Obama Supports Traffic Congestion

    Through Obama’s truculent special interest campaign of division and derision, he is rapidly exhausting his check list of demographic groups.  He’s already targeted women, Hispanics, gays, blue collar workers, and all sorts of minorities.  Now he is going after the ‘commuter vote’ in northern Virginia. Politico is reporting that Obama is up with a 60-second radio spot in northern Virginia claiming that Paul Ryan’s budget | Read More »

    A New Highway Bill to Cave City

    As we’ve noted throughout the past year’s imbroglio over transportation spending, it is clear that complete federal control over transportation spending in a post-interstate highway era (post 1992) is inefficient, costly, anti-federalist, and precludes state and private innovations.  Yet, Congress continues to buckle down on a policy that has failed in recent years, exposing taxpayers to future bailouts and tax increases.  Worst of all, it | Read More »

    A Real Solution to the Gridlock Over the Highway Bill

    As we approach the March 31 expiration date for surface transportation projects, we can take solace in the fact that the House will not vote on two bad bills; Boehner’s original 5-year $260 billion reauthorization and the Senate’s 2-year $109 billion bill. While we push for a more prudent long-term solution, the House will pass a 90-day stopgap bill to continue spending at current levels | Read More »

    Devolve Transportation Spending to States

    One of the numerous legislative deadlines that Congress will be forced to confront this session is the expiration of the 8th short-term extension of the 2005 surface transportation authorization law (SAFETEA-LU).  With federal transportation spending growing beyond its revenue source, an imbalance between donor and recipient states, inefficient and superfluous construction projects popping up all over the country, and burdensome mass transit mandates on states, | Read More »

    Obama Makes the Case for State Control of Surface Transportation

    Earlier today, Barack Obama decried the gridlock that has prevented Congress from passing a long-term surface transportation bill (highway bill) as unacceptable and inexcusable.  He also asserted that we must formulate a policy in which funding would be directed to those districts that need it the most, instead of politically motivated pork, such as the bridge to nowhere (which he supported in the Senate).  Well, | Read More »