Principal Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton Gaggle Aboard Air Force One 1/31/23 Transcript

Hey, everybody.

Hey.

Ooh.

[inaudible 00:00:03] from all you guys.

My goodness.

How’s it going?

How y’all doing?

Good morning, everybody.

Morning.

All right. So as you know, we are on our way to New York City where President Biden will announce a major investment in one of the largest infrastructure projects in the country. In New York, the president will be joined by New York governor, Kathy Hochul, New Jersey governor, Phil Murphy, Leader Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, Senator Booker, Senator Menendez, Mayor Adams, and Secretary of Transportation, Buttigieg, as well as White House Senior Advisor and Infrastructure implementation Coordinator, Mitch Landrieu, who’s here with me this morning.

(00:36)
In addition to the Hudson Tunnel project commitment, the president will announce that the administration has awarded nearly $1.2 billion from the infrastructure law’s, new national Infrastructure Project Assistance discretionary grant program for nine major projects across the country. As evidenced by today’s trip to New York, yesterday’s visit to Baltimore and Friday’s travel to Philadelphia, the Biden Harris administration continues to focus on implementing the bipartisan infrastructure law and delivering real results for the American people. That’ll turn it over to you.

Thank you so much. It’s great to be with you guys. As you know, $1.2 trillion to rebuild the country and build a better America. Roads, bridges, airports, ports, waterways, clean air, clean water, high speed internet, and an entire clean energy economy. We have $185 billion out of the door. Last year we had 7,000 projects that are in some level of formation, and this year we expect to have 20,000 more by the end of the year. We started off this year with a bang. As many of you know, y’all were with us when we announced the Big Bridge program about four weeks ago, where the president went to the Brent Spence Bridge with Leader McConnell and talked about bipartisanship and trying to figure out how to get it done. And this year’s all about implementation and execution on that day. You may recall that the vice president was in Chicago on the south side.

(01:52)
The secretary was in Connecticut announcing a program, and of course not that day, but a few days later, both the secretary and I went to the Golden Gate Bridge to talk about a full $100 billion investment to fortify that bridge in the event that they would suffer from another earthquake, essentially to put brake pads on it and to make it more resilient to make sure that that bridge is in place. Today, actually, we’re making another major announcement of nine mega projects across the country that are in your briefing, but the biggest of which, of course, is the Hudson Tunnel project that we’re talking about today for the casing on the end of it. As you guys know, yesterday, the president was in Baltimore announcing another portion of this because this is also part of the northeast corridor and high speed rail, which is critically important to getting people out of cars onto rail, actually making it more safe, making it more climate friendly, and then of course, providing thousands of jobs.

(02:47)
So this particular project today that we’re talking about, I want to show you this. This is Manhattan, this is New Jersey, this is the Hudson Tunnel. As you can see, this is part of a much larger, it’s the biggest infrastructure investment program in the country. This is part of the Gateway program, and there are a bunch of different projects that are part of that. This particular portion today is right here at the Hudson Yards, which is the entrance of the tunnel, which is the first critical step to making sure that all of this is done. Two of these other projects are only funded in the northeast corridor, and the president was last year in New Jersey at the North Portal Bridge. So this is a really critical part. It’s $293 million of a $600 million program. That’s just the first part of a much larger $16 billion program for the Hudson Tunnel that the federal government is a major part of.

(03:39)
Today also, we’re announcing that we have investments not only in the Brent Fence Bridge, so they got part of the Big Bridge program, and they got part of the mega program because as you guys said, we pushed a lot of these programs together. They’re also announcing funding for the I-10 Calk River Bridge, a $150 million, the Metro UP North line in Chicago, Illinois, the Alligator River Bridge in North Carolina, the I-45 and US-75 corridor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Roosevelt Boulevard multimodal bridge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I-10 freight corridor, $60 million in Mississippi and the Watson Cruise multimodal corridor in California. This is $1.2 billion for nine projects. So when you put all of these things together, you start to see now the country taking formation and how this money’s getting out, starting to get to the ground, coming out of the ground and providing jobs. We expect that on the project today, the casing project, and then the entire tunnel project when it’s done, is going to create 70,000 high paying jobs and actually gets tons of folks off of, out of cars and into the street, and of course, make life a whole lot easier.

(04:43)
These tunnel, this particular tunnel, the Hudson Tunnel was really hurt by Sandy as well, and there was some deterioration in it. So we’re actually building an entirely new tunnel, not far away from the old one and when that new tunnel is built, we’ll start working on the old tunnel. This has been a partnership between the federal government and the state government, and of course two states so it’s a really complicated plan and we want to thank clearly Senator Schumer and all of the senators who have worked on this as well as the two governors who are all part of continuing to help make this happen.

There was some confusion yesterday at the Frederick Douglass Tunnel. 10 years came up about… I think it was like 10 years to complete the project. Is that accurate?

I don’t know what the exact timeline is, but all of these projects are massive projects that take time. The point is, hey, to get the money out of the door, which is of course what the president has been able to do when he passed a once in a generation bill. People have been talking about this forever and so now the most important part was to get the money. Now we have to get it out the door, now we have to get it to the ground, and that was what yesterday was about. So I’ll get you the timeline on that, but nobody should be surprised that these things take time to do, but we go on as fast as we possibly can.

I have a question on your meeting with Elon Musk just a couple of days ago.

Off rail and onto Musk already.

Specifically, if you can talk a little bit about what was discussed, and also did Tesla reach out to set up that meeting or was that something that…

I won’t know much about what was discussed except to say that part of what we’re trying to do here, remember I said roads, bridges, airports, ports, waterways, clean air, clean water, and a clean energy economy. And as you can see, the private sector has come into this space in a really dramatic way. Every major auto manufacturer has decided to actually move into the building of electric vehicles. Tesla was there. They weren’t there first, they were one of the first, and they have a big footprint. So we’ve been talking to all of the folks in the private sector to just try to listen to where they are, what the concerns are, how we can work together. You know that we have to. There’s a substantial amount of money in this bill to help with the creation of critical minerals. You know that there’s money in here to build battery plants because we’ve made a lot of announcements around that in partnership with the private sector.

(06:51)
You also know that we have to get the supply chains, and then finally we have to create security so that people know that that’s a place to charge. And so electrical vehicle charging stations are a critical part of what we’re doing. We have to lay down 500,000 of them, but that’s only a small portion of the total that’s needed. So Tesla’s a big player in the market, and that meeting was just one of many meetings we have. Having general discussions about where they are, what are they thinking about, what are their pros, what are their cons, and just having a general discussion about the implementation of the bill.

Sorry, just a quick follow up. In terms of just the meeting because it’s Musk and the relationship he has had at least online with the president, I mean, does this signify a shift? Why did the White House decide to finally meet him

Well, again, just in the course of the day-to-day work that I have to do, and the team at the White House has the National Security Council, the National Economic Council, and of course the climate folks, we’re in constant touch with the folks that run all of these companies. So this is nothing, a out of the ordinary or unusual, and it is in the course and scope. You may not have been paying attention to my whereabouts the day before, but I was actively in San Francisco and what had happened was Tesla was having an announcement the next day, a $3.6 billion investment to build an entire new plant to build the next level of batteries. And we missed each other and just said, “We’ll catch up if we can see each other in Washington DC.” So it was a run of the mill course of how we talk and make sure that our doors are open to everybody.

What’s the thinking behind the timing of the intense focus on these projects this week? Like you just said, we’re talking about projects that might be 10 years off because of their scope, it’s a two-year-old bill at this point. What’s the reason for such a focus on these [inaudible 00:08:32]?

First of all, it’s a year and a half, not two. It happened on November 15th, almost less than two years ago. Secondly, we have intense focus every day, all day. It’s all about hurry the hell up and get it done from the president’s perspective so that’s just the way we roll. And so we are continuing as the constant drumbeat of announcing getting money out of the door quick. Again, you guys are aware of these. We do them every day. They’re massive announcements all over the country. It’s too hard for you guys to keep up with, actually. But right now, we will focus on this year about execution. So my team’s job along with the president being our leader, is to build the team, get the money out of there, and then to tell the story.

(09:13)
And so as we are doing that, we just want to make sure that everybody continues to stay focused. And because of the timing of the way the programs work, the notices of funding opportunities that have gone out, people applying for the grants, us being able to award the grants and us being able to announce them. These are coming in the current course and scope of what we’re doing so this year, the first thing was a big bridge. This is the mega and then you can expect a whole host of other announcements like this to demonstrate to the American public that we’re doing the job that President had asked us to do.

From your perspective, doing this every day, have you seen a shift in the public awareness or appreciation of these projects as it’s gotten bigger and as it’s gotten…?

You know it’s a myth that people don’t know about these projects and nobody knew about it, people would quit taking credit for all of them. And of course, Republicans and Democrats, especially people that voted against the bill, talk about them all the time. As Nancy Pelosi said, “Even those people that voted No want the dough.” So, I think the public is acutely aware because they drive by or they walk by them all the time and so wherever there’s a road project or a rail project going on, it is more likely than not got a substantial amount of federal funds in it because the president’s commitment was to rebuild. Really simple. I’m going to use the power of my presidency to bring people together and get big things done and this is bringing the receipts over and over and over again, and I think people pick it up and understand it.

Mitch, House Republicans have talked about the need to cut spending to raise the debt limit. If spending cuts or budget caps weren’t in place, what risks could that pose for the infrastructure projects you’re talking about?

Well, we would build less. I mean, if you have less money, you build less and so I haven’t had in my travels or conversations with one person of whatever stripe who said, “I don’t want a road” or, “I don’t want you to fill the pothole” or, “I don’t want a new bridge” or, “Please let me keep dirty water” or, “By the way, I don’t really we need high speed internet because I don’t want to talk to anybody.” We haven’t had that conversation and so I just think, again, I’m not in the business of politics, but in general policy, if there’re folks on the hill that want to take away money from projects, they ought to, I think, identify which projects they don’t want and then maybe we can have that discussion with the American people.

Have you identified those projects for them in any conversation?

No. I’ve identified the ones that they say they wanted built. That’s what’s happening. As you know, when you look at these things, and maybe you should, we’ll get you some information on this, every one of these programs is way oversubscribed. So $1.2 trillion is a huge amount of money. It’s the most that we’ve ever had but on every one of these application processes, of course, which is available to you, you can look at how many people applied and then of course, only about 10% of the projects are getting a yes. So we should have a fairly good scope of what all the asks in the country were at this time and I assure you that I have not had one person, whether they be Republican or Democratic or Independent, say, “Please stop funding projects in my district because we need to save money.” I haven’t heard that yet. And if I do, we’ll deal with it at that time. You might ask them that.

Just as a follow-up, how are you planning proactively to deal with forced cuts to your budget?

Well, we’re full speed ahead. I mean, we’re on the execute… By the way, congress has got an important job, which is to pass the law. This law’s passed. We’re in the business of execution. That’s our job, and until we receive a direction, otherwise, we’re full speed ahead every day. As the president said, “Hurry the hell up more,” and that’s our mission. And from him, that’s his directive, and that’s what we’re doing.

Hey, Olivia, can we get some…?

Yes.

Yeah.

Y’all good?

Thank you, Mayor.

Y’all done with me? Y’all say, Mitch, we’ve finished with you and you’re boring, so go. All right, thank you.

Okay. I can see the waves below so I’m going to try to stay upright long enough to give you guys a couple of updates you’re looking for on Tyre Nichols. We haven’t had a briefing or gaggle since we all saw the horrific footage of the beating that resulted in Tyre Nichols death last week, so I wanted to take a few minutes to address that here.

(13:04)
As you heard from the president last week, he was outraged and deeply pained to see the video. He spoke with Mr. Nichols mother and stepfather to express his condolences and commend the family’s courage and strength. Tomorrow, White House officials will also travel to Memphis, Tennessee to attend the funeral for Mr. Nichols. When President Biden spoke with Mr. Nichols’ family last week, he told them that he was going to be making the case to Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act.

(13:29)
To that end, President Biden spoke yesterday with Representative Horsford and plans to host a small group of Congressional Black Caucus members of the White House this Thursday to discuss police reform legislation and other shared priorities. President Biden is committed to doing everything in his power to ensure our criminal justice system lives up to the promise of fair and impartial justice, equal treatment and dignity for all. When Senate Republicans blocked the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act from reaching his desk last year, President Biden signed an executive order that mandated stricter use of force standards and accountability provisions for federal law enforcement as well as measures to strengthen accountability at the state and local level. But as the president has said, executive action can’t take the place of federal legislation, and we need Congress to come together and take action to ensure our justice system lives up to its name.

Does the White House have any reaction to Congressman Santos recusing himself from his assignments?

I haven’t seen that news, but I’d be glad to follow up with you.

Olivia, can I ask? Title 42, we’ve gotten conflicting information on whether that’ll be shut down in May when you guys lift the Covid emergency, so can you walk through exactly.

Here’s the deal on this. We proposed to lift Title 42 earlier and were blocked by court orders. Extending the public health emergency one month to May 11th doesn’t change that. We do not know when the Supreme Court will rule on this matter or when it might lift its stay but what we do know is that unlike Congressional Republicans, we have a plan to lift Title 42 in a safe and orderly way.

So just to be crystal clear on that, if May comes, the Supreme Court has not acted yet, you expect Title 42 to remain in place even though you’ve lifted the emergency?

I don’t have anything additional to add. We don’t know when the Supreme Court will rule on this matter or what it might say.

McCarthy meeting on Wednesday, House Republicans say they want a path toward a balanced budget. Does the White House think a balanced budget is a good goal and something that should pursue for the economy?

Well, look, let’s start by talking… Let’s look at what President Biden has done to reduce the deficit. The President has cut the deficit, a record, $1.7 trillion, the largest decline in American history. His inflation reduction act reduces it by hundreds of billions more, whereas the deficit increased every single year under Donald Trump. His four years in office are responsible for 25% of our total national debt from the last 230 years and the first bill that House Republicans passed this year would add $114 billion extra to the deficit by helping billionaires cheat on their taxes. That’s on top of the $2 trillion in Trump tax cuts favoring the wealthy that they propose extending. So, when President Biden says he will work to reduce the deficit, he’s not just said it. He’s acted on it and he wants to hear Republicans plans to do the same.

Is that a continued goal going forward for the president?

The President said he’s happy to talk with anyone with ideas to responsibly lower the deficit, and he’s put forward several proposals to do so by making the rich and big corporations pay their fair share. But what’s the Republican plan? Is it to cut Social security and Medicare? Is it to raise the retirement age? Speaker McCarthy claims he doesn’t want to do what he has previously voted for in this regard. He should share what his plan is.

Just a quick question on Ukraine, Olivia. Yesterday, the president said he is not giving Ukraine any F16s. This was during the gaggle, so we just wanted to understand, is he still willing to sell Ukraine F16s?

I don’t have anything to add to the President’s comments, but I think, as you all know, we’re sending a significant amount of weapons and security assistance to Ukraine right now to help with their ongoing battlefield needs in response to Russian aggression. We’ve sent artillery ammunition, armored vehicles, critical air defense capabilities. We’re in regular contact about their battlefield needs, and I expect we’re going to have more security assistance to announce soon. And with that, I think we are a few feet off the ground, so I’m going to go take a seat.

(17:18)
Thanks everybody.

Take care.