Waste not, want not... the 2006 Highway bill

[southsider2k5]

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/...itics-headlines

 

A grand total of 4 Senators and 8 Representatives had the balls to stand up this porkfest. Two conservatives actually asked that their appropriates be turned over the state for its own usage.

[Texsox]

I am wondering if a key big of asphalt, the new I69 project that would link Laredo with Canada is among the projects. There are a couple much needed roadways down by me. The area has been in the five fastest growing sreas for the past 10 years without much new road construction.

[mreye]

This really pisses me off. What pisses me off more is the voters won't remember this on election day.

 

I had to laugh at this, though:

 

McCain, one of only four senators to oppose the bill, listed several dozen "interesting" projects, including $480,000 to rehabilitate a historic warehouse on the Erie Canal and $3 million for dust control mitigation on Arkansas rural roads.

 

His favorite, he said, was $2.3 million for landscaping on the Ronald Reagan Freeway in California. "I wonder what Ronald Reagan would say."

 

Reagan, in fact, vetoed a highway bill over what he said were spending excesses, only to be overridden by Congress. Meanwhile, according to a Cato Institute analysis, special projects or "earmarks" numbered 10 in 1982, 152 in 1987, 538 in 1991 and 1,850 in 1998. The 1998 highway act set aside some $9 billion for earmarks, well under half the newest plan.

 

I'm not a big McCain fan, but he just gained some points with me with his "no" vote.

[mreye]

I am wondering if a key big of asphalt, the new I69 project that would link Laredo with Canada is among the projects. There are a couple much needed roadways down by me. The area has been in the five fastest growing sreas for the past 10 years without much new road construction.

If it's "in the 5 fastest growing areas" it must be generating tax dollars. Why can't the state handle the road projects?

[southsider2k5]

If it's "in the 5 fastest growing areas" it must be generating tax dollars. Why can't the state handle the road projects?

 

The sheer size of Texas is amazing. I can see them needing a lot more highway money than most states.

[mreye]

The sheer size of Texas is amazing.  I can see them needing a lot more highway money than most states.

See, I believe the states should only receive highway money for Federal Interstates.

[Texsox]

If it's "in the 5 fastest growing areas" it must be generating tax dollars. Why can't the state handle the road projects?

 

The biggest need is a major transportation link from Mexico to Canada. It has been in the planning stages for about 8 or 9 years, and portions of existing roadways have been improved to meet national standards.Because the route winds through 6 or 7 states, it must be a national project.

 

http://www.keeptexasmoving.com/projects/i69/

[Steff]

The sheer size of Texas is amazing.  I can see them needing a lot more highway money than most states.

 

 

What do they need roads for...?? Horses run on dirt don't they..

 

 

 

 

[southsider2k5]

The biggest need is a major transportation link from Mexico to Canada. It has been in the planning stages for about 8 or 9 years, and portions of existing roadways have been improved to meet national standards.Because the route winds through 6 or 7 states, it must be a national project.

 

http://www.keeptexasmoving.com/projects/i69/

 

It will be really interesting to see if the I69 corridor gets done, as there is a ton of resistance to it up here. The enviormentalists and the NIMBY's are really up in arms about it.

[Texsox]

The biggest fight in my corner of the world was how the Rio Grande Valley would fit in. The two options, IIRC, were Laredo to Harlingen (spur to Brownsville) and up and having separate spurs from Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley connecting near Rte 37/281/77.

 

It is huge for us.

 

The second project, and could well be called pork, is a second major east-west route. Currently there is one highway connecting the area. The major growth is being stalled somewhat because of the business needs to be near the highway. A second, northern route, would open a lot of land for economic development. A study of other cities and metropolitan areas have all concluded that this type of "loop" have been done much sooner than the RGV would have theirs.

[Texsox]

See, I believe the states should only receive highway money for Federal Interstates.

 

But we pay a federal road tax when we buy gasoline. We pay that tax wether we drive on interstate highways or not. Unless you are also proposing having the feds send that money to the state (and being from a huge ass state, I's agree) we are stuck with this system.

 

Isn't it nice to see what our elected leaders can do when they work together?

[mreye]

But we pay a federal road tax when we buy gasoline. We pay that tax wether we drive on interstate highways or not. Unless you are also proposing having the feds send that money to the state (and being from a huge ass state, I's agree) we are stuck with this system.

 

Isn't it nice to see what our elected leaders can do when they work together?

Yes. See, I think my Federal taxes should be minimum and my state taxes should be more.

[Texsox]

Yes. See, I think my Federal taxes should be minimum and my state taxes should be more.

 

The downside is our economy benefits from a great interstate road system. When a manufacturer in Boise needs to get a shipment to a distributor in Detroit, it all has to work together. As long as that is kept intact, I don't care how the money and oversite is divided up.

 

You would be shifting the pork to a state level. You might have some wonderfully untravelled roads downstate while the Chicago suburbs get shafted, depending on the clout of the state reps.

 

GOP = downstate projects

DEM = Chicago

[mreye]

The downside is our economy benefits from a great interstate road system. When a manufacturer in Boise needs to get a shipment to a distributor in Detroit, it all has to work together. As long as that is kept intact, I don't care how the money and oversite is divided up.

 

You would be shifting the pork to a state level. You might have some wonderfully untravelled roads downstate while the Chicago suburbs get shafted, depending on the clout of the state reps.

 

GOP = downstate projects

DEM = Chicago

I don't mind Federal money going to the Interstate system. It's needed. I have a problem with Federal money going to "Construction of County Road 17" in Elkhart, Indiana. http://www.taxpayer.net/Transportation/hr3database/INF.pdf

[Texsox]

I don't mind Federal money going to the Interstate system. It's needed. I have a problem with Federal money going to "Construction of County Road 17" in Elkhart, Indiana. http://www.taxpayer.net/Transportation/hr3database/INF.pdf

 

But isn't the federal money coming from people who will travel down County Road 17? Perhaps that's a bad example, but it's our money, I'm not as hung up on which group of crooks, errrrrr elected representives, chooses what to build as I am them choosing good, worthy projects. I'm not certain that state cronies would be much better than national cronies.

[Balta1701]

Here's my favorite piece on the highway bill.

 

Last week Congress went back to college, at least in that it waited until just before summer break to turn in all its assignments: the energy bill, CAFTA, a raft of nominee hearings. And after endless bickering among the House, Senate, and White House--Republicans all, a formula that was supposed to produce legislative results--Washington finally passed the $286.4 billion transportation bill, a mere two years after the previous bill had expired (necessitating seven extensions).

 

Such parliamentary sloth, however, was hardly an occasion for modesty. Speaker Dennis Hastert said upon the bill's passage: "House Republicans have worked to pass a highway bill that will not only fuel America's economy by growing jobs, but it addresses the need for a national transportation system suited to the twenty-first century's economy. This monumental effort is another accomplishment that once again demonstrates that House Republicans are charting the course for economic prosperity." But there's a glaring problem with that statement. By looking at the highway bill as first and foremost a jobs machine, rather than an infrastructure package, Congress actually ensured that we won't address the need for a modernized national transportation system. And in the longterm, that will pose a threat to economic growth.

 

The initial price tag for the House version of the bill--introduced in 2003--was $375 billion, a number that relied on estimates by the Department of Transportation showing what we would need to spend to maintain our highways. But then the earmarking began, and every senator and representative had to have his share. The tone was set by Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Don Young, a House lifer from Alaska well-known for his sharp elbows and generous appetite for legislative pork. This time around, for example, his nearly $1 billion take for his home state included $100 million for a bridge connecting tiny Gravina Island to the mainland and $151 million for another bridge--to be renamed Don Young Way. In total, the bill--the most pork-laden in history, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense--has over 6,370 earmarks costing $23 billion; in comparison, the last transportation bill, from 1998, included just over 1,850 items costing $9 billion.

 

Even self-described deficit hawks partook of the pork. Hastert, for example, may talk a good game on the need to keep down spending, but like every other supporter of the bill, he was quick to tout the millions he brought home for his district's infrastructure, including $1.2 million for a pedestrian bridge and $7 million for a pair of parking decks. Hastert was joined by hundreds of senators and representatives, all of whom sent out self-congratulatory press releases showing how much bacon they'd brought home. Only a handful--Senators John McCain and Judd Gregg, among them--voted against the bill as excessively wasteful. All of this at a time when the nation's highways are literally falling apart, even as they witness massive yearly increases in traffic, in some cases by double-digit percentages.

 

The structure of the highway bill actually encourages members to spend money in ways only tangentially related to the bill's ostensible purpose. Each member of Congress is essentially given a lump sum of money in the bill to do with as he pleases, and it would be naïve to expect politicians to spend that money on anything but the most eye-popping construction projects. Some of the most glaring examples don't involve infrastructure at all, but instead are pure electoral propaganda. Young's trove includes funding for--no joke--a documentary about Alaska's wonderful infrastructure.

 

Of course, such enormous waste may start to look fishy even to those who benefit from it. That's why Congress talks about the bill in terms of jobs. What gets ignored, however, is whether the bill's provisions are necessarily the best way to generate jobs. After all, a highway bill is, by definition, going to involve construction and therefore job creation. Jobs will be created whether you build a parking lot or expand a highway.

 

But in the long run, failing to build a parking deck in suburban Chicago won't affect the national economy; failing to expand capacity along congested stretches of interstate will. According to a May 2005 study by the Texas Transportation Institute (an arm of Texas A&M), congestion alone costs the economy $65 billion a year. If national highway capacity continues to expand at its current, meager 3 percent annual rate, it's not hard to imagine the economic impact that the expected doubling of truck traffic over the next 15 years will have. Whatever that economic impact is, it will certainly swamp the benefits accrued from a few thousand more jobs.

 

None of this is to say that all locally focused projects in the bill are wasteful, nor that 100 percent of the bill's monies should go to building highway capacity. It is merely to say that the narrow-minded priorities of congressmen--and the way the legislative system indulges those priorities--run counter to some of the country's most pressing economic needs. The highway bill may be the House GOP's idea of how to generate jobs. But it's no way to keep a modern economy, pardon the pun, up to speed.

[YASNY]

I am wondering if a key big of asphalt, the new I69 project that would link Laredo with Canada is among the projects. There are a couple much needed roadways down by me. The area has been in the five fastest growing sreas for the past 10 years without much new road construction.

 

But I69 is such a vulger name for a highway across this great land. It should be changed to something decent. :rolly

[mreye]

But isn't the federal money coming from people who will travel down County Road 17? Perhaps that's a bad example, but it's our money, I'm not as hung up on which group of crooks, errrrrr elected representives, chooses what to build as I am them choosing good, worthy projects. I'm not certain that state cronies would be much better than national cronies.

Yes, but I'd rather my money go to fix local roads in Indiana rather than local roads in Texas. Yes, you're right state cronies would be the same, but at least the money would stay in state. Right now, is the amount of Federal money coming from Indiana proportionate to the amount coming back in? Or is it proportionate to who has the most clout in DC? I'd say the latter.

[southsider2k5]

Yes, but I'd rather my money go to fix local roads in Indiana rather than local roads in Texas. Yes, you're right state cronies would be the same, but at least the money would stay in state. Right now, is the amount of Federal money coming from Indiana proportionate to the amount coming back in? Or is it proportionate to who has the most clout in DC? I'd say the latter.

 

Actually if it is like most projects, less populous states recieve more money than they put in.

[mreye]

Here's my favorite piece on the highway bill.

What's your favorite part? That the story you quoted doesn't mention the word Democrat a single time? That the same story, when criticizing anyone, identifies them as Republicans, but when giving John McCain and Judd Gregg credit fails to indentify them as Rebublicans.

 

Yeah, that's my favorite part too. :rolly

 

 

Actually, my favorite part is when we have a nice bipartisan discussion on how all of theses bastards are crooked and someone always has to come in and take the fun out. :banghead

[mreye]

Actually if it is like most projects, less populous states recieve more money than they put in.

Well, that isn't fair either. I stand by my "Power to the states" opinion!

[southsider2k5]

Well, that isn't fair either. I stand by my "Power to the states" opinion!

 

To be honest I agree, but I just thought you would be interested in that factoid. States should have more control over their destinies.

[mreye]

To be honest I agree, but I just thought you would be interested in that factoid.  States should have more control over their destinies.

Isn't that what the founders intended?

[southsider2k5]

Isn't that what the founders intended?

 

I totally believe that. I think our forefathers would be embarassed by the bloated federal government of today.

[Balta1701]

But I69 is such a vulger name for a highway across this great land.  It should be changed to something decent.  :rolly

I69 currently runs through a portion of northern Indiana.

 

I went to a concert at Deer Creek music center (when it was still called that) north of Indianapolis a few years ago...when we drove in there were a bunch of signs pointing to the I-69 entrance...when we pulled out of the concert, the signs were all gone.