Getting to and from work today was an exercise in patience and grace -- two virtues I often run short on when I'm stuck in wall-to-wall traffic on Interstate-66. The highway, notorious even at its best as being more of a parking lot than a throughway, was at its worst this morning. It took us an hour to travel nine miles, and that was with the advantage of being in the HOV (express) lane.
What made 66 the poster child today for the need for mass transit was D.C.'s ailing mass transit system. A Metro train had derailed, crippling one of the major train lines linking northern Virginia to the government center of D.C. After snarling commuter and highway traffic for morning drive time, the disabled train finally was removed from the track and the system got back on schedule. Until it was time to go home tonight, that is. Another train derailed on the same line, again snarling commuter and highway traffic just in time for the evening drive.
On the best of days, getting around the D.C. area takes major effort as the designers of the Metro system and the designers of the highways didn't talk to each other when they laid the two out years ago, and neither did a great job of planning for the future. So today, the Metro ends far short of where most commuters can afford to live, and the highways beyond the infamous "beltway" just can't handle the resulting traffic.
You'd think this would be the perfect target for stimulus money -- especially as so many government workers rely on the Metro for their commute and D.C. is so full of people giving lip service to the need to go green. But investing money in existing infrastructure is something conservatives do. It's not so popular with the people currently spending our money in Washington.
The stimulus package, which is supposed to be filled with projects that can generate jobs over the next two years, calls for spending more than $8 billion on high-speed rail. According to a White House news release, "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act makes an unprecedented investment in ... innovative high-speed rail initiatives to bring new, efficient transportation alternatives to millions of Americans across the country and finally start breaking the grip of foreign oil on our nation’s economy." (See http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/Recovery_Act_Infrastructure_2-17.pdf, and yes, I know the grammar in that sentence is awful. But, hey, I'm just quoting from "greater minds than mine.")
The $8 billion far surpasses anything before attempted in this country — and more is coming, according to Minnesota's twincities.com. "Administration officials told Politico that when Obama outlines his 2010 budget next week, it will ask for $1 billion more for high-speed rail in each of the next five years," the paper reported today. (http://www.twincities.com/politics/ci_11722742)
While some people are praising this initiative, others are groaning about the expense. But what few are discussing is the fact that there's no way a fast rail system will move from drawing board to rail lines in the two years required by the rationale for a stimulus package. There are too many environmental impact statements that will have to be researched, too many public hearings that will be have to be held, too many endangered species to look out for, too many state and federal agencies that will have to be consulted. Maybe that's what will generate all the jobs!
Other infrastructure needs mostly overlooked by our overzealous overspenders are those that still bear the mark of Hurricane Katrina. The Democrats rallied around the banner of "FEMA's failures" after Katrina and raised the specter of Katrina victims whenever it made for a good sound bite. But last week when they were tossing a few billion here and a few billion there, they all but ignored the needs of the towns and cities still struggling to regain their footing after being wiped out by the hurricane. And when it comes to creating jobs, the White House estimates that the stimulus package will create about 50,000 jobs in Louisiana and 30,000 jobs in Mississippi, both "red states" that are still trying to recover from Katrina. Compare that with the nearly 400,000 jobs that are expected to be created in Nancy Pelosi's blue state of California. So much for bipartisanship.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I'd just like to point out that there IS a formula to the amount of jobs that are being created/saved with the stimulus money. In general it is roughly 1.2% of the states' population in jobs. So, regardless of red vs. blue, all states will get an equal percentage based on their population. I've gone through about half of the states, red AND blue, and it works out. Here is the link to the state by state breakdown of things. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/multimedia_assets/090204/white_house_releases_additional_state1.pdf
ReplyDeleteYes, there is a formula they used to create their chart of where jobs will be created. But that job formula and the projects to be funded don't correspond.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, all the high-speed rail projects hug the coasts. Most of the interior states would get none of this $8 billion.
Another example is the National Institutes of Health, which has said that it will use the bulk of its stimulus funding on existing grants or projects. It has no plan to disperse that money among the states according to population.