Federal Stimulus

According to a list posted by Politico, the Senate left transit funding untouched in the stim bill compromise brokered yesterday. For now, it appears safe to take a break from contacting your senators about this particular point of concern.

Senator Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican who said that directing stim funds toward bicycle and hiking infrastructure will not help the economy or create jobs, has gone too far. He and Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma have just proposed an amendment that would kill all stimulus funds for bike and hiking trails. 

A Senate amendment full of spending cuts would strip $3.4 billion in transit funding from the stimulus package, Greg Sargent reports. One of the few areas that might get a spending increase in the amendment is highways. The amendment, sponsored by Republican Susan Collins and Democrat Ben Nelson, is seen as a bipartisan compromise that will likely clear the way for the whole bill to pass. There is time to prevent the amendment from including these steep cuts in transit funding, which would drop the total for transit almost in half.

The Inhofe/Boxer stimulus bill amendment for $50 billion in additional infrastructure funds appears to be dead, with official word expected soon from Senator Harry Reid's office. Sources close to the negotiations say that at least five Democratic Senators were not going to support the amendment if transit and water provisions weren't improved, while Senate Republicans vowed to obstruct such improvements.  

A revised draft of the Boxer/Inhofe amendment just came over the transom from a source in DC close to the negotiations (PDF).  This is a draft from yesterday and negotiations are ongoing, so expect changes. 

The latest word from DC is that Kit Bond's pro-highway/anti-rail amendments have yet to come to the floor, while the Inhofe/Boxer amendment to create a $50 billion highway slush fund is still being finalized by its authors. The phone calls and emails are having an effect -- Boxer felt enough pressure to adjust her amendment, Transportation for America tells us, but the tweaks don't go far enough. (This huge pool of money would not, for example, set aside any amount explicitly for transit.)

Stimulus debate continues today in the Senate, where the stale ideas keep on coming. In addition to the $50 billion highway slush fund floated by Senators Boxer and Inhofe (no vote on that one yet), Missouri's Kit Bond plans to offer two amendments that would rob from transit, rail, and green transportation to pay for highways.

Barbara Boxer and infamous global warming denier James Inhofe will present an amendment to the Senate stimulus plan that could funnel as much as $50 billion in additional funding to highways, Streetsblog has learned. Friends of the Earth tells us that Boxer's staff confirmed she will introduce the amendment, which could bring the total for highways close to $80 billion, exactly the figure Inhofe demanded last week in a letter to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. 

This word of warning from cartoonist Mike Luckovich to Republicans in Congress feels all the more timely on the heels of today's action in the Senate. Click through for the punchline.