Feds Cut Light Rail Language from STC Report

Sometimes, you wonder why people even bother to volunteer for the government.

Let’s take the case of transit advocate, and avowed conservative, Paul Weyrich. The founder of such bastions of the Conservative movement in America as the Heritage Foundation and Free Congress Foundation, Weyrich agrees to serve on a Surface Transportation Committee to write a report on the state of American transportation and transportation funding.

So, Weyrich and the rest of the committee work on the report, and it is released to great media coverage and the approval of many transportation experts.

Then what happens?

1) The Secretary of Transportation (and STC Committee Chair) Mary Peters publicly buries the reports main finding, that America needs to raise its gas tax.

2) People notice that the section dedicated to light rail (written by Weyrich and approved by a 9-3 vote of the committee) was magically excluded from the report.

Weyrich was not amused, “It is disappointing that after the paragraphs indicated were passed by a nine to three vote that someone without ever asking me would see to it to do away with these important policy considerations. It is the kind of gutter politics which make people hate their government, and Washington in general.”

You can find the text of what was excluded in the comments section below.