House Republicans on Tuesday introduced a giant new surface transportation bill loaded with goodies for the GOP base.
No earmarks, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, cutting Amtrak’s budget, forcing approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and ending mandatory spending on bicycle and pedestrian paths — what’s a diehard Republican not to like?
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) and more than a dozen GOP committee members held a Tuesday press conference to sell the bill. Anybody in attendance wouldn’t be blamed for thinking they walked in on a tea party rally — complete with references to the Constitution and “changing how Washington works.”
“When our freshman class came to Congress, we wanted to change how Washington worked, and this bill does exactly that,” Freshman Rep. Frank Guinta (R-N.H.) told reporters of the 800-page bill that sets federal highway and transit spending levels, reforms transportation programs, and streamlines environmental reviews.
“It’s consistent with the Constitution and our duties as the federal government. It says in Article 1: national security, commerce, and build Post roads,” said Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), chairman of the railroads subcommittee.
But a Republican’s treasure is a Democrat’s trash.
“All of it fits into the Republican mantra of the last year and four weeks of this year,” former T&I Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) told POLITICO. “It seems to me that fringe policymakers have hijacked the transportation bill.”