We’ve said many times that the so-called “infrastructure bill” is really a mass transit bill even though almost no one uses mass transit anymore – a 20th-century form of transportation.
So we weren’t at all surprised that the Biden admin policy is implementing an anti-roads, anti-car policy to not build new roads but instead to “fix it first” by prioritizing existing roads and diverting money to empty buses and subways.
Even Senate Dems including Manchin, Tester, and Shaheen are protesting the policy and complained in a letter to Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
A “Fix It First” requirement was ultimately not what the bipartisan group of negotiators chose to emphasize in the [bill]…a one-size-fits-all approach does not accurately reflect the diverse needs of states across the country.
Now Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia has teed up a procedure for overturning the memo using a filibuster-proof Congressional Review Act resolution, which the GAO has concluded would be in order.
https://www.gao.gov/products/
Our friends at the WSJ endorsed the effort over the weekend.
The NYT and others rolled out the old chestnut about how expanding highway capacity is hopeless because the new lanes get filled with cars. If you believe this argument then we should get rid of roads altogether and then – hallelujah – there would be no traffic congestion at all.
Sometimes we wonder if these people were dropped on their heads when they were babies.