There is a transportation-funding bill before the US Congress. US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has called it "the worst transportation bill in 35 years." (LaHood, it should be pointed out, served in the previous administration of President George W. Bush and thus was not originally an Obama appointee, and is in fact a Republican.)
A Republican spokesman defends the bill as providing for improved roads and bridges, and also implies that it will provide jobs and lower the cost of gasoline.
US roads and bridges are deteriorating and need improvements, but the bill will cut funding for urban mass transit in cities like New York and Chicago.
Thus the bill pits the big cities against the suburbs and rural areas—the mass transit riders and the car owners. This should not be surprising and might even be a deliberate intent of the bill, because the cities have tended to be liberal and Democratic, while rural and suburban areas are more often Republican. Thus the Republicans, who currently control Congress, are aiding those they consider their supporters and penalizing those they feel would most likely oppose them in any election.
The US is becoming proverbially polarized, into Red and Blue states. Now one more divisive and polarizing issue has been found.
Update, February 9, 2012.
I have been corrected in a comment (which see): Transportation Secretary LaHood was in fact appointed by Obama.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
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LaHood actually is an Obama appointee. He was an Illinois Congressman and was appointed in the spirit of bipartisanship that characterized the opening minutes of the administration.
ReplyDeleteI've been hearing about deteriorating infrastructure since the early 90s, and was disappointed that only a small fraction of the 2009 stimulus went for infrastructure. Looks like any highway bill at this point is going to be a political football. Obama's original proposal called for an infrastructure bank along the lines of Fannie and Freddie, and that drew predictable opposition.
We have our own transit-highway problem in New Mexico: federal funding has run out on a commuter train from Albuquerque to Santa Fe that is lightly used and probably wasn't needed in the first place. Even if the train is shut down, the bond payments threaten to eat up most of the state's road funds for years to come.