The Cliffs Ahead of Congressional Republicans

Even if they succeed in putting out the brush fire sparked by Rep. Steve Scalise's white supremacist ties, Congressional Republicans, especially Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, will find themselves facing several potential cliffs as they try to prove to the nation that the GOP can govern and is more than the party of obstruction.  In addition to confrontations with the White House, McConnell and Boehner will need to seek to rein in the lunatic elements of their respective caucuses.  A piece in Politico looks at the coming circus.  Here are highlights:

They just won control of the Senate and have a historic majority in the House. The presidential election hasn’t yet begun. President Barack Obama says he wants to engage with Capitol Hill. For the first time in a while, there seems to be a genuine thirst for getting something done.

But guess what: Congress is running straight into another series of cliffs. . . . . The legislative land mines range from tricky transportation issues to funding controversial slices of the government, to updating a pricey Medicare program and, of course, the ever-explosive debt ceiling.

The lineup of these so-called cliffs could complicate the GOP’s desire for scoring a big accomplishment before the onset of presidential primary season. Furthermore, it could stoke intraparty confrontation and force Republicans into cooperation with the White House. These problems can’t be ignored, and GOP leadership will have to decide if it wants to set up short-term solutions or negotiate permanent fixes to these long-lingering problems. These deals don’t come together quickly and could require leaders to spend their hard-earned political capital on brokering compromises.

The first cliff comes just 25 legislative days into the 114th Congress. By Feb. 28, Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell must devise a plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Conservatives are furious that Obama unilaterally changed the enforcement of immigration laws and will want to enact some change of their own.

The potential for an intraparty feud over immigration is high: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and his conservative allies are urging Boehner and McConnell to play hardball and defund the administration’s order to shelter millions of immigrants from deportation.

In March, Congress has to deal, once again, with the extremely pricey formula by which the government reimburses Medicare providers — known inside the Beltway as the “doc fix.” Washington has punted on changes to the formula for years, but there is a desire to fix the problem for good. That would cost billions of dollars and could drive fiscal conservatives mad.

The highway trust fund will become insolvent in May, and federally funded infrastructure projects across America will grind to a halt if nothing is done. Congress will have to work out a new funding mechanism — the gas tax has not been raised since 1993, and fuel-efficient cars have steadily decreased its buying power. Raising the tax is politically difficult, so Boehner, McConnell and the transportation chairmen will have to work out another funding mechanism — or turn to another unpopular general fund bailout, rather than risk a construction shutdown.

The debt ceiling isn’t far behind — the nation’s borrowing authority will need to be extended sometime between the late spring or early fall.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans must confront the unique challenge of processing Obama’s executive and judicial branch nominees while occasionally flexing their parliamentary muscle to halt some confirmations.

The GOP has vowed to hold numerous votes on amendments to each piece of legislation, a key promise of McConnell’s reign, along with working a five-day workweek and empowering the committees. But Democrats are eager to prove the GOP’s parliamentary promises are hard ones to keep.

Lynchburg News Advance Slams Cuccinelli Roads Plan

With the toxic Liberty University dominating the city in many ways, Lynchburg, Virginia is considered by some to be a reactionary backwater.  But not everyone in the city is a Kool-Aid drinker as demonstrated by the Lynchburg News Advance's condemnation of Ken Cuccinelli's plan for highway funding which would solve the state's finance problem by simply throwing more of the highway construction/maintenance burden on cities and counties.  Cuccinelli proposes to continue the very mindset that has helped put Virginia in the die straits it now faces with an inadequate transportation system.  Here are excerpts from the editorial:

Very quietly this week, Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for governor, released his transportation plan.

With one exception — the creation of a Virginia Congestion Matrix Database so the public can track progress on solving the 100 most important transportation bottlenecks, it is more of the same we’ve seen from many Republicans in Richmond during the past decade. And that makes it a bad deal for the commonwealth, localities who would be harmed, the business community and residents.

In the summary of the transportation plan (available online at Cuccinelli.com/transportation), he claims one of the “fundamental reasons” for the commonwealth’s being “plagued” with transportation woes for decades is “undeniable lack of decision making and buy-in at the local level.”
We beg to differ with the candidate.

One of the fundamental reasons for the commonwealth’s transportation woes was the utter inability of the General Assembly, specifically the no-tax wing of the GOP in the House of Delegates, to accept reality and raise revenues for transportation infrastructure problems.

For a quarter of a century, the gas tax, the primary source of state dollars for transportation, sat at 17.5 cents, unindexed to inflation. Its purchasing power was cut in half by inflation, and the GOP did nothing — nothing — to address the looming crisis. It wasn’t until this year that Gov. Bob McDonnell managed to cobble together a plan that only just begins to address Virginia’s glaring needs.

And as attorney general, Cuccinelli did his best to sabotage that plan at the last minute. Now he wants to “devolve” the responsibilities of the state upon localities, all “without imposing a statewide tax increase”?

Pardon us if we don’t buy this line yet again.

The simple reality is that highways are one of the things the state, not localities, needs to build and maintain.  And that means raising taxes - the gasoline tax is a perfect example - so that an inadequate and deteriorating highway system can be updated and maintained properly.   Forcing costs on localities which would then have to increase real estate taxes is not a solution.

Thousands of US Bridges Could Be On Verge of Collapse

 

We hear over and over again from Republicans that they seek to starve and shrink government and relentlessly lower taxes.   The result, of course, is that many critical needs and services go without proper funding.  In addition to throwing the poor and needy to the curb, this policy of spending less is taking a severe tool on the nation's infrastructure some of which could be a minor collision away from collapse.  American bridges are among the ticking time bombs that this failed GOP policy has set in motion.  George W. Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney and their GOP accomplices in Congress cause the USA to squander billions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Meanwhile our infrastructure at home is crumbling.  Talk about misplaced priorities.  A piece in the Virginian Pilot looks at some of the dangers that could have deadly consequences with little or no notice.  Here are excerpts:

Thousands of bridges around the U.S. may be one freak accident or mistake away from collapse, even if the spans are deemed structurally sound.

The crossings are kept standing by engineering design, not supported with brute strength or redundant protections like their more modern counterparts. Bridge regulators call the more risky spans "fracture critical," meaning that if a single, vital component of the bridge is compromised, it can crumple.

Those vulnerable crossing carry millions of drivers every day. In Boston, a six-lane highway 1A near Logan airport includes a "fracture critical" bridge over Bennington Street. In northern Chicago, an I-90 pass that goes over Ashland Avenue is in the same category. An I-880 bridge over 5th Avenue in Oakland, Calif., is also on the list.

Also in that category is the Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River north of Seattle, which collapsed into the water days ago after officials say an oversized truck load clipped the steel truss.

Public officials have focused in recent years on the desperate need for money to repair thousands of bridges deemed structurally deficient, which typically means a major portion of the bridge is in poor condition or worse. But the bridge that collapsed Thursday is not in that deficient category, highlighting another major problem with the nation's infrastructure. . . .

The most famous failure of a fracture critical bridge was the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis during rush hour on Aug. 1, 2007, killing 13 people and injuring more than 100 others. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the cause of the collapse was an error by the bridge's designers - a gusset plate, a key component of the bridge, was too thin. The plate was only half of the required one-inch thickness.

Because the bridge's key structures lacked redundancy, where if one piece fails, there is another piece to prevent the bridge from falling, when the gusset plate broke, much of the bridge collapsed.

Fracture critical bridges, like the I-5 span in Washington, are the result of Congress trying to cut corners to save money rather than a lack of engineering know-how, said Barry B. LePatner, a New York real estate attorney and author of "Too Big to Fall: America's Failing Infrastructure and the Way Forward."

About 18,000 fracture critical bridges were built from the mid-1950s through the late 1970s in an effort to complete the nation's interstate highway system, which was launched under President Dwight Eisenhower, LePatner said in an interview. The fracture critical bridge designs were cheaper than bridges designed with redundancy, he said.

Thousands of those bridges remain in use, according to an AP analysis.   "They have been left hanging with little maintenance for four decades now," he said. "There is little political will and less political leadership to commit the tens of billions of dollars needed" to fix them.

There are 66,749 structurally deficient bridges and 84,748 functionally obsolete bridges in the U.S., including Puerto Rico, according to the Federal Highway Administration. That's about a quarter of the 607,000 total bridges nationally. States and cities have been whittling down that backlog, but slowly. In 2002, about 30 percent of bridges fell into one of those two categories.

There is wide recognition at all levels of government that the failure to address aging infrastructure will likely undermine safety and hinder economic growth. But there is no consensus on how to pay for improvements. The federal Highway Trust Fund, which provides construction aid to states, is forecast to go broke next year. The fund gets its revenue primarily from federal gas and diesel taxes. But revenues aren't keeping up because people are driving less and there are more fuel-efficient cars on the road.

The GOP's "starve government"policy - triggered by Tea Party and the 1% greed -  is creating life threatening dangers yet morons in the GOP base just keep eating up the anti-tax demagoguery. 

Petroleum Association Bucks McDonnell and Asks For Gas Tax Increase

Anyone who commutes during rush hour in Hampton Roads or Northern Virginia knows that Virginia's transportation system is not only inadequate, it's also crumbling (e.g., the potholes on east bound Interstate 64 in Norfolk between the HRBT and the Granby Street exit that I drive each day  make the pavement look like its been bombed in places).  Meanwhile, the state's gasoline tax hasn't been raised in over a quarter century in keeping with the GOP's no tax increase mantra.  And rather than increase the gas tax, Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell wants to scrap the tax, increase the state sales tax, and raid funds for already stretched programs.  It's idiocy that so far has been blocked by the Virginia Senate.  Now, the petroleum association that represents gasoline retailers statewide has come out in support of an increase in the gas tax and displayed far more logic than Taliban Bob. Here are highlights from a Virginian Pilot article:

How desperate are Virginians for a statewide transportation funding solution?  Here's one example: a trade group that represents gas stations is bucking tradition and backing a higher fuel tax to pump new money into state road building accounts.

The Virginia Petroleum, Convenience and Grocery Association this week has expressed support for raising the state's 17.5 cent per gallon gas tax to 23.5 cents starting in July. More than 25 years have passed since the state's gas tax was last adjusted.

In a statement, the group cited the mushrooming maintenance deficit that has required Virginia to increasingly spent more of its road construction dollars to repair its decaying road network,
"Should this continue it will eventually impact the productivity of our membership and other Virginia businesses, and affect the quality of life for many Virginians," the Feb. 7 statement reads.

The association also said it would work toward "consensus legislation for the 2014 General Assembly session that adjusts Virginia’s cents per gallon rate along with the biennial state budget, to accommodate the increase in federal gasoline efficiency standards for all passenger vehicles."

The transportation funding plan still alive in the General Assembly is the House of Delegates' version of Gov. Bob McDonnell's proposal to dump the current gas tax and replace it by increasing the state sales tax from 5 percent to 5.8 percent, among other plan wrinkles.

The transportation funding plan still alive in the General Assembly is the House of Delegates' version of Gov. Bob McDonnell's proposal to dump the current gas tax and replace it by increasing the state sales tax from 5 percent to 5.8 percent, among other plan wrinkles.  .  .  .  the Senate version of McDonnell's plan and several proposed amendments to it were defeated by Democrats who consider its revenue sources either unreliable or sacrosanct.

McDonnell needs to dump the GOP's failed approach on taxes and increase the gasoline tax and make sure all of the new revenues go to highway repair and expansion.

The Virginia GOP's Failed Transporation Solution

Rather than raise the state gasoline tax which has not seen an increase in 25 years or raise the state sales tax to pay for Virginia's increasing crisis transportation funding, the Virginia Republican Party's solution has been to slap tolls on road projects build either completely by private money or in what are euphemistically called public-private partnerships.  In these later scenarios, there is no partnership and the real intended relationship is that the public gets screwed and the private interests get rich. As with all of their funding approaches, the Virginia GOP tells the gullible public that they did not raise taxes - the public just ends up paying in some other way be it "user fees," increased license fees or, in the case of the new Jordan Bridge which spans the southern branch of the Elizabeth River by allowing a private interest to reach into the tax payers' pockets.  I'm sorry, but maintaining a first class transportation system is the state's responsibility - especially if Virginia's economy is to be protected from strangulation due to transportation gridlock.  Also distressing is that Hampton Roads has been disproportionately targeted for financial rape by public- private road projects.

Interestingly, an article in the Virginian Pilot shows the other fallacy of the Virginia GOP's approach: people will change their travel habits to avoid tolls.  So far the new bridge has seen traffic levels drop by 90%.  Here are article highlights:

The new South Norfolk Jordan Bridge is a nice place for a stroll. The span's snaking white walkway provides unparalleled views of surrounding cities as it climbs 145 feet over the Elizabeth River's Southern Branch.

And for deep thinkers, the path provides plenty of silence, even during rush hour.
After opening in late October, the privately owned bridge drew 35,271 E-ZPass customers from Nov. 1 to Dec. 21, according to data provided by the Virginia Department of Transportation. That equates to fewer than 700 a day or, assuming no traffic on weekends or Thanksgiving, about 980 per weekday.  The old Jordan Bridge averaged about 7,000 vehicles per weekday before it was closed in 2008 for safety reasons.

Kevin Crum, the new bridge's general manager, sent a statement by email that said the crossing "averages 2,500-3,500 vehicles per day (depending on the day)" and that the owners "are pleased with where we are."  The bridge cost $142 million to build and was financed entirely by private investors. 

Jason Ewell, the owner of SoNo Auto Sales, said he suspects the $2 toll, combined with the E-ZPass membership, has kept drivers from trying the bridge.  "Before, if you had 75 cents laying in the ashtray, you could go across it," he said.

Ewell said he expected the bridge to continue to draw more traffic as people become more familiar with it. The beginning of $1.84 rush-hour tolls at the Downtown and Midtown tunnels in early 2014 also could persuade more people to take the Jordan.

And what happens if the traffic never comes? The city is protected in a development agreement by a clause that says it can begin the process to take ownership of the bridge if it is ever closed for more than three months, for reasons other than acts of God, labor strikes, war or scheduled improvements.

When the tolls hit the Midtown Tunnel next yea (to enrich private interests, of course), I have already decided that I will adjust my commuting schedule and my use of the Midtown will become a thing of the past - at least until VDOT  and the Virginia GOP empower some private interest to butt rape commuters on the commuters on the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel as well or I decide to relocate the law firm to Hampton.  As at the national level, the Republican Party in Virginia is proving that it is unfit to govern and that average citizens and the needs of the public are the last on their priority list.  One can expect regionalism between the Peninsula and south side to take a huge step backwards as the populace is strangled with tolls - all because the Virginia GOP and Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell are afraid to stand up to the lunatic elements of their party base.