Clock ticking on U.S. transportation bill

Reuters ^ | 04/29/09 | Lisa Lambert

[TigerLikesRooster]

Clock ticking on U.S. transportation bill

Wed Apr 29, 2009 2:19pm EDT

By Lisa Lambert

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislators and the U.S. transportation industry are up against a September 30 deadline to pass a massive funding law for the country's roads, bridges and public transit.

If they fail, the result would be a sharp cut in money available for transportation infrastructure projects.

"I am hopeful," Pete Nonis, congressional relations manager for the American Automobile Association told Reuters. "It's going to be a tough lift."

Every five years or so, Congress passes a law that dictates how all surface transportation projects in the country will be planned, funded and completed.

The current law, frequently called the highway bill, expires on September 30. It was approved in July 2005, nearly two years after the previous law expired in September 2003. Then-President George W. Bush signed extensions of the expired law 12 times to keep the country's transportation programs on track.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Ping!

[smokingfrog]

Another opportunity to waste Billion$.

[napscoordinator]

Another opportunity to waste Billion$.

Actually of all the “bailouts” I would rather see this pass. The bridges are falling apart as we witnessed in St. Louis. Our roads and bridges are coming up or passed 50 years old. I would never have voted to save the banks or autos but this seems to be the only one that should pass.

[smokingfrog]

Citizens Against Government Waste, a fiscal watchdog group, estimates that pork barrel spending last year cost taxpayers $27.3 billion, up from $10.1 billion in 1995. The recently enacted transportation bill [2006] had 6,371 earmarks in it alone, which included the now infamous $223 million Bridge to Nowhere.

The problem with these huge spending bills is that every congresscritter has to have one of their pet projects included, whether it's really needed or not. Plus all the crap seems to be added at the last minute, in the middle of the night and nobody reads it.