Is the Passenger Rail Lobby Drowned OUT by Business Interests?

[FayeforCure]

A Lobbying Free-for-All: Thousands of Special Interests Vie for Influence on New Transportation Bill

A Lobbying Free-for-All
Thousands of Special Interests Vie for Influence on New Transportation Bill

By Matthew Lewis | September 17, 2009, 5:00 am

Crafting a New Bill as the Clock Ticks
Desperate Search for New Money
Special Interests, Not National Interests
Lobbyists and their Ties to Lawmakers
A Bias Toward Roads


Speaking from a lofty perch not unlike the one he occupies as ranking Republican on the House Transportation Committee, Florida Representative John Mica looked out upon a sea of familiar faces last month at a suburban Dallas hotel. Mica was addressing the 12th Annual Transportation and Infrastructure Summit.

The conference drew more than 1,100 participants, including many veterans of transportation lobbying wars past and present. Among them: the CEOs of three of America’s freight railroad giants, directors of some of the West’s largest transit agencies, and representatives from engineering giants like Kansas City-based HNTB.

“I’ve had a chance to hear from some of you,” Mica told the luncheon crowd of transportation pros as they picked at a dessert of tiramisu, “but not all of you. … I need your ideas.”

“We don’t know if we can succeed,” he went on. “We know we can’t succeed without you getting involved.”

And with that the legislator pointed a finger back at the transportation lobby â€" a lobby that spent at least $45 million in Washington in the first half of this year, mostly to “help” Congress craft a new transportation bill. That lobby is composed of almost 1,800 entities of all stripes, and they are employing at least 2,100 lobbyists with intimate knowledge of transportation politics to make their cases.

Over the past two decades, this is the way federal transportation policy has largely been made in America â€" by a quasi-private club of interest groups and local governments carving out something for everyone, creating a nationwide patchwork of funded bypasses, interchanges, bridges, and rail lines with no overarching philosophy behind it. “

Applying patches to our surface transportation system is no longer acceptable,” Congress was told in January 2008 by a bipartisan commission lawmakers themselves had created. That commission described Washington’s present policy as “pursuing no discernible national interests other than … political imperatives.”

Now, as this year’s version of the transportation debate reaches a crescendo, all of those interests are back at the table, some of them waxing eloquently about the need for reform. And some emboldened outsiders are trying to change the game, struggling to change the debate so that this year’s bill will really be different.

But don’t bet on it.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/transportation_lobby/articles/entry/1668/

BTW James Olberstar (D-MN) is the Chairman of the House Transportation Committee. John Mica is the ranking Republican member of the House Transportation Committee.

Hmmmm, yeah, representation in the PUBLIC interest. Clearly, influence goes to the highest bidder. So much for any semblance of democracy.

[FayeforCure]

Actually, the piece continues to explain where our transportation funding comes from and how it gets to us:

the House Transportation Committee, led by powerful chairman James Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat, proposes spending $500 billion on a brand new, six-year bill. Everybody from progressives to builders supports the higher number, given the need for new roads, new bridges, new rail lines, and new jobs.

Even maintaining current spending levels through 2018 would require $100 billion more than the trust fund can take in, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Finding new money would require picking from a host of politically risky options. In the short term though, the conversation usually circles back to raising the price at the pump. “We should have indexed [the gas tax for inflation] a long time ago,” Oberstar said at a hearing in July. But doing that in the midst of a severe recession seems more than a bit unlikely.

Special Interests, Not National Interests
For the moment, everyone’s talking a good game about new ways of doing business. “The good news is that the financial part of the system is so broken that marginal change probably isn’t going to get the job done,” said Van Beek.

Beneath that consensus, however, lies trouble. Once hard decisions are made about which projects are funded, and which aren’t, and which funding mechanisms make sense, and which don’t, things are likely to get ugly. The reason: transportation policy and transportation bills provide depressingly stark proof that all politics is local. Each city, state, and more specifically, congressional district, has its own battles to fight.* (for lakelander who thinks passenger rail in FL is a matter of local and state,......not US Representatives)

“The system we have now is not one of national needs,” said Roy Kienitz, undersecretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation, “but one that responds to local and regional decree.”

There are a couple of key issues here, say experts.

• The vast majority of federal transportation dollars get divided among states and localities to spend as they see fit. Congress has created dozens of programs through which those dollars flow from Washington. But there’s no overarching national strategy. And few goals.

• Beyond that, though, a portion of the pot is doled out project-by-project in Washington. So lots of groups end up hiring lobbyists to bypass local and state decision-makers and get projects funded federally. “High-priority projects,” the most visible of earmarks, accounted for $13.5 billion in the last bill, almost five percent. But that doesn’t include earmarking within the bill’s other narrow programs.

“The decision making process for transportation is like a piece of Swiss cheese,” said Anne Canby, director of the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, a reform-minded advocacy group. “If you don’t get what you want, you go some place else.”

“All it is about is how much money everybody gets,” Canby said.

The $286 billion transportation bill passed in 2005 authorized 6,371 high-priority projects â€" nearly quadrupling the number contained in the previous measure. The so-called “Bridge to Nowhere,” a project linking Ketchikan, Alaska, to nearby Gravina Island, was one of these high-priority items included in 2005, for $223 million. Another Alaskan bridge, the Knik Arm, received four earmarks of its own totaling more than $229 million.

That process has become a runaway train of expectations and perceived entitlements, experts say, as lobbyists go hat in hand to individual members of Congress, assuming that the member will have little or no trouble delivering on the desired project. “The expectations are so high, that an individual member can deliver these projects,” said one Democratic Senate staffer familiar with transportation policy.

Congress doesn’t seem in any hurry to give up its prerogatives, however. Rather than pick no projects, they propose to simply pick them better.

Critics argue the process needs to be depoliticized entirely. [b]“Instead of going through the earmark process,” former Republican Senator Slade Gorton wrote last month in an op-ed, “projects should be funded based on merit … as components of a larger program of metropolitan investment.”[/b]

Thank you former Republican Senator Slade Gorton! Earmarking shouldn't be a mechamism through which Congressmen consolidate their power at National tax-payer expense.

[FayeforCure]

Ah, and here is the ROAD lobby for our area!!

A pair of central Florida counties looking for road improvements hired former congressman L.A. “Skip” Bafalis, a Florida Republican. Bafalis’ 20 clients include three local governments within Mica’s congressional district.

[FayeforCure]

Time we consider taking a look at how our own Congressional representation is paid for:

The PAC for law and lobby firm Holland & Knight, also a part of T4America, spent $17,000 on House Transportation leaders Oberstar and Mica during the same period.

Role of Environmentalists ( our Congressmen are rated by the League of Conservation Voters) is increasing:

Many of these groups â€" along with, environmentalists awakened by the climate fight â€" are having an impact, observers say. The groups are also unified by support of a proposed National Transportation Objectives Act introduced by Democratic House members in June, as well as an outline by senior Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee called the Federal Surface Transportation Policy and Planning Act.

Both measures set specific benchmarks for federal transportation policy: reducing the number of vehicle miles traveled, increasing freight rail capacity, and bringing transportation-related CO2 emissions down by 40 percent over the next two decades.

Ah, I guess passenger rail is finally indirectly mentioned here under: "reducing the number of vehicle miles traveled"

And here is that dreaded TAX word again, stifling any chance for PROGRESS:

The reluctance to engage in a debate that likely ends in new taxes prompted Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to suggest an 18-month extension of present law, just one day before Oberstar publicly released his bill on June 18. Mica called the extension proposal a “betrayal,” and Oberstar has continued to push his bill. But the Senate followed the administration’s advice, passing portions of an extension out of three separate committees. To keep the trust fund solvent until 2011, Senate Democrats suggest reimbursing it $26.8 billion. But that would come from the general treasury, meaning Congress either needs to find an offset or chalk it up to the national debt.

House leaders proposed some nontraditional ways to collect more money, such as a tax on oil speculators, a national sales tax, or the use of more tolling and private partnerships. A “miles traveled” tax, which levies specific charges on drivers based in part on the number of miles they drive, has gained the support of Congress’ two national policy commissions, but that option would require years to implement and would likely be a tough sell to the public.

That leaves the gas tax. All the big players in the transportation lobby accept the idea of an increase and are offering Congress their support. This includes the truckers, road builders, and even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But even Oberstar said during congressional testimony that the gas tax will not be raised during a recession, and no one in Congress is stepping up to argue the case.

Seems like Congress is out of touch, when all the major transportation folks are ok with finally indexing our gas tax!!!!!!!

[tufsu1]

Faye...perhaps you should check out T4America's website to see what they stand for....prior to jumping to more conclusions about Mica and roads.

[CS Foltz]

Somehow I do not see "Truckers" saying they would back a Gas Tax! Your talking about not only the Teamsters but the Independents. Even those running with 2 sets of logs, one for the DOT (Dept of Trouble) and one for the real world would not put up with it! Diesel has gone dramatically up in the past 10 years and will get worse! John Mica would be shot by some Idiot who thought that he controls the price of motion lotion when the big 3 are to blame!! Passenger Rail is being drowned out by Big Business and it is all for the sake of a dollar!

[FayeforCure]

Faye...perhaps you should check out T4America's website to see what they stand for....prior to jumping to more conclusions about Mica and roads.

They are a fine org., THAT wasn't my point. My point was that everyone is bought and paid for,......and the amounts involved are astronomical.

[tufsu1]

another name for lobbying is advocacy....and the reason the # are astronomical is because the reauthorization bill will be huge....it is all proportional.

[FayeforCure]

another name for lobbying is advocacy....and the reason the # are astronomical is because the reauthorization bill will be huge....it is all proportional.

So where is the PUBLIC in all of this:

Based on disclosure data, the Center estimates that lobbying expenditures on the new surface transportation measure and associated appropriations bills exceeded $45 million for the first half of 2009.

A cool $100,000,000 a year on "advocacy." And guess whose money is being used for "advocacy"?

Our tax payer monies are used by county and state governments to buy lobbyists.

BTW, where is the passenger rail lobby,.......didn't see them mentioned in the article at all!!!

[FayeforCure]

Passenger Rail is being drowned out by Big Business and it is all for the sake of a dollar!

Thanks CS Foltz!

[tufsu1]

the passenger rail lobby is tied in with organizations like T4America....and they get their money from many plaes (including $25 from me).

[FayeforCure]

the passenger rail lobby is tied in with organizations like T4America....and they get their money from many plaes (including $25 from me).

I'm a member of T4America too,........but it remains to be seen how much influence they can BUY.

Again, what happened to representation in the Public interest?

[FayeforCure]

Somehow I do not see "Truckers" saying they would back a Gas Tax! Your talking about not only the Teamsters but the Independents. Even those running with 2 sets of logs, one for the DOT (Dept of Trouble) and one for the real world would not put up with it! Diesel has gone dramatically up in the past 10 years and will get worse! John Mica would be shot by some Idiot who thought that he controls the price of motion lotion when the big 3 are to blame!!

September 20, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Real Men Tax Gas
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Do we owe the French and other Europeans a second look when it comes to their willingness to exercise power in today’s world? Was it really fair for some to call the French and other Europeans “cheese-eating surrender monkeys?” Is it time to restore the French in “French fries” at the Congressional dining room, and stop calling them “Freedom Fries?” Why do I ask these profound questions?

Because we are once again having one of those big troop debates: Do we send more forces to Afghanistan, and are we ready to do what it takes to “win” there? This argument will be framed in many ways, but you can set your watch on these chest-thumpers: “toughness,” “grit,” “fortitude,” “willingness to do whatever it takes to realize big stakes” â€" all the qualities we tend to see in ourselves, with some justification, but not in Europeans.

But are we really that tough? If the metric is a willingness to send troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and consider the use of force against Iran, the answer is yes. And we should be eternally grateful to the Americans willing to go off and fight those fights. But in another way â€" when it comes to doing things that would actually weaken the people we are sending our boys and girls to fight â€" we are total wimps. We are, in fact, the wimps of the world. We are, in fact, so wimpy our politicians are afraid to even talk about how wimpy we are.

How so? France today generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants, and it has managed to deal with all the radioactive waste issues without any problems or panics. And us? We get about 20 percent and have not been able or willing to build one new nuclear plant since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, even though that accident led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or neighbors. We’re too afraid to store nuclear waste deep in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain â€" totally safe â€" at a time when French mayors clamor to have reactors in their towns to create jobs. In short, the French stayed the course on clean nuclear power, despite Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and we ran for cover.

How about Denmark? Little Denmark, sweet, never-hurt-a-fly Denmark, was hit hard by the 1973 Arab oil embargo. In 1973, Denmark got all its oil from the Middle East. Today? Zero. Why? Because Denmark got tough. It imposed on itself a carbon tax, a roughly $5-a-gallon gasoline tax, made massive investments in energy efficiency and in systems to generate energy from waste, along with a discovery of North Sea oil (about 40 percent of its needs).

And us? When it comes to raising gasoline taxes or carbon taxes â€" at a perfect time like this when prices are already low â€" our politicians tell us it is simply “off the table.” So I repeat, who is the real tough guy here?

“The first rule of warfare is: ‘Take the high ground.’ Even the simplest Taliban fighter knows that,” said David Rothkopf, energy consultant and author of “Superclass.” “The strategic high ground in the world â€" whether it is in the Middle East or vis-à-vis difficult countries like Russia and Venezuela â€" is to be less dependent on oil. And yet, we simply refuse to seize it.”

According to the energy economist Phil Verleger, a $1 tax on gasoline and diesel fuel would raise about $140 billion a year. If I had that money, I’d devote 45 cents of each dollar to pay down the deficit and satisfy the debt hawks, 45 cents to pay for new health care and 10 cents to cushion the burden of such a tax on the poor and on those who need to drive long distances.

Such a tax would make our economy healthier by reducing the deficit, by stimulating the renewable energy industry, by strengthening the dollar through shrinking oil imports and by helping to shift the burden of health care away from business to government so our companies can compete better globally. Such a tax would make our population healthier by expanding health care and reducing emissions. Such a tax would make our national-security healthier by shrinking our dependence on oil from countries that have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs and by increasing our leverage over petro-dictators, like those in Iran, Russia and Venezuela, through shrinking their oil incomes.

In sum, we would be physically healthier, economically healthier and strategically healthier. And yet, amazingly, even talking about such a tax is “off the table” in Washington. You can’t mention it. But sending your neighbor’s son or daughter to risk their lives in Afghanistan? No problem. Talk away. Pound your chest.

I am not sure what the right troop number is for Afghanistan; I need to hear more. But I sure know this: There is something wrong when our country is willing to consider spending more lives and treasure in Afghanistan, where winning is highly uncertain, but can’t even talk about a gasoline tax, which is win, win, win, win, win â€" with no uncertainty at all.

So, I ask yet again: Who are the real cheese-eating surrender monkeys in this picture?

BTW, I prefer simply indexing our gas tax,........rather than a set 18 cent per gallon, it should be 18% of the cost per gallon, to take it back to the tax rate of the 1980s.

[CS Foltz]

Faye...........you have a point! I also agree with "where the hell is the Rail Lobby"? Right now the big 3, as in Oil, have more than sufficient funds to make their cases and it is to their advantage to continue to slant things their way. Until the American People wake up and see just what is taking place........it will continue! Until we get serious about our dependency on foreign oil and change our ways.........well you know the direction this is going!

[FayeforCure]

Faye...........you have a point! I also agree with "where the hell is the Rail Lobby"? Right now the big 3, as in Oil, have more than sufficient funds to make their cases and it is to their advantage to continue to slant things their way. Until the American People wake up and see just what is taking place........it will continue! Until we get serious about our dependency on foreign oil and change our ways.........well you know the direction this is going!

CS Foltz, it is difficult for the American People to wake up,.........because our fourth estate, the media, gets a major portion of their funding from Big Oil (.......and Big Parma) in the form of advertising dollars, so it is not in their best interest to expose a lack of People Power for Passenger Rail.