Government Organizations

There's no excuse for dilly-dallying.

UPDATE 3 PM: The text of the MTI doesn't mention forcing a vote on the Senate bill.

For the past six months, I have had the enviable task (seriously) of tracing the path of federal transportation legislation through Congress. And look how far we've come! When I first took the editor's chair in January, transportation funds were drying up, the deadline for a new bill was fast approaching, and none of the news made Congress look good. Today, essentially, nothing has changed, except everything is somehow even worse.

The transportation bill conference committee negotiations have been difficult and contentious, by all accounts -- all except Senator Barbara Boxer's account. The EPW chair has been optimistic when others have been bitter, consistently focusing on how much the two sides agree rather than the places where they're still far apart.

Over the past month or two, I couldn’t help noticing that Rep. John Mica, chair of the Transportation Committee in the House, seemed completely consumed with fingerpointing at federal agencies. While the country’s transportation programs neared a crisis point -- and indeed, there is no other way to describe the current deadlock over a transpo bill -- the top dog in the House was barking up a whole other tree.

As if the drama surrounding the reauthorization weren’t enough, there is another transportation battle brewing between the House and Senate. Last month, the House voted to eliminate funding for the American Community Survey, which is the Census Bureau’s way of getting a yearly pulse-check of how the country is doing and where investment is needed. The Senate’s version of the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill [PDF], approved at the committee level, does not include this ill-advised amendment to defund the survey.

Despite the common refrains about transportation spending creating jobs, most states don't actually give serious thought to the economic impact of transportation projects. More often than not, they're content to sink money into freeways despite a wealth of research that shows that transit, bikeways, and sidewalks deliver a much bigger economic bang for the taxpayer's buck.

We reported last week that the House had proposed allowing states to “opt out” of funding bicycle and pedestrian safety improvements in its counter-offer to the Senate during transportation bill negotiations. The House GOP essentially wants to reject the Cardin-Cochran amendment, which gave local governments control over half the “Additional Activities” funding set aside for bike/ped programs, letting states make decisions about the other half.

The House has just defeated, in a 323 to 82 whopper, a motion to instruct members of the transportation bill conference committee to slash spending by nearly 30 percent in order to stay within the projected limits of the Highway Trust Fund.