Boxer holds transportation bill hearing
Every few years, Congress takes up a massive federal spending bill on transportation. The current bill, which provided $286 billion in federal funds, expires Sept. 30, 2009, and the new bill should start to take shape early next year.
In that vein, Sen. Barbara Boxer is holding a hearing tomorrow at MTA headquarters to discuss local needs with elected officials and community leaders. I would expect that subway proponents will offer about 9-billion reasons that project should be in the bill. I also expect Sen. Boxer won't be wearing the construction vest she modeled with other elected officials during a visit to the Gold Line construction site in February.
President Bush signed the last federal bill in 2005. You can read the whole thing at the Federal Highway Administration's website. And, yes, the fact that the bill is on the Federal Highway Administration's website should tell you a thing or two about the bill's priorities.
The bill is usually derided as being chock full of earmarks -- money for pet-projects that members of Congress insert into the bill without going through the usual vetting process. The federal Office of Management and Budget, in fact, maintains a website that allows you to look up some earmarks.
As a USA Today story noted last year, the Senate approved spending in a transportation and housing bill that included money for a North Dakota peace garden, history museum in Las Vegas and baseball stadium in Montana -- and they approved it just six weeks after the fatal bridge collapse in Minneapolis. And here's a link to a 2007 federal report requested by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) about the more than 8,000 earmarks that have found their way into recent transportation spending legislation.
More information about Thursday's hearing with Boxer and news releases from her office are after the jump.
photo: Allen J. Schaben / LAT
