Representative John Mica is at the podium flanked by Villaraigosa and Boxer at last February's "field hearing" on reauthorization held at the V.A. Hospital in West L.A. Photo:Darrell Clarke

Much has been made of the proposal to reauthorize the Federal Transportation Trust Fund that was submitted by Republican Congressman John Mica last week.  The Mica Bill has been criticized by Democrats who feel left out of the proposal, advocates for green transportation options who bristle at the proposed elimination of the bicycle and pedestrian programs and the construction industry shocked by dramatic cuts to an industry that is already seeing higher-than-average unemployment in an era where the unemployment rate is beyond average.

To paint an even uglier picture, SF Streetsblog broke down the bad news for transit agencies and cities throughout California while Capitol Hill Streetsblog just called it a “disaster for transit.”  But there is a surprise winner in the legislation: Los Angeles’ 30/10 plan, aka America Fast Forward.  This plan would allow Los Angeles to build its Measure R transit projects, currently slated to take three decades, to complete their planning, environmental studies and construction in the next decade.  The plan was rebranded because it provides benefits for all areas of the country willing to shoulder a major chunk of the burden of building their own transit.

Back when Mica and California Senator Barbara Boxer held a field hearing on reauthorization back in February, the Congressman was pressed by Mayor Villaraigosa to dramatically expand the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) loan program up to $350 million a year which would be a dramatic increase from the $110 million a year funding level it is currently at.  While the Mica Bill cuts spending by nearly 33% from the federal government, this loan program would explode to $1 billion a year, nearly triple what Villaraigosa proposed just over four months ago.  It’s no wonder that while Democrats around the country have attacked the bill so much that Mica is publicly complaining about his treatment, Villaraigosa releases a statement praising Mica:

I know that Chairman Mica, who graciously co-hosted a transportation hearing in the City of Los Angeles earlier this year with Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), understands the scale and scope of the transportation and economic challenges facing all Americans.

Politically, it’s a smart move for Villaraigosa to continue to position himself as the champion of transit expansion and stay out of the partisan fight occurring on the Hill.  It’s almost unthinkable that the legislation from Mica’s Senate counterpart, California Senator Barbara Boxer, won’t have at least a robust plan for America Fast Forward as the conservative Republican from Florida’s plan.  This way, regardless of who wins the Capitol Hill staring contest, Villaraigosa and 30/10 wins.

Which is not to say the fight to enshrine America Fast Forward into law is over, back in February Villaraigosa outlined five changes that would help Los Angeles County, and all areas that are proactively pushing transportation through self-taxation, build faster.  The other four prongs are:

• Increasing the maximum percentage of the project allotment that TIFIA can fund.  Currently, TIFIA will fund up to 80% of a project with no “added points” going towards proposal with a higher local match.  Villaraigosa called for at least a 49% local match;
• Permitting the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to approve multiple related projects at the same time. In Los Angeles County, for example, this could mean loans for the entire suite of Measure R transit projects at once, as opposed to a line-by-line piecemeal approach;
• Allowing USDOT to grant up-front credits to projects and;
• Authorizing USDOT to lock-in interest rates for approved projects.

These four proposals were nowhere to be found in the Mica bill, so despite the increase in the TIFIA program, there are still a lot of other things that have to happen before Los Angeles can start breaking ground on the dozen transit projects that are waiting for Measure R dollars.  It also provides an opening for Boxer, who probably wasn’t thrilled that Villaraigosa is offering bi-partisan cover for a bill despised by Democrats on Capitol Hill, to position her bill as the best bill for transit and the best bill for Los Angeles’ transit needs.

Fantasies of a six-year bill seem likely to die at the feet of Senator Max Baucus.

I’m not going to quote any of them by name, because I don’t want to risk getting them in trouble with the Congressional leaders that are pushing for a six-year bill. But the half-dozen or so people I talked to for this story were unanimous in their skepticism that this year will see anything but another short-term extension, despite the fact that everyone agrees that’s the worst option.

One advocacy leader said he’s generally an optimist, and until a few months ago, he believed there was a 50-50 chance of getting a bill passed this year. (That’s right – even at his most optimistic, those were the best odds he could give it.) In the last month or so, he’s gotten far less cheery on the subject. The administration has refused to provide leadership on the issue, he said. Rahm Emanuel was a strong force pushing for reform within the White House and with him gone (pushing for reform now in Chicago, bless his heart), the fire seems to be gone as well. Besides, my source said, the White House is already in re-election mode.

Other advocates aren’t shy about putting the odds at zero. Many say they don’t see how a bill could pass this year, with deadlines getting pushed later and later into the summer. Some sources aren’t convinced the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee even has a bill written. Certainly the staff is working on one, but nobody’s seen it yet. Even some sources inside the administration are wondering what’s up. T&I leaders say they’re waiting to finish the FAA reauthorization before really getting started with the surface transportation bill, and that’s not for nothing – budget cuts in Congress have left the committee short-staffed and they simply don’t have the person-power to shepherd two major initiatives at the same time.

But the time crunch is far from the only problem. The small size of the bill the House is expected to pass could be the kiss of death. “The stakeholders that often drive the process are not going to be as enthusiastic about it if it’s a lower level,” said one expert. Besides, with a smaller bill (not to mention the program changes and consolidations being proposed), they’re going to need to change the funding formulas — a complex process that takes a long time.

The rift between the six-year bill camp and the two-year bill camp is about to get serious, some say. First of all, sixers have a way of changing their tune when it becomes clear they’d be locking in starvation funding levels for that long. And many people think Sen. Max Baucus wasn’t just talking off the cuff when he proposed a two-year alternative. If that’s his position, he has the power to enforce it, both as chair of the Finance Committee and chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee of EPW. House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica has made no secret of the fact that it’s six years or bust in his book. Some think Baucus will go along if Mica and Boxer insist on a six-year bill. But as one expert told me, “It’s rotten fruit – how much of it do you really want to take home?”

Others say it’ll take a “public failure” of the six-year concept before lawmakers will switch to a two-year bill. That failure could well come at Baucus’ feet, if T&I and EPW both pass a six-year bill that the Senate Finance Committee then says it can’t fund. But if the committees go through that whole process and then go back to the drawing board to craft a two-year bill, will that bill be essentially a “clean” extension of current policy, or will it contain the policy reforms advocates have been pushing for? If it gets down to the wire, even the reforms everyone seems to agree on could be out with the bathwater.

Some experts have speculated that it’s possible for Congress to pass a six-year bill addressing just the policy questions and then a two-year bill with funding levels – but given that they haven’t even dealt with those policy questions yet, that’s an unlikely scenario. Sure, the dollar figure is the 800-pound gorilla, but lawmakers still need to dig their teeth into performance measures, donor/donee states, formulas, local government participation, and environmental streamlining, just to name a few.

If Congress spends long enough banging its head against the wall of a six-year bill, there may not even be enough time to regroup and try for a two-year bill. They’re up against a September 30 deadline – which seemed a pretty generous timeframe when Congress extended the current authorization until then. “It’s late, and they’ve got budget stuff to deal with, and by the time they get done killing each other over this debt ceiling thing I don’t see that there’s any money left,” one insider told me.

“It’s impossible to get anything done in this town anyway and in the last year it’s gotten tougher,” another expert said.

If the September deadline doesn’t leave enough time for a bill so big and so contentious to be passed without extensions – especially with a month-long summer recess between now and then – Congress will be forced to pass an extension. And once you start down the road of extensions, a former DOT official told me, it’s hard to stop. If they end up passing an extension on September 30, it’ll be extensions “forever” – or at least until after the presidential election in 2012. Or even later – political veterans say it takes a while for a new Congress or a new administration to get organized to tackle a bill like this.

That creates a serious fiscal problem because the Highway Trust Fund is approaching insolvency. The highway account is projected to go broke next year and the transit account the year after. A clean extension of current funding levels without new revenue would lead us directly into a crisis when the accounts run out of money.

Could Congress pass a short-term extension just to buy a little more time but not kick the can so far down the road? Experts say it’s not likely. No one wants to touch this during an election year — which is completely unprecedented. Infrastructure isn’t supposed to be a polarizing issue like immigration or health care, for goodness sakes. This is a jobs and potholes bill. Transportation bills used to pass by voice vote with near-unanimous support.

But that was partly because they had enough pork in them for every member to bring home at least some bacon. That was when gas taxes brought in enough revenue to keep the Highway Trust Fund flush, or at least lawmakers didn’t mind a general fund transfusion every now and again. But with insolvency right around the corner and deficit spending a deal-breaker, it’s a different world now. Spending is a polarizing issue. Whether Congress eventually raises the gas tax, spends from the general fund, or passes a meager bill that doesn’t address infrastructure needs, they’ll be making decisions that will be unpopular with their constituents.

From left: Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue, Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, Rep. John Mica, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Sen. Barbara Boxer, AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka. Photo: Senate Photographic Studio

The “Tom and Rich Show” continued on Capitol Hill yesterday. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue and AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka joined up for yet another event to show that business and labor, which don’t agree on anything, agree on a major infusion of federal investment for infrastructure.

They weren’t the only strange bedfellows there. Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer and Republican Congressman John Mica were practically holding hands through the entire press conference. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (a Democrat) found common cause with Mesa Mayor Scott Smith (a Republican).

“We have Democrats, Republicans, House, Senate, labor, business, lambs, lions, cats, dogs lying down together,” said Mayor Smith. “But there’s no apocalypse on the horizon. There’s a new dawn.”

In the past, even as other leaders in Boxer’s party have called for an infrastructure bank, she has hesitated to join them, expressing support for a strengthened and expanded TIFIA loan program instead. She’s said that rather than create a new federal bureaucracy, she’d rather stick with an existing program with a proven track record. But now she’s saying those approaches can each work in conjunction. “They’re definitely complementary,” she said yesterday. “I’m supporting the infrastructure bank, a strengthened TIFIA, and the Wyden approach [to renew the Build America Bonds program]. They’re all complementary. It’s all about leverage, leverage, leverage.”

Tom Donohue’s persistent, at times strident calls for strong federal infrastructure investment have been at odds with the calls from the fiscal conservatives the Chamber helped elect. While many in the House are bracing for a smaller reauthorization bill than hoped for – possibly even smaller than the last one, passed in 2005 – and calling for increased public-private partnerships to pick up the slack, Donohue knows that’s not going to cut it. He’s calling for a big bill, funded with a significant increase in the gas tax, which everyone in the transportation industry supports and everyone in Washington shuns.

Chamber spokesperson Janet Kavinoky explained why public-private partnerships can’t just replace adequate federal investment.

“You have to have revenue to do transportation projects,” she said. “So even if you’re doing public-private partnerships, even if you’re offering leveraging tools, you still have to have revenue to pay interest on debt and to pay returns on equity. That’s true if you take out a mortgage, it’s true if you have a credit card, it’s true if you do infrastructure. So we don’t want people to lose sight of the fact that public private partnerships, TIFIA, banks aren’t a magic solution for everything. We still gotta have the money.”

The unlikely allies came together yesterday to promote a new initiative they’re calling America Fast Forward, a new plan building on L.A.’s proposed 30/10 program to use targeted federal investments to leverage locally-raised money for transportation projects. They say it will create jobs, support business, and empower local communities without adding to the nation’s deficit.

As part of this, more than 100 mayors from around the country, including Smith and Villaraigosa, sent a letter last week to the chairs and ranking members of four of the main Congressional committees that will be crafting the transportation bill. The letter asks them to support an expanded TIFIA loan program to provide “credit assistance for surface transportation projects of national and regional significance” as well as Qualified Transportation Improvement Bonds, which the federal government subsidizes by paying most or all of the interest cost in the form of tax credits for investors.

Photo: Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel

As he’s said before, Mica doesn’t have a bill in his “back pocket.” It’s hard to say if he was praising or criticizing his predecessor, Rep. Jim Oberstar, when he told the APTA audience, “He had waited 32 years to become chair. He knew exactly what he wanted in the bill, and he hand-wrote it out and projected it up on a screen and everyone was to march, and I did, until we started to get picked off by the administration and other folks who had other ideas, and it never happened.”

Mica also announced a series of stakeholder meetings to be held in the last week of March to supplement the field hearings the committee has been holding around the country. The meetings will help lawmakers craft a transportation reauthorization bill. Mica told the APTA members that they will be among those invited. It will include “all the Washington folks that haven’t been heard.”

Then he’ll “buy beer and pizza” (and fruit smoothies, as requested by Sen. Barbara Boxer) and lawmakers will sit down and hash it all out, he told reporters after his speech.

As for the broader budget fight, Mica alluded to the current deal to pass another extension for three more weeks – “Then, my advice and counsel would be, grab a hold of your shorts and hang on,” he said. “It might be a wild ride.”

He said it’s “above his pay grade” to guess whether more extensions will follow. “It’s not the way to fund the government, but a lot of people were sent here with a mission to cut spending.”

Mica got in his usual jabs at Amtrak, which he likes to call a “Soviet-style” train operator, incapable of developing real high-speed rail. It’s a sad time for high-speed rail proponents, like him, who were excited about the president’s vision, he said, “It’s like trying to celebrate and you’ve got a box of cigars and the first three cigars explode in your face.”

In his opinion, Florida was a bad choice for a high-speed corridor, but he and other advocates should “dust ourselves off and move forward.” He said all future inter-modal centers will be built in downtowns (and not leave passengers “at a gas station outside of town”) with consideration given to transit connections, which Tampa doesn’t have.

Mica drew on his own personal history as a “transit-dependent” to explain his support for a strong public transportation system – and one with reliable service at all hours, not just rush hour.

“I became a fan [of public transportation] when I was young, and I didn’t always have the money for a car,” he said. “I took public transportation. I used to take the last bus out, when I worked all night at the Miami Herald in the mail room, and I took the first bus out in the morning, at 6:30. And over the weekend, I had two other jobs. So I personally know many people depend on the service you provide.”

In response to a question about the new inter-city rail caucus, just founded by Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Mica said he’s “not a big caucus-joiner” and encouraged people to put their energy into the committee process instead. He told them this is their chance to influence legislation – “you’ll never have a more open process than what I’m providing” – and told them that if the final bill is missing something, “it’s your fault” for not providing input.

LaHood also addressed the gathering, speaking only briefly before taking questions about transit safety, including the Public Transportation Safety Act, which he said was a priority for him this year. He said he was stunned, after Washington, D.C.’s metro crash, that DOT has no jurisdiction over transit safety. The Banking Committee passed the bill last year, and they’re still tweaking it. “If you look at the bill, which we hope will be reintroduced, and if there are some things you don’t like about it, let us know.”

He paid homage to the inter-agency Partnership for Sustainable Communities, and listed the benefits it provides, like collaboration on a TIGER grant to build affordable housing and sidewalks near transit in Kansas City, Missouri.

Not surprisingly, LaHood was asked (not by me, this time!) how the administration plans to pay for its transportation proposal, and not surprisingly, he said he looked forward to working with Congress on that, but a gas tax hike is off the table.

One attendee said that people in London are paying $12 a gallon for gas and perhaps our gas tax could go up a bit more, as it did under President Ronald Reagan, for the dual purpose of deficit reduction and transportation. But LaHood balked at the questioner’s cajoling for a candid answer “just among us friends in this room.”

“I wish that were the case,” LaHood joked back. “Do you know how many media people are sitting in the back, just waiting for me to say something? Do you want me to keep my job? (“Yes, sir, I do, very much!”) Then don’t be asking your question.”

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Rep. John Mica, and Sen. Barbara Boxer at the podium, at the recent field hearing in LA on transportation. Photo: Darrell Clarke

Dr. Richard J. Jackson is Professor and Chair of Environmental Health Science in the UCLA School of Public Health. We’re happy to host opinion pieces from academic and other community leaders. Contact damien@streetsblog.org if you’re interested.

On February 23, Senator Barbara Boxer and Representative John Mica held a congressional hearing here in Los Angeles to discuss the federal transportation bill. The dominant theme of the hearing was expanding and establishing federal financing programs to provide capital for major infrastructure projects such as Los Angeles’s 30/10 plan, an initiative to build 12 major transit projects in 10 years. The elected leaders and assembled experts lauded the proposed programs for their potential to rapidly stimulate job creation and economic growth. Very little was mentioned, however, about the need for transportation investments to also be guided by other objectives, such as reducing air pollution, investing in biking and walking networks, and improving safety – all critical elements for improving the economy and public health. Transportation has immense impacts on human health, both positive and negative. Current policies fail to consider and value these impacts, but they must.

Traditionally, federal transportation funds have been given to states according to formula and with little accountability for how they are used. In Los Angeles the results are staggering. The annual health impacts from air pollution in our region alone are conservatively estimated at $22 billion, or $1,250 per person per year. Also, while pedestrians or cyclists account for 12 percent of all trips, they suffer 25 percent of all traffic fatalities. And as we have become more dependent on cars as a way to get to our jobs, to the store, to our doctors’ offices, and to every place else, our physical activity has declined, and coronary heart disease has become the number one killer of LA County residents.

To the credit of many public health leaders, elected officials, local policymakers, and engaged citizens, cities throughout the region are investing in biking and walking infrastructure to address these issues, revitalize local economies, and increase the effectiveness of transit systems. Planners in numerous cities — including Pasadena, Long Beach, Culver City, Glendale, Santa Monica, and Los Angeles — are setting strategic long-term goals and formulating plans to expand biking and walking networks, make them safer, and integrate them into existing and future public transit networks.

California is moving forward with its SB 375 law to reduce emissions by focusing on the communities we build and the types of transportation we use. This landmark law has initiated a process where planners, regulators, and the public have come together to set long-term goals and plan to achieve them. One purpose of this law is to comprehensively evaluate how different projects — including public transit, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, car-pool lanes, and roads — contribute collectively to achieving these goals.

But federal transportation bills have not set these strategic goals. As a result, despite continuous increases in federal funding, public health has not been a major factor as transportation projects are selected. Los Angeles, for example, has seen its air quality improve significantly but not as a result of more public transportation or communities where people can bike and walk safely and efficiently, but rather because cars are cleaner. At the same time, sprawl has continued to increase to a point where, in Los Angeles alone, we spend 490 million hours annually stuck in traffic. The combined weight of the health impacts from air pollution, traffic accidents, and lack of physical activity along with the costs of wasted fuel and time is a collective drag on our health and economy.

To address these issues, our next federal transportation bill should contain long-term goals, measure progress toward achieving them, and provide the funding needed to do so. Such goals should include measuring whether infrastructure investments contribute towards achieving needed public health improvements, such as: improving air quality to healthy levels; improving traffic safety for all users regardless of whether they walk, ride, or bike; increasing biking and walking trips; and improving and expanding public transit, as well as fixing the infrastructure we have.

During the worst and most prolonged economic downturn in many decades, it is critical for the health of our economy and our public health that we get the most bang for every transportation dollar we have available. As Senator Boxer and Representative Mica return to Washington to write the next federal transportation bill, we ask them to focus on a bill that will set these goals and provide funding to build the projects needed to achieve them.

Dr. Richard J. Jackson is Professor and Chair of Environmental Health Science in the UCLA School of Public Health. He has done extensive work on the impact of the environment on health, particularly relating to children.

Photo courtesy of the office of T&I Committee Chair John Mica.

Streetsblog: First, I wanted to ask you what your thoughts are about the size of the six-year bill?

John Mica: Size matters.

(Long pause, Mica laughs.)

SB: Any guesses? Would it be limited to what’s in the Highway Trust Fund?

JM: We’ll have to see. What I hope to do is have four measures of value. One would be what’s in the trust fund and stabilizing that. The second would be any money that we can find that hasn’t been used in any previous authorizations or appropriations and move that. The third would be looking at programs where we could leverage funds, like public private partnerships, bonding – and the fourth area that I would like to count would be speeding up the process. We’ve heard in the hearings we’ve done so far that the time the process takes runs the cost up, and very often projects go on for years and sometimes decades.

So those are the measures that would get me to a total figure. And I would like the size bigger rather than smaller. We’ll see what we can do.

SB: You’ve been a real supporter of mass transit and there aren’t many Republicans who are…

JM: Well, where the projects make sense. You have to look at the value, the cost-effectiveness, the routing, and the public support.

SB: Is there a way that you can talk – or that you can recommend that advocates can talk – to Republicans in a way that makes sense to them instead of a way that has been alienating?

JM: Republicans are most interested in cost-effectiveness. What they’ve seen is some wasteful projects. They’ve seen the administration take an $8 billion appropriation for high-speed rail and turn it into a Christmas tree, and many people are now returning the ornaments. I think Republicans will support sound infrastructure projects; they just have to be evaluated on a cost-effective basis.

SB: Will the next bill have the same 80/20 highway-to-transit split?

JM: We haven’t decided that, but given the mix in Congress we’ll probably stay at about the same level. It’s just my guess, of course; anything can change. And you know, I only have 50 percent of the responsibility for the bill.

SB: And how are the conversations going with the Senate side?

JM: Excellent; we had the hearing, as you heard, in Los Angeles, and I think we heard some things on our listening tour and hearings that we can adopt, and hopefully we’re gaining support for a comprehensive measure.

SB: And are you already in conversations with the Senate Banking Committee [which has jurisdiction over transit] about the transit piece of it?

JM: We’re talking to folks; we’re not down to specifics enough yet. We’ve talked about some finance things with Senate, with Mr. Inhofe and Ms. Boxer a little bit, but everything so far is really preliminary. We don’t have anything – we’re not at a stage where we can discuss specifics yet.

SB: There’s talk about whether things like bike lanes belong in an infrastructure bill – whether that’s “real transportation.”

JM: Those are more specifics that we haven’t gotten into. But we have heard cries for consolidation and flexibility, so we’ll see how that washes out and how specific we want to get in the legislation.

Will Rick Scott reconsider his decision to forego high-speed rail in Florida? Photo: Orlando Sentinel

Scott was given an extension last week by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, while the two parties worked on ways to minimize the risk involved for the state of Florida. The governor had been given one week to reconsider his decision, one that was criticized by fellow Florida Republican John Mica, chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

According to reports from a local newspaper, state transportation officials have floated the idea of making Amtrak or a private company responsible for any potential cost over-runs, one of the concerns cited by Gov. Scott in his refusal last week.

LaHood made the following statement this afternoon on the situation:

“This morning I met with Governor Rick Scott to discuss the high speed rail project that will create jobs and economic development for the entire state of Florida. He asked me for additional information about the state’s role in this project, the responsibilities of the Florida Department of Transportation, as well as how the state would be protected from liability. I have decided to give Governor Scott additional time to review the agreement crafted by local officials from Orlando, Tampa, Lakeland and Miami, and to consult with his staff at the state Department of Transportation. He has committed to making a final decision by the end of next week. I feel we owe it to the people of Florida, who have been working to bring high speed rail to their state for the last 20 years, to go the extra mile.”

Rep. Mica released a statement expressing his support for the continued talks:

“I am pleased an agreement has been reached between Governor Scott and Secretary LaHood to extend the timeframe for consideration of additional alternatives for the Florida rail project. I hope a sub-grantee arrangement can be structured that will salvage part or all of the project in a viable way that will protect Florida taxpayers from financial risk.”

In a previous statement, LaHood had said Florida’s money would be transferred to other states. The high-speed rail line would have connected Tampa at Orlando and would be the nation’s first, true high-speed rail line.

Transportation Chair John Mica has "extreme reservations" about the administration's new plan for HSR. Image: Orlando Sentinel

“This is like giving Bernie Madoff another chance at handling your investment portfolio,” Mica said in a statement.

“With the first $10.5 billion in Administration rail grants, we found that 1) the Federal Railroad Administration is neither a capable grant agency, nor should it be involved in the selection of projects, 2) what the Administration touted as high-speed rail ended up as embarrassing snail-speed trains to nowhere, and 3) Amtrak hijacked 76 of the 78 projects, most of them costly and some already rejected by state agencies,” Mica added. “Amtrak’s Soviet-style train system is not the way to provide modern and efficient passenger rail service.”

They say the committee plans to investigate how previous funding decisions were made, charging that rail routes were selected “behind closed doors” as a “political grab bag for the President,” despite “the Administration’s pledges of transparency.”

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result and that is exactly what Vice President Biden offered today,” Shuster said. “Rail projects that are not economically sound will not ‘win the future.’ It just prolongs the inevitable by subsidizing a failed Amtrak monopoly that has never made a profit or even broken even. Government won’t develop American high-speed rail. Private investment and a competitive market will.”

Like we said – don’t count those 53 billion chickens before they’re passed by Congress.

Ranking Member Nick Rahall presents Chairman John Mica with a new gavel to run the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Meet the new House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

The committee’s meeting this morning, the first of the 112th Congress, included twenty new Republican faces, 19 of whom are freshman representatives. The mostly administrative agenda didn’t offer many chances for the committee members to talk policy, but even some of the freshmen’s short introductions proved potentially revealing.

Chair John Mica and Ranking Member Nick Rahall each forcefully restated his commitment to keeping the committee running on bipartisan terms. “This has been one of the most bipartisan committees and it will continue to be,” said Mica. In a rhetorical reach across the aisle, Mica also used the president’s State of the Union call to invest in transportation as a springboard for his own remarks.

“There’s no Republican bridges, there’s no Democratic bridges, there’s only American bridges,” said Rahall. He urged committee members to “stand together, even against party leadership if necessary,” to keep partisanship out of their work. He even serenaded Mica with a one-day-early rendition of Happy Birthday.

More importantly, both Mica and Rahall agreed on a proposed schedule for the committee: as previously reported, aviation reauthorization will come before the surface transportation bill.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the surface transportation bill is being abandoned. “We’re going to get the darn thing done,” promised Mica. He also announced that the committee will take a listening tour across the country in mid-February to gather ideas from across the country. “I’m going to be as flexible as a Barbie doll,” said Mica.

The Republican freshman also had a few interesting things to say. Here are a few that stood out.

• Tom Reed, from Western New York, suggested that the House’s new anti-spending fervor should perhaps spare transportation. “It’s through our infrastructure that we can unleash the private sector,” he said. “That’s proper government spending.”
• Two representatives, Pennsylvania’s Lou Barletta and New York’s Richard Hanna, cited their private sector infrastructure building experience. Barletta founded the Interstate Road Marking Corporation, which became the largest pavement marker in Pennsylvania, and Hanna’s construction company handled a variety of public and private projects.
• Pat Meehan, who represents the Philadelphia suburbs, said that his district has “complex needs” ranging “from rail to ports to highways.” In contrast, Florida’s Steve Southerland only noted that I-10 and I-75 run through his district.

Mica speaks at the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Auto Train terminal in Sanford. Photo courtesy of John Mica's office.

We mentioned the Journal’s report the other day that Mica has tried to reassure transportation supporters that new House rules won’t starve the highway trust fund.

Now the Journal is reporting that Mica is eager to shift more freight transportation to rail in order to “ease pressure on federal road and bridge spending out of the Highway Trust Fund, by reducing the pace of wear and tear.”

“My goal would be to get more trucks off of the highway, and more cars off of the highway,” Mica said.

Mica also refered to the vastly undersubscribed Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing loan program, which hasn’t shared the popularity of other federal funding programs like TIGER and TIFIA. He told the Journal would not try to use RRIF money for road projects, “but I can free that up for rail infrastructure … (and) enhancement of rail takes pressure off of my highways, if it’s properly applied, too.”

The Journal continued:

He also wants to take private the Amtrak Auto Train service that runs from central Florida nearly to Washington, D.C., in which drivers load their automobiles on the train and ride inside train cars for the 855-mile trip. Mica said that could be sharply expanded and perhaps broadened to include commercial trucks, as in Europe.

Such efforts, he said, save energy and “save the infrastructure, because four out of every five dollars for transportation now goes just for maintaining infrastructure. So I look at ways to take that asset, not only stop sitting on the (highway) asset, but stop wrecking the asset.”

The Journal is also reporting that Mica is planning to start a series of field hearings on the transportation reauthorization in the middle of next month. “The first thing I plan to do,” he told the Journal, “is a series of hearings around the country, and listening sessions, and we’re going to start that probably about the 18th of February.”

The current extension of the transportation bill expires March 4. It’s the sixth extension since SAFETEA-LU expired October 1, 2009.

Photo from Barbara Boxer's flickr page

But she also said that the future of any transportation bill is in jeopardy now that the House has passed a new rule allowing money to languish in the highway trust fund instead of being spent on urgent infrastructure projects. The Republicans want to keep that money in the bank in the name of deficit reduction.

Boxer made it clear that if there’s no mandate to spend the money in the highway trust fund, “there is no highway trust fund.” She called the fund “sacrosanct” and made it clear that the new rule makes it far more difficult to craft a serious transportation bill, since financing will no longer be guaranteed. “If the Republicans plan to raid this fund,” she said, “then all of our plans to do more, to do it right, to do it better – even to do as much as we’ve done before – are thrown aside.”

She said the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will be holding its first hearing on the transportation bill January 26. The hearing isn’t on the committee’s website yet, but it’s on our calendar now. She reaffirmed that she and Senator James Inhofe, the top Republican on her committee, see eye to eye on infrastructure (though they don’t quite agree on climate science). “I’m hopeful we’ll be able to be a unified force,” she said.

She called the press conference to affirm that the EPW Committee, which she chairs, will continue working to protect the environment – specifically, against attacks on environmental regulation. She railed against Rep. Fred Upton’s recent statement, “We are not going to let this administration regulate what they’ve been unable to legislate,” referring to the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases as any other pollutant.

Boxer made it clear that not only does clean air legislation require such regulation, the Supreme Court has mandated it. Even the auto industry supports it: Boxer pointed out that the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers favors EPA regulation of carbon and raising fuel economy standards.

As for a climate bill, Boxer said one would surface when it has the votes. Even with a stronger Democratic majority in the Senate, they could never muster more than 54 votes for it – not enough to overcome a filibuster.

So does that mean Sen. Boxer is in favor of the new proposal to reform the filibuster rule so that not every piece of important legislation stalls without a 60-vote super-majority? She does indeed. Expect to see her listed as a co-sponsor soon.

The House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure just got a bunch of new members.

Incoming Chair John Mica (R-FL) announced the Republican picks today. “The Committee and its new Republican Members will be at the forefront of cutting government waste and red tape and finding cost effective solutions for getting our country moving in the right direction,” said Mica.

The new Committee Republicans, in alphabetical order, are:

Chip Cravaack, who ousted Jim Oberstar in Minnesota and is now taking a seat on the T & I Committee, driving his "War Wagon". Image from Cravaack's Facebook page

Lou Barletta (PA)
Larry Bucshon (IN)
Chip Cravaack (MN)
Rick Crawford (AR)
Jeff Denham (CA)
Blake Farenthold (TX)
Stephen Fincher (TN)
Bob Gibbs (OH)
Frank Guinta (NH)
Richard Hanna (NY)
Andy Harris (MD)
Jaime Herrera (WA)
Randy Hultgren (IL)
Jeff Landry (LA)
James Lankford (OK)
Billy Long (MO)
Tom Reed (NY)
Jim Renacci (OH)Tim Scott (SC)
Daniel Webster (FL)

If Chip Cravaack’s name looks familiar, it’s because he’s the guy who defeated Jim Oberstar in the November election. Now coming onto the Transportation Committee, Cravaack says he wants to eliminate the deficit by limiting spending; one pot of funding that he calls unnecessary is for bike trails.

Lou Barletta’s father owned a road construction company, and he himself co-founded his own construction firm, Interstate Road Marking Corp., before becoming mayor of Hazelton, PA.

Mica says he plans to announce subcommittee assignments in January.

Democrats started out the last session with 45 members on the T & I Committee, compared to 30 seats for the Republicans. These 20 new Republican members will make for a healthy Republican majority on the committee.

Meanwhile, the Democrats just confirmed Rep. Nick Rahall as the top Democrat on the committee. No other Democratic committee members were named, as far as we know. We don’t know yet if they’ll have to drop members from the committee or if the committee lost enough Democrats through election losses.

John Mica was confirmed today as the next Chair of the T & I Committee. Image: Daily Me

There have been some contested leadership elections this month but this wasn’t one of them. Mica’s position as chair was basically a foregone conclusion as soon as November’s election results came in.

After the Republican conference voted to confirm him, Mica said in a statement, “It is critical that Congress jumpstarts transportation projects to rebuild our nation’s crumbling infrastructure and get people working.” He affirmed his eagerness to “pass stalled major surface transportation, aviation, and water resources bills.”

He also emphasized “cutting red tape to complete stalled projects,” which observers take to include limiting environmental assessments for planned infrastructure projects.

Mica enjoyed a close working relationship with Committee Chair Jim Oberstar before the elections flipped control of the Congress and ousted Oberstar after 18 terms. Since November, Mica has clarified some of his positions on transportation issues, including the fact that, while he believes high speed rail is basically a good idea, he doesn’t like the way the DOT is going about it.

“I am a strong advocate of high-speed rail, but it has to be where it makes sense,” Mica told the Associated Press. “The administration squandered the money, giving it to dozens and dozens of projects that were marginal at best to spend on slow-speed trains to nowhere.”

He’d even like to see his own state of Florida be removed from the high speed propects list.

He’s also a strong proponent of private sector investment in infrastructure, a theme we’re likely to see echoed often during the next session of Congress. As federal belts tighten, the money that is disbursed will need to have strong local and private partnerships.

In other committee news, Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY) was named Chair of the House Appropriations Committee. Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) had wanted the position but House term limits didn’t allow him to serve more than six years as top Republican on the committee, no matter whether the Republicans were in the majority or the minority. Rogers is considered far friendlier to earmarks than Lewis.

And Rep. Fred Upton will be the new chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) ran into the same term-limits problem as Lewis. A waiver for him was deemed even less likely, as he’d embarrassed the party earlier this year with his famous apology to BP.

Meet John Mica (R-FL), the new chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Rep. John Mica (R-FL) could chair the T&I Committee if the GOP wins back the House.

Will it happen? Depends which pundit you listen to or which polls you look at. It’s likely enough that some transportation advocates are concerned about what would happen to the six-year transportation reauthorization bill if Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN) is no longer chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

With DOT Secretary Ray LaHood pushing lawmakers to move quickly on transportation, the reauthorization figures to be one of the first items on the agenda of the next Congress. A Republican majority would likely be less friendly to reform, and fiscal conservatives are likely to pull the purse strings tighter.

Now the good news: Ranking Republican John Mica (R-FL), who would almost certainly take over Oberstar’s seat, is about as transit-friendly a Republican as you can hope for. Check out this interview he did with PBS’s Blueprint America last year:

BLUEPRINT AMERICA: You are a Republican – and you support transportation and infrastructure spending?

REP. MICA: Well, I tell you though, if you’re on the Transportation Committee long enough, even if you’re a fiscal conservative, which I consider myself to be, you quickly see the benefits of transportation investment. Simply, I became a mass transit fan because it’s so much more cost effective than building a highway. Also, it’s good for energy, it’s good for the environment – and that’s why I like it.

BLUEPRINT AMERICA: If anything, you’d say that your time in Congress and on the Transportation Committee has brought you around to these ideas?

REP. MICA: Yes. And, seeing the cost of one person in one car. The cost for construction. The cost for the environment. The cost for energy. You can pretty quickly be convinced that there’s got to be a more cost effective way. It’s going to take a little time, but we have to have good projects, they have to make sense – whether it’s high-speed rail or commuter rail or light rail. We got to have some alternatives helping people – even in the rural areas – to get around.

Blogger Matt Yglesias has called Mica “a Republican worth listening to” and David Alpert of Greater Greater Washington has called him “the House’s leading pro-transit Republican.” Mica stood with Oberstar last year at the unveiling of the half-trillion dollar transportation reauthorization bill and didn’t flinch at the price tag. He fought for more transit capital funding to be added to the stimulus, saying transit infrastructure creates jobs.

Katie Drennan, Transportation for America’s legislative associate, said Mica deserves some of the credit for the cooperative nature of his committee. “He’s carried on the tradition in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee where there’s been a kind of bipartisanship you don’t see in a lot of other Congressional committees,” she said.

As for Mica’s strong support for transit and high-speed rail, Drennan said, “He sees how it’s working in the state of Florida.”

Drennan said a Mica-led committee would still be open to ideas from progressive transportation groups. But a majority-Republican committee would likely break from Oberstar’s model, despite Mica’s leanings.

“Because we’re in such a tough financial situation – with the Highway Trust Fund being broke, and folks needing to look at new revenue sources – there are conservative efforts to strip down the program to what they see as its core,” Drennan said. And to many GOP members, the core function of federal transportation investment doesn’t extend much beyond highways. “They don’t see transportation enhancements [biking and walking projects] or transit as being core to the program.”

The committee chair only controls so much, after all. With a Republican majority, even a good bill could be gutted by amendments added in committee and on the floor of the House.

Rep. John Mica (FL), the committee's senior GOPer, and six colleagues displayed a chart (depicted at right) that used estimates of stimulus money spent so far by state DOTs -- as opposed to the amount obligated.

Tallying obligated money might have gotten in the way of the GOPers' argument, since states are beating the White House deadline for obligating transport funds.

But the press conference also hit on a theme that auditors at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted this week: Stimulus cash has not been steered to the nation's most economically devastated areas, largely because of an emphasis on getting money out the door quickly.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood responded quickly to the GAO report, asking governors late yesterday to redirect money to infrastructure in struggling areas.

This political firestorm over the stimulus' success obscures two crucial decisions that helped seal its fate as a job creator.

First, as Mica and his committee chairman, Jim Oberstar (D-MN), often pointed out during the stimulus, more cash for infrastructure would have generated more jobs.

The duo's proposed $85 billion transportation stimulus was ultimately cut to $48 billion to make room for extra tax cuts. That $48 billion represents just 6 percent of the total stimulus measure, as the AP points out in a fact check of today's event.

Judging the effectiveness of the entire law based on such a tiny slice of the pie -- no matter how economically potent transportation spending is -- seems misguided at best.

Second, investing more in transit would have given greater benefits to the urban areas that are the nation's economic workhorses. Transit also creates about 19 percent more jobs than road projects on a dollar-for-dollar basis, according to research by the Surface Transportation Policy Project.

Still, Mica's statement this morning made a compelling point, one that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) referenced yesterday:

Some leading Democrats are talking about the possibility of another huge stimulus, despite the current package’s failure to put money on the streets quickly and create jobs. 

In addition, the Administration wants to doom a major transportation bill -- the only real jobs bill this Congress could consider -- to an 18-month delay.