WASHINGTON
(By Shailagh Murray, Washington Post) November 6, 2005 —
The highway bill seemed like such a good idea when it
sailed through Congress this summer. But now Republicans who
assembled the record spending package are suffering buyer's
remorse.
The $286 billion legislation was stuffed with 6,000
pet projects for lawmakers' districts, including what
critics denounce as a $223 million "Bridge to Nowhere" that
would replace a 7-minute ferry ride in a sparsely populated
area of Alaska. Usually members of Congress cannot wait to
rush home and brag about such bounty -- a staggering number
of parking lots, bus depots, bike paths and new interchanges
for just about every congressional district in the country
that added $24 billion to the overall cost of maintaining
the nation's highways and bridges in the coming years.
But with spiraling war and hurricane recovery costs,
the pork-laden bill has become a political albatross for
Republicans, who have been promising since President Bush
took office to get rid of wasteful spending.
"Does it make all the difference in the world? No,"
said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), one of four senators who
voted against the highway bill. "But there's a great deal of
symbolism associated with whether we're going to add $24
billion to the debt in unwanted and unnecessary pork-barrel
projects."
Conservative groups, government watchdogs and ordinary
folks around the country are so offended by the size of the
legislation -- signed into law by Bush in early August --
that efforts are underway in the House and the Senate to
rescind or reallocate a portion of its funds.
Lawmakers say voters are stopping them back home to
ask whether the "Bridge to Nowhere" is a joke or whether it
actually exists. It is no joke. The project, championed by
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), would link tiny Ketchikan, with
a population of 8,900, with its airport on Gravina Island --
population 50.
Former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), who
was instrumental in shaping the highway bill in the House,
apologized for its excesses during an appearance on Thursday
before the Heritage Foundation.
In a speech to a group of conservative academics and
policy experts, DeLay blamed the runaway spending of recent
years on minority Democrats. When he took questions, the
first came from a senior official at the American
Conservative Union, who asked DeLay, "How large does the
Republican majority in the House and Senate need to be
before Republicans act like the fiscal conservative I
thought we were?"
"I'm not here to defend the highway bill," DeLay
responded. He described the overall 1,000-page legislation,
which funds major interstate, bridge and mass transit
projects and distributes gasoline tax revenue to states
according to a formula, as an important economic development
tool. He conceded that Congress may have gone a bit
overboard.
"Our responsibility, that frankly we didn't perform
very well, is to make sure those are legitimate earmarks for
legitimate reasons," DeLay said, referring to the pet
projects.
McCain and six other Senate Republicans want to
reallocate the pork dollars in the bill to help pay for the
damage caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Rep. Jeff
Flake (R-Ariz.), one of eight House members who opposed the
legislation, and who declined any special projects for his
district, wants to rescind 10 percent of the bill's total
cost and allow states to disregard the pet projects
authorized by the legislation, and spend the money as they
wish.
"My guess is that most states would gladly forgo 10
percent of their funding for the ability to make funding
decisions," Flake said.
The Senate has already considered one proposal to
scale back the legislation -- an amendment offered by Sen.
Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to cut funding for some of the projects
special-ordered by Alaskan lawmakers and use the money saved
to rebuild the Interstate 10 bridge over Lake Pontchartrain
outside New Orleans. The I-10 bridge, a major transportation
corridor, was shattered during the Katrina storm surge.
Coburn's bid failed, but it gained widespread
attention and attracted 15 Senate "yes" votes, a landslide,
considering the political clout of Stevens, a former
chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a
formidable force in Congress. In a display of outrage,
Stevens threatened to resign from the Senate if Coburn's
measure succeeded.
Stevens and other Alaska lawmakers have been masterful
at steering federal aid to their thinly populated state.
According to a tally by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a
nonpartisan budget watchdog group, Alaska received $1
billion for 120 special projects. In total funding, it ranks
third, behind California and Illinois.
The highway bill has long been a reliable source of
pork-barrel spending, and it has been used by Republican and
Democratic leaders to reward or punish rank-and-file
members. President Ronald Reagan once vetoed a highway bill
because it contained 152 pet projects. Despite the pork
inflation, Bush had no complaints about the current package
when he signed it on Aug. 10. "This bill upgrades our
transportation infrastructure," he declared. "And it
accomplishes goals in a fiscally responsible way."
That was before Katrina devastated New Orleans and the
Mississippi Gulf Coast, leaving tens of thousands homeless
and requiring billions of dollars in unanticipated
rebuilding costs. Trying to live within a tight budget,
Republican leaders in the House and the Senate are in the
process of pushing through politically difficult cuts in
Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, farm subsidies and student
loans.
The Club for Growth, a conservative group that funds
like-minded candidates for Congress, has turned the highway
legislation into a bumper sticker for the GOP's fiscal
failings. "Too many Congressional Republicans have veered
away from the limited government agenda that got them
elected to the majority in Congress. They have approved
pork-barrel highway bills worse than the Democrats used to
give us," says one appeal to supporters.
