I'd love to write more about this, but time is short, and the time to act is now.
The stimulus package moving its way through Washington is, to be fair, a bit of an ugly monster. However, there's a lot of good programs in it, many of which are unfortunately the ones that are on the chopping block right now. Energy efficiency upgrades for government buildings, which one would think would fall into the duh-obvious category for good stimulus, are among those at risk of cuts. However, what's worse is mass transit funding is at risk too, while both Houses of Congress seem intent on stuffing more and more highway funding into it.
I hate to say I told you so, but a year ago when Bush's stimulus bill was making it's way through Congress, I spilled a bunch of electronic ink on this subject. Sadly, in one of those, "damn, I wish I'd been wrong" moments, sure enough, huge amounts of new tax breaks did absolutely nothing to stimulate the economy, and just set the stage for the economic collapse of 2008. With massive government funds getting shipped overseas, the public treasury turned upside down by Bush's tax cuts, and major backlogs in infrastructure left wanting by the crony capitalism of the previous administration, it was no surprise that simply dumping more tax cuts into the economy was about as effective as pushing on a string.
What we needed then, just as now, was infrastructure investment as stimulus. Early on in the process, it sounded like what this was what the stimulus bill was going to be about. However, the rotting corpse of the Reagan/Goldwater orthodoxy (which Reagan himself might have even blanched at today) brought out the bellicose GOP and the nervous Nellies from the Democrats, and of course we had to have some largely useless tax cuts in the bill.
Regardless, while there is a fair amount of infrastructure spending in the bill, what those in Washington seem to be failing at realizing is that, as per Shellenberger and Nordhaus, this is exactly the time we need to be thinking about how to restructure our economy to be less dependent on fossil fuels and more ready to make cuts in our carbon emissions. Government spending has an enormous effect on shaping the economy, and despite the stammerings from policy mouthpieces of the Right's political machine, nobody in the GOP is doing anything to lessen that impact. Massive federal spending on highways simply continues to push our economy towards a single passenger vehicle-focused transportation system, when either the absence of federal spending, or less disastrously, greater balance in transportation dollars, would allow for a correction towards less polluting forms of transportation.
The bill from the House originally had $30 billion in road projects and just $10 billion for all mass transit and rail projects. Thankfully Rep. Oberstar from Minnesota lead a revolt that got a little over $3 billion added in funding. It's hard to keep everything straight in the swirl of information coming out of Capitol Hill today, but it sounds like the GOP is trying to strip out some of that mass transit funding as part of the "centrist" compromise. From the reports of the STAC committe, to complete the biggest transit dreams of the Triangle, including passenger rail improvements, local bus expansion, para-transit, and some form of regional rail, whether heavy or light, we'd need about $1 billion in federal dollars to match a combined $1 billion from state and local sources. (I'll also note that for most highway projects, the Feds pay about %80 of the tab -- yet another way in which highway funding is ridiculously skewed and unproductive.) Given that we have at least 3/4 complete plans sitting around right now, we'd very likely be excellent candidates to receive this money, which would not only provide jobs in planning and construction of the system, but would likely trigger a building boom near the planned stations, we've got a vested interest in keeping that money in the bill. But if the hand-wringers among the Democrats and the pro-highway wing of the GOP (including our friends at the John Locke Foundation) get their way, what chance do you think that money has in coming out in the next few years.
An excellent diary at Daily Kos made a fantastic point. Obama's best campaign slogan, by my lights, was, "We are the ones we've been waiting for," with a close second being, "I'm not asking you to believe in my power to change government, I'm asking you to believe in yours." If you want transit in the Triangle, now is the time to call. Here are the office numbers. The lines are understandably a bit busy, so keep trying:
Kay Hagan
202-224-6342
Richard Burr
202-224-3154
Because rail and transit are STILL stimulus where we need it.
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