Flap over “railroad to nowhere” roils GOP
Remember Alaska’s “bridge to nowhere”? It’s about to be topped by what critics call Mississippi’s “railroad to nowhere,” which is quickly becoming the poster child for excessive spending by the Republican-controlled Congress, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
The project, which was added to a $106.5 billion emergency defense spending bill in the Senate, would relocate a Gulf Coast rail line inland, to higher ground. Never mind that the hurricane-battered line was just repaired at a cost of at least $250 million. Or that at $700 million, the project championed by Mississippi’s two US senators is being called the largest “earmark” ever.
The controversy points to a deepening split in the GOP over whether to rein in spending in the face of wartime commitments and record deficits - and whether failing to do so threatens their majority in this fall’s midterm elections.
Its sponsors say the motive is evacuation and safety. “Along the Coast, we too often seen motorists and pedestrians killed on the rails that have run parallel to our shores for more than a century,” wrote Sen. Trent Lott (R) of Mississippi in the Sun Herald newspaper Monday. Mississippi’s senior senator, Thad Cochran, chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee, which drafted the bill.
But critics say it’s also a bid to open land for developers to turn Mississippi’s struggling Gulf Coast into Las Vegas South - and that emergency federal spending shouldn’t pay for it, especially when Washington is on track to spend $371 billion into the red.
“There’s never been a single earmark anywhere near $700 million,” says Ronald Utt, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. Tuesday he released a report, “Deadly Sin: Larding up Emergency Appropriations,” which details the CSX freight line relocation plan. “That’s more than twice the size of the [$223 million] bridge to nowhere.”
Just remember this everyone screams about the democrats and wasteful spendig. But lets look at the biggest waste or pork projects in the last couple years. The brigde to nowhere now the rr to nowhere. Plus lets not forget the about Bud Schuster who made it his job to spend more money in his district than anyother one. Yes the democrats have had some huge pork projects also I will give them that but the republicans have taken pork barrel spending to the next level.
Is this the same issue that was discussed here a week ot 2 back? I thought it involved the feds buying up an NS line to use the right-of-way for a new interstate?
Of course, don’t forget that the “Bridge to Nowhere” project in Alaska was never funded and ended up cancelled. The RR to Nowhere has a much better chance of being funded given the position of Sen. Cochran as Chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
They’re not just relocating the line for the hell of it. Unlike New Orleans, most of the Mississippi Gulf Coast is completely wiped out. The plan calls for redevelopment of the corridor into a mixed-use commercial/residential parkway area with a light rail system for public transit.
Comment: On one side of this I will point out that Gulfport(I think) & several other communities would like to get freight trains away from relocated casinos.
Flip side $700 million.(ouch)
I’ll let elected reps deceide on this & pay the political price.
Hey, here’s an idea: If it is the Gulf Coast states that desire this superfluous project to enhance the property values of Gulf Coast casinos, THEN LET THE GULF COAST STATES PAY FOR IT!!
It’s one thing to pay for new projects such as the misnamed “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska, which is just as useful to the nation as the State of Washington’s new Tacoma Narrows bridge. Both play a role in expanding the breadth of the North American intracontinental highway network.
It’s another when you’re taking perfectly good infrastructure and tearing it out for redundant infrastructure that is not part of the important interstate commerce network.
Commuter interstates and casino highways should not be the responsibility of the nation’s taxpayers.
Trent Lott (R??, Mississippi) is what we call a “RINO”, Republican In Name Only.
He’s a big time Amtrak supporter, tries to get warships our Navy doesn’t want built in a Mississippi shipyard as pork projects, and supports this raid on “The Peoples’ Money.” He enjoys spending other peoples’ money.
If casinos are viable on the MIssissippi Gulf Coast, then private money will rebuild them. It’s not real hard to get investors to put money in casinos.
What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know that the Alaska bridge would have been built with the user fees that go into the highway trust fund? Think of all the additional user fees that would have been generated as a result of that bridge being built. I’d bet the farm that the added fees would pay for that bridge in not more than a millenia or two.
And think of poor Senator Stevens. Now he won’t have bridge building contractors to to hit up for the campaign war chest.
Lets see…this would make a great warner brothers cartoon-Porky Pig playing a senator with Elmer Fudd playing the vice president and Daffy Duck as the prez…Bugs Bunny could play the pesky news media correspondant lurking behind a tree.
Since John Snow used to be chairman of CSX, wasn’t their operating ratio something in the 80 to 90 percent range? Could it be that as treasury secretary, the USA’s operating ratio has gone over(for a long time now) 100 percent because of all the pork spending? Just wondering.[:)][:)]
Seriously, do you have any ability at all to differentiate between value-added production enhancements and purely indulgent pork? No? Well, I’m not suprised.
Here’s a simple test of validity: If it aids in anyway the movement of US goods domestically and in our export markets, it is a justifiable investment. If it does nothing for the movement of value-added production, then it is not justifiable for national taxpayer/user fee investment.
Otherwise, our future public transporation investments will consist of nothing more than a bunch of “Big Dig’s” and light rail to nowhere.
Unfortunately, that may be wishful thinking on your part…[}:)]
I’d have to disagree with part of this statement. At some point, the cost vs. benefit aspect needs to be investigated, to see if something really is a justifiable investment.[xx(]
I think the republicans are going to pay dearly for this in November. They have been spending money like it is going out of style. I am a strong fiscal conservative, but the current majority in congress and the administration is anything but. This used to be a democratic problem, but both parties now suffer from lobbyists and special interests at home. The voter is usually not included in there. There are priorities, yes. The war in Iraq, reducing the deficit, low cost loans for Katrina, and funding our current programs are all important. Moving a rail line inland to satisfy the interests of casinos is not. If they want it moved, why not have the casinos pony up for it? 700 million is probably a good weekend for them, right?
We are losing track (no pun intended) of the real issue, here. CSX should relocate away from the immediate gulf shoreline area, since it has had to be completely rebuilt in three places in the last two years. If a significant part of it is damaged this coming hurricane season, then thought should be given to relocating the affected lines. But let’s not spend the money until it is necessary after all, who is paying for the repairs that were just finished? I don’t recall CSX saying anything about “extrordinary expenses”, have you? Let’s remember that this forum is not supposed to get political and that all the elected representatives along the Gulf Coast and Louisiana regardless of party affiliation were asking for funds to restore everything as it had been prior to last year’s storms. No time was available to study properly the alternatives for a less vulnerable routing for CSX along the gulf coast. Trying to do that in 2006 would be dragged out by bogus environmental concerns and litigation started by the NIMBY attitude of property owners along the “new” gulf coast line. There is a very real quagmire here, and with both parties so [censored][censored] at one another things were guaranteed to get ugly. What did we expect, anyway?