GULLIBLE REPORTER ALERT
I seriously doubt that A.P. reporter Jim Abrams is in the pay of the highway lobby, but judging from this propaganda masquerading as a news story, he might as well be:
It's legislation dear to the hearts of politicians: a highway spending bill spreading jobs and economic benefits throughout the country. But even such a popular measure can't get traction this year against a White House that insists the bill is just too much of a good thing.
"There's a deafening silence right now," Matt Jeanneret, a spokesman for the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, said in a recent interview. "It's a sad commentary on the state of political discourse."
Nearly eight months have passed since the last six-year, $218 billion highway and transit plan expired. Congress has approved three temporary measures to keep federal grants to the states at the old spending level while it struggles, without success, to come up with a new plan.
There's wide agreement that current spending is inadequate to deal with the nation's unsafe, congested and deteriorating transportation system. The Transportation Department has suggested a figure of $375 billion over the 2004-2009 period is needed.
There's also the formula, often cited in an election year where jobs are a prime issue, that 47,500 jobs are created for every $1 billion invested in federal highway and transit programs. [[Interesting sourcing, or lack of same.--vp]]
The White House, however, decided to make the highway bill its poster child for insisting that Congress end its profligate ways. It set a $256 billion ceiling on the bill while suggesting it might accept $275 billion if Congress could do it without increasing the deficit.
For more on highway investment, see my NYT column, coming on Thursday.