John Mica

Rep. John Mica (R-FL) no longer chairs the House Transportation Committee, but that doesn’t mean he’s eased up on his crusade against Amtrak. Calling the company a “Soviet style monopoly,” Mica used his afternoon address to the U.S. High Speed Rail Association to announce his plan to revive his despised and defeated measure to privatize parts of Amtrak.

Perhaps Rep. John Mica's most remarkable legacy as chair of the House Transportation Committee is the single-minded focus he gave to attacking Amtrak. Under the guise of wanting it to succeed, Mica has repeatedly excoriated it as a "Soviet-style monopoly" and a waste of taxpayer dollars. He's tried to sell off its only profitable line, the Northeast Corridor, and made a mockery of every aspect of its operations, right down to food service. If there's anything he got more glee out of criticizing, it was the Transportation Security Administration.

Rep. John Mica (R-FL) has withdrawn from the running to remain chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He was up against Republican term limits, which specify that no Congressmember can spend more than six years as the highest-ranking member of their party on a committee -- regardless of whether that time is spent as chair of the committee (while their party is in the majority) or as ranking member (when in the minority).

This is the second of two posts examining Rep. Bill Shuster’s candidacy for the chairmanship of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Yesterday, we took a look at Shuster's positions on rail and his leadership style. Here we delve into his record on active transportation and the always-thorny topic of funding.

This is the first of two posts examining Rep. Bill Shuster's candidacy for the chairmanship of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. We'll post the second one, focused on his positions on bike/ped programs and funding issues, tomorrow.

UPDATED 9/24 with chart.

At a highly politicized hearing on Tuesday, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair John Mica slammed "Amtrak's failure to compete with the private sector," arguing that the national rail company should stop bidding to run commuter rail services.

I was not expecting this: Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair John Mica (R-FL) just released a statement saying "the tentative agreement establishes federal highway, transit and highway safety policy and keeps programs at current funding levels through the end of fiscal year 2014." That's a full year longer than the Senate bill allowed for.

Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. John Mica just released this statement: