Quote:
Originally Posted by electricron
I agree. I just wish Obama and the Democrats had spent as much time and effort renewing the Transportation funding as they had on health insurance the first two years of the Obama's administration. Instead, all the increase in transportation funding came from discretionary general funds. Just about every discretionary program is getting cut now. Big mistake! It would had been better to fund these programs from its own revenue sources, even if that meant raising the Federal gas tax.
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Two remarks:
1. A multi-year transportation bill could still be mucked with and raided through amendments.
2. With gas prices where they are now, any increase in the gas tax is pretty much a non-starter. When raising the gas tax is suggested, it's explicitly suggested that revenues go to deficit reduction or debt servicing, not transportation. And even if it were to go to transportation, diverting revenue to rail would have been very difficult--Amtrak spent the better part of its existence trying to wring a share from gas taxes.
As it stands today, I'd be skeptical of any real progress being made on transportation financing until 2012 at the earliest, with 2016 (assuming a Democrat takes office) or 2020-24 (assuming a Republican takes office in 2016) being more likely IMO.
In any event, this hits California the hardest--if they can't find
a lot of private financing it looks like CAHSR is going to die in its crib a la FOX.