion - excuse me, $100 billion - $100 billion in damage. i visited new jersey, as the gov mentioned, after the hurricane ida came through. the governor and several of you were with me. in manville, we met people who had been put out of their homes by flooding. it was devastating. water marks over people's heads. they'd show me where the water had gotten to. i told them that help was on the way. since then, fema processed assistance applications for nearly 30,000 new jerseyans and approved $150 million in repairs, replacement, and rental assistance and other needs. between 2010 and 2020, this state has had 24 extreme weather events - 24. nationally, extreme weather, as i said, cost the taxpayers $100 billion a year . our plan is going to build our roads higher, our levees

stronger, our power grids more durable, all to withstand the ever-increasing ferocity and intensity of extreme weather. and with my build back better plans, we're going to address the root cause of ever-increasing extreme weather and destruction. the climate crisis - we have a climate crisis. i've flown all over this nation this year, in helicopters, going from lake mead - you know, more land, gov, has been burned to the ground in the west - to the ground - forest homes - than the entire state of new jersey, from all the way down to cape may, all the way up to the hudson. that's how much has burned to the ground. my infrastructure bill will also put americans to work for long-overdue national environmental cleanups, like cleaning up the passaic river - the nation's most expensive superfund site. we're going to invest $42 billion in modernizing and

electrifying our ports and airports - like the port of new york and new jersey, newark liberty international airport - reducing congestion and emissions and creating thousands more good-paying union jobs. this is going to help us meet the moment of the climate crisis in a way that creates good jobs, makes us more economically competitive, and we can breathe. look, we haven't passed the transformative infrastructure bill for a decade. think about this: how many times, under the former guy, did we have - we had "infrastructure week"? not a single thing happened. we need to get this done. and it isn't enough just to invest in our physical infrastructure. we also have to invest in our people. that's what my second bill - the build back better plan - does. i just had the opportunity to visit a preschool in east end elementary in north plainfield. north plainfield provides access to preschool for all kids four

years and above. my plan is going to make it possible for the district to expand that program to three-year-olds all across america. the earlier our children begin to learn, the better for themselves, their families, and for the nation. studies show that children who have attended high-quality preschool are 50 percent more likely to finish high school and get a two- or four-year degree after high school. but right now, we're lagging behind. today, only about half of three- and four-year-olds in america are enrolled in early education. in germany, france, the uk, and even latvia, that number is over 90%. over 90 percent of three- and four-year-olds are in school. my build back better plan gets us back on track. and we'll make two years of high-quality preschool available to every child in america. an average two-parent household in this state spends $15,000 to care for just one young child every year.

everybody says, "how do you know?" i - i know about this. when i got elected to the united states senate, my wife and daughter were killed. i had two little boys. i was making a lot of money as a u.s. senator - $42,000 a year - and i could not afford it. that's why i started commuting every single day. couldn't afford to have two houses and to have daycare. thank god i have a sister, who's my best friend; a brother; my mother; and my father who helped out. my build back better plan is going to cut childcare costs more than in half for low- and middle-income new jersey residents. under my plan, no middle-class family will spend more than 7 percent of their income on childcare. we'll also extend historic middle-class tax cuts for parents by expanding the child care tax credit. everybody talks children. and josh has heard me say it: i view it as a tax cut for middle-class families - a tax cut. we never have an argument when we talk about the wealthy.

this is a tax cut. it changes the lives of the american people. [applause] because many people here in new jersey understand it means you get $300 a month for every child under the age six and $250 for a child between 6 and 17. that money is already a life-changer for so many working families. it's projected to cut child poverty in new jersey by 36 percent. these bills are going to change the lives of millions of people in the area and hundreds of millions of people across the country for better and for years to come. so, to everyone here today, especially governor murphy and other dedicated officials here today, thank you for showing us what's possible. because when we make these investments, there's going to be no stopping america. we will own the future. this initiative is about betting on america, about believing in america, about believing in the american people. if you look at the history of the journey of this nation, what

becomes clear is this: given half a chance, the american people have never, ever, ever let their country down. so let's get this done. let's move. folks, we have the most - we have the most talented workforce in the world. what are we doing? what in god's name are we doing? and, by the way, you hear these numbers - $3.5 trillion or $1.75 trillion. we pay for it all. it doesn't increase the deficit one single cent. [applause] so, let's get to work. let's put people to work. and let's once again reestablish america as the most advanced country in the world. [applause] god bless america. and god bless our troops. thank you. thank you. thank you.

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>> c-span's washington journal, every day we are taking your calls live on the air. coming up tuesday morning, we will discuss the latest on president biden's build back at her agenda and upcoming fiscal deadlines. with pennsylvania democratic congresswoman. and on the pending expiration of federal money for roads and bridges. and the status of the bipartisan infrastructure bill. watch live at seven eastern tuesday morning. or on c-span now, our new mobile app.

>> to discuss authorizing pfizer's covid-19 vaccine for youth and children. watch live coverage beginning at 830 man is turn on c-span3, online at c-span.org, or watchful coverage on c-span now, our new video at. >> the house unanimously passed legislation to award a congressional gold medal posthumously to the 13 u.s. service members killed in a and a stand during the act -- afghanistan during the evacuation of u.s. allies. that bill now heads to the senate.