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Plan not popular with Republicans
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Plan not popular with RepublicansObama administration wants high speed rail; Republicans opposeWolfe 2011 (,Kathryn A. "Ambitious Rail Plans Stun Lawmakers." CQ Weekly , February 21, 2011: 400. http://library.cqpress.com/cqweekly/weeklyreport112000003817897.) On the day President Obama released his fiscal 2012 budget, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood pointed reporters to an aerial photo of Hoover Dam, its concrete mass shining bone white behind an impressive span of highway. “The people that came before us had some big dreams” for infrastructure, LaHood said. And, he added, Obama does, too. Just before LaHood spoke, the president had unveiled details of his budget for the Transportation Department, which called for an eyepopping $53 billion investment in building highspeed rail corridors around the country over the next six years. Left unanswered was how to pay for it all. The budget announcement was itself a followup to Obama’s State of the Union address, in which he called for a nationwide network of highspeed rail corridors to be developed within 25 years. LaHood refers to the rail initiative — which received seed money through the 2009 economic stimulus law — as his agency’s “signature program.” When he speaks about it, he sometimes conjures images of historically important public works projects, including Hoover Dam, the Interstate Highway System and the transcontinental railroad. Just as those huge projects transformed the country in ways that are still felt today, LaHood and the administration view their rail proposal as having the potential to reshape America’s transportation options, create employment opportunities, reduce congestion and revitalize manufacturing. “Like our parents and grandparents, we, too, must exercise the foresight and courage to invest in the most important infrastructure projects of our time,” LaHood wrote in a December oped column. “If we work together, a national highspeed rail network can and will be our generation’s legacy.” Obama’s highspeed rail dreams are certainly ambitious, but can they be achieved? So far the administration hasn’t offered any specific proposals to pay for all this rail spending. When asked whether the administration has any plans for solving the yawning financing gap, LaHood replied that he looks forward to working that out with Congress. Of course, so far Congress hasn’t had many new ideas about how to raise revenue for the country’s current infrastructure needs — much less an additional $53 billion for highspeed rail. The proposal to bring 80 percent of Americans ready access to fast trains within a quarter century is part of the president’s sixyear, $556 billion surface transportation proposal. Overall, the White House is proposing an ambitious agenda to fix roads and bridges, modernize aviation, and expand broadband access. Surface transportation programs have been authorized through a series of shortterm extensions since the last highway law expired in September 2009. The biggest obstacle to enacting a new multiyear authorization has been how to pay for it. The Highway Trust Fund is financed with taxes on motor fuels and truck and tire sales. But the 18.4 centspergallon gasoline tax hasn’t been increased since 1993, and highway spending has outpaced revenue. Congress kept the fund solvent in recent years only through transfers from general tax revenue. With no appetite in Congress or by the administration for raising the gasoline tax, it is unclear how a new highway bill will be financed. Billions of dollars in new spending on highspeed rail makes a bill an even tougher sell. Even before the administration unveiled its newest plans for rail, congressional Republicans were criticizing the $10.5 billion already doled out, mostly through the stimulus law. In fact, highspeed rail was near the top of the hit list for Republican budgetcutters. And it’s not just congressional Republicans who take a dim view of the initiative. A handful of Republican governors have actually rejected billions of dollars in federal highspeed rail money, saying the lines will end up being too costly for the state to maintain. Florida’s new governor, Rick Scott, was the latest to say no thanks to $2.4 billion, just days after the White House unveiled its spending blueprint. The administration promptly said it would allocate the money elsewhere. “There’s been a lot of bipartisan support for the need to create the kind of modern infrastructure in this country that will enable us to compete,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney. “Highspeed rail is very much a part of that. And we will make sure that that money is used elsewhere to advance the infrastructure and innovation agenda that is essential for economic growth.” That’s a message welcomed by a new crop of “green” transportation advocates. John Robert Smith, president of Reconnecting America, which promotes transitoriented development, said a national highspeed rail system “is not only an opportunity to redefine how we travel and how our regional economies grow” but also the type of “innovation and progress that can secure a better future for our grandchildren.” More road builders and other more traditional transportation stakeholders are wary about the administration’s proposal to rejigger the Transportation Department’s budget to ensure that highspeed rail has a dedicated funding stream into the future. To ensure that highspeed rail isn’t subject to the whims of appropriators, the budget proposes merging rail programs with the Highway Trust Fund, which funds most highway and transit spending, into a new account to be called the Transportation Trust Fund. Traditional transportation groups worry that already inadequate gasoline tax receipts deposited into the Highway Trust Fund won’t remain dedicated to highway and transit spending, even though the president’s budget says the money will be protected. “It is hard to take this proposal seriously when the administration has yet to identify how it will pay for the other programs it wants to add to the trust fund,” said Stephen E. Sandherr, chief executive of the Associated General Contractors of America, in a statement. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which will draft portions of the next surface transportation bill, said he won’t support such a big change to the trust fund structure for just that reason. “Well you know what that means,” Inhofe said. “We used to have surpluses. Remember that? Then all these hitchhikers came along — bike trails and rail — instead of just maintaining and building highways, bridges and construction.” Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 0.9 Mb. Share with your friends:
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