Here’s a rundown of what happened: Late last week, Republican Sen. Jim Bunning filibustered a bill to extend federal unemployment benefits, arguing that the government needed to add a provision stipulating how it would pay the $10 billion tab. As a result, the Transportation Department has announced it’s going to furlough 2,000 employees (though it could be double that) without pay — including people like federal inspectors that keep state construction projects going. The job cuts will come from the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the Research and Innovative Technology Administration.
What else does this all mean? We’ll likely see a total shutdown of federal funding for road, bridge, bike-ped, and transit projects, since a short-term extension of the Highway Trust Fund was attached to the dead bill. The government will also halt the processing of funds for stimulus construction work, which means the remainder of the ARRA money will sit gathering dust. And to top it all off, the federal spigot will be dry for state-based road safety groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).
All of this is bad news for states. Very bad. The DOT’s layoffs will trickle down into the private sector, as Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood noted in a statement, since “construction workers will be sent home from job sites because federal inspectors must be furloughed.” And as Larry Brown, executive director of the Mississippi Department of Transportation, put it: “If you do the math, we’re talking about more than $153 million a day in lost reimbursement payments for highway projects to the states.” Finally, Susan Martinovich, director of the Nevada Department of Transportation, summed it up thusly:
The timing could not be worse….States need every dollar they can get to improve our aging roads and bridges and put people to work. My home state of Nevada has the nation’s seventh-highest unemployment rate at 10.4 percent. We should be awarding contracts for spring construction right now, but instead many states are forced to delay, and in some cases cancel, projects.
Still, all hope is not lost. StreetsBlogDC writes:
Nevertheless, the situation remains fluid. House transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) has secured a promise that future Senate legislation will assuage his panel’s frustration with a provision in the pending jobs bill that would apply 2009 earmarks to $932 million in 2010 transportation grants.
That agreement helps pave the way for House passage of the Senate jobs bill, perhaps as soon as Tuesday. If both chambers can agree quickly on that jobs bill, which would extend the 2005 federal transport law until 2011, the flow of federal funding for local projects likely would turn back on without senators having to break through Bunning’s one-man filibuster.
Let’s hope! In the meantime, Oberstar’s committee has released a statement explaining how bad things could get. Read it and weep.
March 2nd, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Umm…so why doesn’t the Senate just find a way to pay for it? A tiny jump in the gas tax could bring in tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions.
March 2nd, 2010 at 6:34 pm
Raise the gas tax? Didn’t anyone tell you that most Americans believe that our infrastructure is free?
March 2nd, 2010 at 8:48 pm
Jim Bunning is a legend! Well done fine sir.
Instead of a Bob the Builder Mentality “Can we fix it?! Yes we Can” and doing something about the situation as one, for the better of the people, leading by example, working together etc once again they go “Can we fix it?! No its Fucked!” and leave it at that. Pardon my language but this asinine bullshit pissing match that we’ve been audience to for the last year has finally made me want to stab myself in both ears with a pencil. I give up.
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Jim Bunning wants to pass the bill. He just wants a way to pay for it first, so that it doesn’t add to the deficit.
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:48 pm
I feel like cutting off federal funding for transit would ULTIMATELY be good for most transit programs. There are two big reasons:
1. It’s wasteful when local projects aren’t funded locally. When funding comes from federal grants, money moves from local people to the IRS in taxation, bounces around the federal government for a while before it is designated for a transit grant. Then, more officials have to decide where to send the money. Finally, the money might come back to the local community where it started, but a lot is lost in administrative costs. Ideally we should have lower federal transit funding, and lower federal taxes. If a locality wants to pay for a project with taxes, they should raise taxes. (Unfortunately pork works - people don’t think about how wasteful it is when they like it.)
2. It hurts public support. I realized this in a big way with St. Louis Metrolink, some of which is apparently paid for with federal grants which require some money to be spent on art. What’s worse, they require matching funds, even for art, from local taxes. Needless to say this annoys some people quite a bit. If the project was totally local and local people didn’t like a stipulation, it could be removed.
I suspect that public transit would be a lot better if the federal government was smaller and less active. We pay for federal largess in many, many ways.
March 2nd, 2010 at 10:12 pm
It hurts me to say it, but I’m siding with Bunning on this one.
What is proposed is that this spending just keeps adding to the deficit. All he wants is the money to come from somewhere.
Either take it from somewhere (the military has lots of money!) or make a new source of funding (raise the gas tax).
Instead of villainizing the senator for doing something we should have started doing decades ago, work with him and find real money somewhere.
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:18 am
Everyone siding with Bunning are right. Temporary budget extensions should be postponed until THE ENTIRE FREAKING BUDGET IS BALANCED! (That’s me being sarcastic. Could you tell?)
So lets do the dirty work, conservatives. Let’s balance the budget here. Here are your options:
A) Greatly increase Taxes During a Recession.
B) Dissolve Social Security
C) Dissolve Medicare
D) Dissolve the Armed Forces
E) Inflate the Dollar.
Those are your choices. Which would you like? Because, if you are we balance the budget and your not talking doing at least one of those 5 things, then what the h*** are you talking about?
March 3rd, 2010 at 5:25 am
Did Bunning put a hold on the Iraq War to make sure it didn’t add to the deficit? No. So why are we turning partisan grandstanding into some deep principle?
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:13 am
He is not talking about balancing the entire budget. He just doesn’t want to add any more to the record breaking deficit. His proposal was to funnel the funding into the stimulus package, presumably to replace some of the spending that is scheduled for a few years out. Personally, I think raising the gas tax would take care of the infrastructure part of the spending and then some.
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:35 am
If he wants to stop the deficit from growing any further, he should find something to stall other than frikikin’ COBRA.
Perhaps the next financial sector bailout?
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:47 am
I’m pretty sure there isn’t a “next financial sector bailout” on the table…so it is gonna be pretty hard for him to stop it. And last I checked, he dropped his objection and voted FOR the proposal with an amendment paying for the proposal.
March 3rd, 2010 at 5:34 pm
The deficit broke records in 2003, as well. Why didn’t he insist on finding a spending cut or tax increase to pay for the Iraq War?
March 3rd, 2010 at 9:48 pm
By the way. No one senator can fillabuster anything. I believe that the senator in question requested that the item be brought up for a formal vote with debate on its merrit. No one fillabustered, this is part of the narative that the republicans have a purely obstructionist agenda.
March 4th, 2010 at 11:29 am
The deficit in 2003 was lower, as a percentage of GDP, than it was with Reagan in the mid 80s. Regardless, you are acting like if it is okay to blow $100, then surely it is okay to blow $1000. It is logically inconsistent. Does that make him a hypocrite? Sure, but it also shows he has limits. I’m sure you do too, but we haven’t hit them yet obviously.
And yes, a single senator can filibuster a bill. It typically doesn’t happen, but it has happened and there is nothing to stop it from happening again.