On March 2nd, the House Transportation Committee proudly announced its approval of a $284 Billion Highway and Transit Funding Bill. They cleverly call it the “Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy For Users” (“TEA LU”), as if it is an instrument of national fairness instead of the grim truth: it is yet another example of an out of control legislature that pays worthless lip service to fiscal discipline.

Not only is the substance of the Bill a travesty of pork and profligacy, but the Congressmen have the gall to emphasize its cost. In the “Executive Summary” (http://www.house.gov/transportation/highway/issues/tealu109.pdf) they Committee crows about a 42% increase in the size of this bill versus the prior one (which covered 1998-2003.)

In the most direct (and in a way refreshingly honest) statement of the purpose of the legislation, the Committee states that this bill “will continue and protect existing U.S. jobs in the transportation sector and related industries. Millions of new jobs will be created and sustained by the infrastructure funding increases in TEA LU.”

In other words, the transportation bill is about buying the votes of those who do or will feed at the trough of government construction projects. Each item in this bill must be considered through that lens: Incumbents protecting their jobs at the expense of the average citizen.

Or to put it another way, concentrated benefits and diffuse costs are the standard method of incumbent vote-buying. Transportation, farm, and defense bills are among the favorites in our Congress.

The Committee cited several major areas of transportation concern and how this bill addresses them. The problems and answers all have a common thread: Problems which are nearly funny in their transparency as a method to fund pork, and answers which simply throw money at the problem without any evidence that prior money thrown has done anything more than blow away. What’s worse, the bill adds spending requirements to the states.

For example, to deal with the problem of traffic congestion (which Amendment covers that?) the Act “implements new state spending requirements for projects that increase motor vehicle travel reliability, maximize roadway capacity and efficiency, and remove bottlenecks.” Fortunately, we also get this: “TEA LU Congestion Relief provisions will help highway managers squeeze more capacity from our existing highway investments while empowering them to build projects and conduct analyses that will also recapture unused capacity.” I can only imagine the projects we’ll see out of this as government bureaucrats work to expand their own fiefdoms to justify their own jobs.

For the problem of increased truck transportation of goods (although it’s not clear why that is a problem), we get this excellent and specific paragraph: “TEA LU provides $6 billion for a new program to fund projects of regional and national significance. This program is designed to fund projects that will have a significant impact on the movement of goods and people beyond the immediate local area of the project.”

Within the description of the mass transit problems lies a great example of why these bills are such a disaster: “The Mass Transit Account (MTA) of the Highway Trust Fund, which provides percent of the funding for public transportation programs, is drawing down its balance faster than actual spending would dictate because of an accounting problem. If this problem is not addressed, the MTA balance will be zero by 2007.” I wonder if “excessive spending, waste and fraud” counts as an “accounting problem”.

According to the NY Times, “The legislation also contains 3,315 projects requested by House members for their districts and criticized by government watchdog groups as pork barrel spending. They range from $15 million for an access road in Juneau, Alaska, the home state of committee chairman Don Young, to $200,000 for a bicycle trail in Eagleville, Tenn.”

Rather than continue with examples, I suggest you read the bill yourself. Let me know whether it makes you laugh, cry, or both. Also, please contact your Congressman and Senators and let them know that it’s your money they’re wasting and that bills like this (and not tax cuts) are the cause of our budget deficit.