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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We begin today with our monthly Call Your Senator segment with New York Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand.

Senator Gillibrand is announcing today, how some of the money from the Infrastructure Bill will be spent in New York now that it's been signed by President Biden. She continues to lead the fight to keep paid family leave in the human infrastructure or Build Back Better Bill that they're hoping to pass next. She attended part of the COP26 Climate Summit. There is plenty to talk about.

We will also take your calls, New Yorkers, or from wherever you want to call this Senator about. New Yorkers and anyone else may call 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or you can tweet a question for Senator Gillibrand. Just tweet @BrianLehrer. I see we have one in already on Twitter that I will ask Senator Gillibrand. Senator, as always, we appreciate that you do this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Thanks, Brian. I'm delighted to be on your show.

Brian Lehrer: What are you announcing today about the infrastructure spending?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: The Infrastructure Bill has a lot that will help New York. A lot of my priorities were in the bill. There's a lot of money for affordable housing. As you travel around New York, one of the biggest challenges is people can't afford to live where they work. I think that's really important. There's a lot of hard infrastructure money. $100 million dollars just to build broadband coverage. Last-mile in rural places is exceedingly expensive, and it's something I've been fighting for at least over the decade, I've been in the House and Senate, so that's a huge issue. There's an affordability connectivity benefit, which will help low-income families afford internet access.

That was the digital divide problem we had during COVID, that a lot of low-income families, a lot of families of color just couldn't access the internet appropriately so their kids could be educated at home. It was a huge problem. Clean air, clean water, as you know, is a huge issue in our state. There's money for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund. $15 billion over the next five years. That's going to help us with the PFAS problems, with the PFOA problems. With the problems of the Hudson River being the largest superfund site in America. Clean water is really, really important.

Brian Lehrer: Certainly the longest.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Without a doubt. It's considered the biggest. There's also money for just bridges and highways, the regular nuts and bolts of fixing infrastructure. That obviously creates jobs because you want to train people to do basic building construction trades. It's a dual fund apprenticeship program that will train people to get those really good jobs. There's money for public transportation and mass transit. New York is the biggest user of that. That's almost $10 billion over 5 years. That's pretty impressive and important for our state, because we want people to use mass transit because it helps the climate. I just got back from COPS so we could talk about what that was all about. That as I said is really important.

Also, in our COP goals was the expansion of EV charging network. People who do have enough money to afford an electric vehicle and want to be climate-focused, there's the investment to build that infrastructure to do it. Also to push back against the impacts of global climate change, protecting against wildfires, energy costs, reducing weatherization for the energy efficiency pieces. Again, more investment in water infrastructure to make sure everybody has clean drinking water.

On the area where I'm very focused right now, because of my work on the Intel Committee. We have real resources to protect against cyberattacks, which I know the business community is desperate for because there's been continuous ransomware attacks at every sized business in America. Then if you've flown in or out of any of our airports, I'm sure people really want to continue the work to get those up and running more efficiently. There's a lot of money for infrastructure for our airports.

Brian Lehrer: We could start making LaGuardia jokes, but we'll lose the [crosstalk]

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I've been in LaGuardia. It takes a really long time to get where you're going, but the parts that are done are beautiful. I'm hopeful that all that will get finished in the next year or two. Then I had some personal infrastructure wins, which I'm really excited about which I talked to some of our business leaders about over the weekend. One provision, it's called Build Local, Hire Local. This is about righting the wrongs of the past.

We have this legacy of Robert Moses, where a lot of our infrastructure was built in a way that really harmed communities of color, and low-income communities. Highways built right in the middle of low-income communities, cutting them off from rivers or waterfront, cutting them in half, highways that take you straight to the suburbs, cutting off low-income communities and splitting cities in half.

This bill provides that if you're going to rebuild infrastructure, you're going to rebuild it better in a way that strengthens those communities. You're going to train and hire those local communities to get the jobs to rebuild the highway in a way that is not undermining those communities of color and fixing those racist legacies of the past. It's a win-win for everybody. That's in there, which makes me really excited. I also had some provisions about cleaning up PFAS. As you know, that's something I've been focused on around the state.

Then I had some transportation priorities because of some real tragedies around our state. We want to fix our limo standards, a whole family tragically died because of a horrible limo accident. That's happened in several parts of the state. As well as this horrible thing when a car gets under a big truck and it can kill the driver because the car gets basically sliced in half. Those provisions got in there.

Then the last thing that I got to write was how to make highways more resilient and more protected from floods, and mudslides and making better drainage and more resilient against those floods. Because we saw so many floods from Superstorm Sandy, and even before that actually in upstate. 100-year floods that seemed to be coming every two and three years.

Brian Lehrer: That is so much. That's quite a list.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I know. We should be celebrating from now till forever, I have all these big wins.

Brian Lehrer: Let me focus in on a couple of the things that you mentioned, that people may not realize are in there. Because a lot of the roads and bridges and broadband infrastructure, people get basically that those things are in the bill. One of the things you mentioned right at the beginning of that list was housing. Obviously, affordable housing is always one of the primary issues in New York. How does housing figure into the federal Infrastructure Bill?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I think I misspoke, to be honest. I think is actually in the Build Back Better bill. It's one of the things that I'm working on to get in our next bill. I don't think it's in the Infrastructure Bill, but I'm looking to make sure that's right. I think the only part that's an Infrastructure Bill, is the affordability connectivity benefit, to help people who don't have internet access in their homes. I think that's really the only part.

The housing part that I'm working on now is for the Build Back Better bill that we're trying to get passed in the House this week and trying to get passed to the Senate before the end of the year. That provision would be $150 billion to build more than one million new affordable rental and single-family homes. That would also provide rental and down-payment assistance and fund our public housing authorities, which as you know, is in disastrous shape. Which we've been trying to clean up over the last five years. Not to a lot of success.

Brian Lehrer: It makes sense that that would be in the so-called human Infrastructure Bill, so we'll come back to that. What you said about the Hudson River, I actually did not know that about the Hudson River being the biggest Superfund site in the United States. People with long enough memories might think that going back to the Pete Seeger, Hudson River sloop clearwater days of a few decades ago, that the Hudson River had started to become an environmental success story.

That it used to be so polluted with PCBs and other things, but it was getting cleaned up quite a bit. People go swimming now in the Hudson River, in the dam state, half of the river where that was not safe previously, and things like that. What's the status of the Hudson River that it's still such a big Superfund site?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: It's still not safe for all uses. Frankly, you still can only have one fish a month that's been fished out of the Hudson River, because there's still PCBs in it. What happened was about 100 years ago, General Electric created transformers that used a kind of oil that was laden with PCBs to make sure it never caught on fire. A PCB is a chemical that's used as a fire retardant, and it worked. It worked very well, but they didn't know it was a carcinogen. When these huge Transformers were manufactured close to the head of the Hudson in upstate New York, the oil would leech into the Hudson River or be disposed in the Hudson River, and it accumulated huge amounts of PCBs.

There was a consent decree, probably about 10 or 15 years ago, and they signed a document called Polluter-Pays, and so GE agreed to do the cleanup, and they did the cleanup. They agreed around 2005 maybe to do a certain kind of cleanup. That was what was considered at the time close to state of the art, if not state of the art, and so that was agreed to. I remember when I got elected to the House in 2006, I looked at the agreements, and I talked to the experts, and a lot of people at the time said, "This isn't going to work. This is terrible. It's going to cost $2 billion, and it's not even going to work. Don't do this. Don't let them do this. This is not going to work."

Sure enough, because the lawyers were involved, they did the thing they promised to do, they completed the work they promised to do. As soon as the work was done, they stopped doing the work. They decommissioned the plant that was doing the cleanup, and they stopped the work. The EPA said, "Okay, you did your work," and let them off the hook. That is how the cleanup stopped. When you test the Hudson River today, there's still a lot of PCBs in it. It's not done. It's just a lack of vision, a lack of responsibility by the state, and by the federal government, and by the company.

The state and the residents are still left holding the bag, and it's just frustrating. Nobody wants to hold anybody accountable. I get it's a legal document. I'm a lawyer, I'm well aware you have legal rights, and when you sign that document, you're saying, "I'm obligated to do this," and they did the thing they said they were obligated to do, but it's still polluted. It's a lack of vision.

Anyway, frustrating. I'm frustrated our river is still polluted, and it's still the number one Superfund site in the country.

Brian Lehrer: Some of the money to deal with it is in the Infrastructure Bill. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand with us. I said that a question came in on Twitter right as we were starting our conversation, and I'm going to ask you that question from the listener first before we go to some people on the phones and then some other Twitter questions. This listener writes, "In regards to Senator Gillibrand's segment, I would like to ask what she is doing to get voting rights legislation passed before the midterm elections next November?"

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: The Voting Rights Bill has been worked on for a long time. It's something that John Lewis, our fearless leader worked on for decades. I worked with him. I was the lead sponsor of his Voting Rights Bill on the Senate, and that bill worked its way into HR1 and S1. That bill then got narrowed by Senator Manchin to try to work on a bipartisan basis to get it passed. That bill has been brought up for a vote several times. Actually, one Republican has voted for that bill, Lisa Murkowski. God bless her. She believes we do need voting rights reform, but no other Republican is willing.

I support getting rid of the filibuster to pass voting rights reform. Many people have said and are concerned that if you get rid of the filibuster, that when we are in the minority, horrible things will happen. That is absolutely true. When we are in the minority, horrible things will happen and everything we care about will be at risk. My response to that is horrible things are happening now when we are in the majority. It's already our reality now.

States all across this country by Republican governors and Republican legislatures are denying people the right to vote, undermining our basic democratic principles and values, and taking away people's basic civil rights and civil liberties. We need to protect those voting rights. The voters of America put Democrats in charge, gave us the White House, the House of the Senate. If we don't use that majority to protect people's basic constitutional rights, they will not be there to protect within the next two years.

We have to protect voting rights, and I think despite the negative impact that reforming the filibuster will have long-term on Democratic values, it is important to reform it, at least for this Voting Rights Bill. I would also reform it to do all the other things voters elected us to do, such as gun reform, and immigration reform, and protecting LGBTQ rights and women's rights. If we could at least start, if we could at least convince Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema to just do it for voting rights, I would urge them to make the exception for this one thing now, because everything else falls from the right of people to vote.

Brian Lehrer: Jim in Crown Heights, you're on WNYC with Senator Gillibrand. Hello, Jim.

Jim: Hi, Senator Gillibrand. Thank you for taking my call. I want to start out by saying that a lot of us are very worried that in 2022 or 2024, we may become a one-party dictatorship. I would like to know, the senators and the Democrats as a whole, what is their strategy for preventing this from happening? I personally think that Republicans are eating your lunch, and I'm very pessimistic that-- I have two children, we're going to leave them with a democracy, and I don't see anyone on the Democratic side as effective. Thank you.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Well, the most important thing I can do as your Senator is to help people in their gravest time of need. That is why I'm working so hard to make sure we can have affordable daycare, and universal pre-K, and a national paid leave plan. To have affordable housing, to invest in our health care system so people afford health care and get the kind of health care they need to survive. To help businesses survive this pandemic, and create jobs so people can actually work. Make sure that we have job training so that people who have lost their jobs can get jobs in health care, and industries that are growing, and industries where we need them to be looking at their careers.

My job is just to help people and to find the bipartisan way to bring people together to get that done. In the next month, my job is to pass the Build Back Better agenda, which has all those things I just said, which will make it easier for people to thrive. I need to tell people what's in the bill and talk very directly and openly and thoroughly across the state and across the country about what we're doing and who we're working for, and why. Hopefully, with that hard work, people will want us to keep working for them.

Politically, I feel we can hold on to a lot of these seats. I really believe we can hold the Senate. I think there's a chance of holding the house, so I'm not as pessimistic as you are because I believe we are on the right side of what's right and we're doing the right thing for the right reasons. If Democrats are bad communicators, hopefully, we can improve and just talk about what we're working on and why. I hope that people can see us for who we are and what we're trying to accomplish on behalf of them and their families, to make a difference in their lives and to make their lives better, because the last year and a half was really horrible.

People suffered, they lost their loved ones, they lost their livelihoods, they lost communities. It was a really, really rough time for people. I'm hoping that we can rebuild our communities and our country and make it stronger. If you want to talk about the politics, Brian, just let me know, and I could take you through the races. I don't know if you want to do that on your show. You can let me know.

Brian Lehrer: No, we can talk about some of the politics. I think I'd like to ask you about where the Build Back Better Bill and your priority in that, or one of your main priorities in that the paid family leave fits in. Because you talk about, everybody talks about getting Senator Sinema and Senator Manchin on board. That assumes taking 50 out of 50 Republican votes as no votes for granted on items that so many of their working and middle-class family constituents probably feel like they need. Like paid family leave and child tax credit and universal pre-K and more home health aides for the aged infirm.

I think you were suggesting before that if you get things like that done and passed, people will like them by the end of next year's election cycle, and that'll help the Democrats retain the majority in Congress. So far, the hammer seems to only be coming down on Manchin and Sinema. How do you see the politics of that?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: All those ideas I just talked about so far are not bipartisan. They're not shared by 10 Republicans. Might be shared by one or two Republicans, three or four if we're lucky, but not 10. Let's talk about paid leave specifically because this is something I'm pretty expert in. There are five Republicans that have talked about that paid leave is important to them. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Marco Rubio, Deb Fischer, and Joni Ernst. I've met with all of them about what kind of paid leave they're in support of, and what it would look like and how they would build it.

None of them are for universal paid leave for all life events that is an earned benefit, that people buy into through their payroll tax, that's matched by their employer and that is like social security that it's theirs, social insurance plan. That's why I looked passed them. That's actually what Joe Manchin likes, which is interesting. What they are for is tax benefits to employers. That's what Deb Fischer is for. She wrote that into legislation under President Trump and passed it. So far under her bill, not many employers have started to offer it, and maybe it needs a few more years, but it's not going to get us to universal coverage and it's not going to be very quick. Because most businesses just can't afford it right now, even if there's a tax benefit. I support tax benefits. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just not going to get us to universal quickly.

Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are open to lots of ideas, but they don't think an earned benefit is something they can sell to their party. They don't think payroll tax or an employer match tax is something they can also sell to their party, but I'm going to work with them. We're going to work on different ideas, tax benefits, maybe polling states, so that states can buy into a federal program, something like that. Again, that's not going to get you universal and it's not going to be quick. That might take a year or two to figure out, but I'm committed to working with them.

Marco and Joni had an idea to let people draw down on their social security early. Nothing wrong with that idea, except it really will harm women if they do need to retire at 65. Because if women are more often than are not going to be the caregiver in these situations for a dying parent, or an ill family member, or a new child. If they have to take one or two or even three leaves across their working lifetime, that might mean they have to work an additional year or two to pay for that leave. They might be working till 70. Not everybody can work till 70, depending on what their job is, if they're on their feet all day, if it's heavier lifting, or heavier labor job. It just depends.

I liked the fact that they like this idea, that social security is an appropriate place to house paid leave. There's room there to start talking. Again, it's going to take time. It's not going to be done this year or next year. It's not going to be done in a universal way. My job in the next week or two is to spend time with Senator Manchin and talk about what he's willing to do now. What the House did is they put basically a placeholder for a four-week universal paid leave bill for all workers, for all life events. Whether it's a new baby, or a dying parent, any worker could take up to four weeks off to meet that urgent need.

That is better than nothing for a lot of low-wage workers and middle-income workers who will never get any days off to meet the need of a new baby, or a dying pay parent, or a sick loved one. If you could get them that little bit of leave, maybe they can have vacation time, maybe their employer will add their own little bit of leave. That's how we grow a program over time. I'm going to really start there with Senator Manchin and see if he's willing to just start a program. Then, I promise to work with him on a bipartisan basis to get us to 12 week, maybe with a statewide pool where states can buy in to get some states to 12 weeks.

Big states like New York and California and New Jersey already have paid leave because they have the economies of scale to offer it. A little state like North Dakota or South Dakota, or other small states, they can't afford it, they can't offer it. Maybe, we can provide opportunities for those smaller states. That's what I'm going to work on. I'm not giving this up. I'm not going to stop negotiating with Senator Manchin until the ink is dry. Because it's in the House bill, we've got a little bit of time. I'm just going to keep trying until it's over.

Brian Lehrer: One other thing about the politics of trying to get this through. There's a lot of anticipation right now about a congressional budget office score that's expected probably by the end of the week. Many Democrats say that they're expecting a score of zero. In this case, zero is a good thing. It means zero impact on the federal deficit because of the ways the bill would be paid for. If that's the case, that should get it through the House.

I'm curious, after all, you just laid out about working with Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema to get them to yes on some version of Build Back Better. How transformative do you think that CBO score of zero, if it comes out as zero, would be for Manchin and Sinema? Because one of the main objections that they always cite is that the bill is too expensive, but if it doesn't increase the federal deficit, then it's not too expensive.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: That'll be great because obviously, Senator Manchin said many times that he's worried about the deficit. If it is fully paid for or only cost X number, that may get him closer to, yes. I think Senator Manchin is very close to, yes. I think he has a framework that he in the White House and Senator Schumer have come to, that they are on an agreement on a framework. I think details are important to him and final numbers are important to him, and so he will keep working with them.

I think Senator Sinema has been involved in more of how the bill will ultimately be financed. I think she's feeling very satisfied with the good work she's put in. I think we're very close to a consensus about where this bill's going to end up. I think there's some details that still need ironing out especially on the global climate change provisions and obviously on paid leave. We are very close to a consensus version of where this bill will end up. It will be extremely helpful to New York and to the country.

To have an expanded child tax credit, so parents and families can have just a little bit of resources to make ends meet will make a huge difference. To have universal pre-K for three and four-year-olds to have that early childhood education, that high-quality education to start being built nationwide. Will be enormously important for the wellbeing of those children and for those parents to be able to be working during those two years to able to have expanded Medicaid coverage, more healthcare.

That's important to have the affordable housing provisions I talked to you about. We know how expensive housing is in New York and how urgent that crisis is all across the country. For New Yorkers, there's going to be some relief on those state and local taxes, which is a uniquely huge problem for New Yorkers and a couple of other states. That'll be important.

Brian Lehrer: Tina in Central Harlem has a question about the physical Infrastructure Bill that has now passed and been signed into law by the President. Tina, you are on WNYC with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

Tina: Hi. Is this me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, it's you.

Tina: Thanks. My question was about the allocation. I know it's largely up to each state how the monies get spent. How do they decide how much money that state gets? I keep thinking if Trump passed this thing, all the money would go to red states as punishment to blue states because that's the transactional Trump. Is this going to be super egalitarian? Is it based on the population of the state, of the GDP of the state? How is it allocated that way?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: For each program, there's a unique formula. In general, it's based on population of the state. As a consequence, New York tends to get its fair share for most federal programs. Sometimes, it's needs-based. Sometimes, it's risk-based. When it is about national security, oftentimes New York gets more money because we are more at risk on a national security basis. We tend to do well when it's mass transit money because we have more mass transit. We tend to do well on some of the basic infrastructure money for federal highways, bridges, and roads because we have a lot of them.

I think we will do well in this infrastructure investments. The other reason why we tend to do well in the general formulas is because Senator Schumer is the majority leader. He doesn't allow formulas to get written in ways that disadvantage New York. Sometimes, when the Senators that are in charge who are from rural states, for example, or small states, they will write formulas in ways that disadvantage large states. That has been the case and that was the case when President Trump was in charge. That's why he wrote the SALT tax deduction the way he did, and he knew it would harm big states. He allowed others to write that bill that were from small states and they didn't care that it would disproportionately harm places like New York, New Jersey, and California.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a tweet from a listener who writes, "Trying to get people to vote because you want to pass vote by mail, same-day voting, and drop box voting is ridiculous. The New York voters voted no to no-excuse vote by mail. The Dems should concentrate on issues that voters care about." That's a statement, not a question, Senator. Let me use it to set up a question of what your take is on what happened in the elections this month. Virginia we know is seen as a bellwether for 2022 by many national commentators. Also including in New York, there were results that surprised and disappointed some Democrats. Republicans did better than expected on Long Island in a number of races.

Yes they defeated the voting rights ballot proposals for same day registration and permanent mail-in voting rights. We've talked before on this show about how the Republican party and the Conservative party in New York state seemed to really mobilize a get out the vote, no vote for that, and the Dems maybe took it for granted. Bigger picture what do you think happened on election day in Virginia and in New York and what does it pertain for 2022 and how you need to fight it?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: On the voting rights ballot initiative I of course supported that, and I think we should always be making it easier not harder for people to vote, it's a civil right. I think the Republican and Conservative party worked overtime to make sure people voted no, because they don't want people to vote, they want less people to vote not more people to vote. They're very anti-democratic. Unfortunately we have our work cut out for us and we need to fight harder and we need to educate people, we need to educate people about what this is.

Unfortunately, a lot of Republican advocates and Conservative advocates have used misinformation to frighten voters, to scare voters, to misinformed voters. To say that this would be fraudulent or that people are lying. Frankly I think a lot of misinformation was responsible for the election results in Virginia as well. I don't like some of the rhetoric that was used in that election, I think there was a lot of misinformation to parents. I think that misinformation has been distorting a lot of the debates around COVID and it's been very alarming and frightening to watch around our country and even in our own state.

What I hope to work on and help is just to help people understand facts, to give people power to understand what's happening in their communities. So that they can make their own decisions and not be misled by people who seek to distort reality and just to give the power to the people. It's one of the reasons why I work on getting money out of politics, it's why I work on ethics and oversight. It's why I'm working on the [unintelligible 00:32:54] 2.0, trying to put transparency and accountability into government, into elections, into our communities.

My biggest worry Brian, is about how social media and how misinformation and how division is being used to frighten people and to mislead people and to divide our communities. I think that is what's at play in a lot of these election outcomes. It's not really about the candidates and it's not even about their platforms, it's about the tactics being used by certain people to divide and to destroy our democracy and to obliterate facts.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing before you go, you went to the COP26 Summit in Glasgow. Part of it mixed results by most accounts, promises to do better but not enough commitments that are enforceable to stave off the 1.5 degree Celsius of warming that scientists say would be catastrophic for humanity. How do you see the good and the bad of COP26?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I left the conference feeling very optimistic and the reason is this, the last administration under president Trump not only denied global climate change, but left the Paris Accords. Removed the words global climate change from every federal government document and website that he could find and try to eliminate science from his entire administration. This administration has not only restored sanity but restored science and restored our place in the world. Not only did this administration send representatives from pretty much every part of the government, but Congress showed in force on a bipartisan basis.

I was part of a delegation house and Senate bipartisan and we appeared on panels, we represented the United States in bilateral conversations with China, with France. We really showed how much America cares, and how committed we are as representatives of states and the federal government. What was so interesting during the Trump administration is that despite him walking away from, Paris we had governors across the country and mayors across the country who stepped up and said we're still going to meet our goals. Even though activists and allies were disappointed that the hard commitments weren't made, I still think we can over achieve and I still believe we can outperform these commitments that were made.

Brian Lehrer: What's going to make us do that as a country? Because honestly setting the bar as we're back in Paris we don't have Trump as president anymore, that's a fairly low bar compared to let's really get this done in a myriad of specific ways aggressively.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: First of all there's a huge amount of work, I don't underestimate how much work there is to do, but this agreement is a big step forward, because it is the first international agreement to phase down coal. It gives us a roadmap to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, it also contains increased financial help for the developing countries. It really is a commitment, a far bigger commitment for supercharging the 2030 emissions cutting targets by next year. It's doubling the funding for the developing nations to adapt to climate change by 2025. Those are legitimate accomplishments.

It agrees on rules for carbon offset markets which the last two COPs tried and failed to finalize. It boosted some of the agenda plans on how to pay for the loss and damage that climate change inflicts on the developing countries. Again it's not everything that we would have wanted, but it did push people further. Even in our bilat with the Chinese, the guy who was there, I wish I had his name in front of me so I could say it, because he was the negotiator under president Obama. What his message was was listen, "I'm the guy that was here last time, I was here during president Obama, we had 10 working groups."

He mentioned president Trump twice and I took that as an indication of you guys can't always control who your president is, but I'm here and I think you should get your 10 working groups back up and running, and I think there's lots we can do together. He left our bilat meeting and then went on and met with Secretary Kerry and reached an agreement with secretary Kerry. Even for a country that didn't have their president there, he reached an agreement with our special envoy. There's an interest, there's a growing demand.

The fact that we have young people all across our country and across the globe who are demanding answers, who are furious with lacks of commitment, who are never going to stop and never going to give up. That's going to push politicians to be bolder, to be more aggressive, to work outside their governments, to go farther than their governments are asking. It's going to make mayors and governors be bolder than presidents, that's what I'm trying to say. At the end of the day if your president gets and your government gets to first or second base, activists can get the third or to home.

I'm just saying this is such a strong momentum forward that the rest of a us and the rest of the people who care even more deeply can get us to home. That's what I'm really excited about, and I felt like the momentum of the presence of the people who showed up was real and the commitments were real and were optimistic and positive. That getting to as far as we need to go will happen because of the rest of the people who might have been disappointed, but have a lot of energy left to fight. I just think it pushes people farther and I'm optimistic.

I got to tell you the energy was positive, it was not negative, it was hopeful, it was electric, it was good, so I'm excited. I'm excited about what Congress is going to do and I'm excited about the Build Back Better. I think we've put some basic investments in the bipartisan Infrastructure Bill as I mentioned, in clean water, and in resiliency, and in energy efficiency, and in mass transit. Then we're going to probably put in some tax benefits and maybe even a price in carbon on this next stage and that's being finalized now. It will be the greatest investment in energy efficiency and renewables in the history of America regardless of which version gets put in. That's going to be exciting, so I'm very hopeful.

Brian Lehrer: It's good to hear some optimism which is in short supply these days. Let's hope it pans out that way. Senator Gillibrand we always appreciate it. Talk to you next month.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Thanks Brian. Anytime.

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