Gesturing toward the nearly completed Wilshire/La Brea Metro station, U.S. Representative Laura Friedman warned "The Trump Administration proposed cuts to federal investments to support this stop, this train stop that is months away from opening."
"How crazy is that?"
Metro is extending the D Line subway to Westwood, with the first of three new sections expected to open later this year.
"We've invested billions of dollars in these new train stops along this new spur of the Metro system," continued Friedman "only to see it endangered by a reckless cutting of federal funds." She noted that a court stopped Trump's initial freeze of congressionally approved federal infrastructure funding. Friedman cautioned that transit funding remains at risk.
Friedman (D - Los Angeles) was joined by Congressmember Rick Larsen (D - Seattle), L.A. City Councilmember and Metro Boardmember Katy Young Yaroslavsky, and union leaders and workers - yesterday at a rally in support of federal transit infrastructure investment.
Larsen explained, "the president's rapid-fire executive orders and memoranda over the last few weeks have put billions of dollars - hundreds of thousands of jobs - and tens of thousands of projects at risk - including this one [the Metro D Line subway]."
"What they want to do is to take out the green stuff - and do different kinds of criteria that frankly have nothing to do with transportation," Larsen warned. "This administration has been really clear that they don't want to fund projects that cut carbon emissions."
Yaroslavsky noted, "federal funding has been crucial in bringing projects like this [subway extension] to life, creating good jobs, and giving people real alternatives to sitting in traffic."
Federal infrastructure funding comes in two flavors: existing commitments (with signed grant contracts - called Full Funding Grant Agreements), and future allocations. Both are threatened.
Larsen termed blocking committed funds "illegal," but this hasn't stopped the White House.
"At the beginning of this administration," according to Larsen, "the first memo was to stop all funding - all federal funding through the IIJA [Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act] regardless of contract obligations." But that "lasted about a day because they quickly realized that states actually get formula money - which just automatically comes - but they were stopping that formula money as well."
"They actually don't have a good grasp on what they are doing, right now."
Larsen pledged to "chase all these grants to make sure that the money that is already obligated by contract is going to get out." Friedman will "continue to work to protect federal transit investments and to increase them."
"There's still money to be spent" Larsen noted, "an unprecedented level of federal money" not yet obligated. "The administration has authority to define the criteria by which that money goes out the door. However it doesn't have the authority to not get that money out of the door."
Larsen anticipates that the administration will "not spend that money" so they can instead cut taxes, via "a four and a half trillion dollar tax cut for the richest Americans and the wealthiest corporations... as they did in 2017."
The afternoon's pro-infrastructure rally contrasted with a nearby cabinet official announcement earlier the same day. While Democrats urged continuity and infrastructure investment, the Republican Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy threatened to pull the plug on billions of federal dollars approved for California High-Speed Rail construction.
Find additional coverage of yesterday's rally at Beverly Press.
