Obama's trains and roads to nowhere

Washington Examiner Editorial:

If you live in northern Virginia and listen to the radio, then you've probably heard the ad from President Obama's re-election campaign attacking Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan for a budget plan that "slashes investments in road and infrastructure projects." It does no such thing.

Ryan's Path to Prosperity budget does return federal spending levels on all transportation projects to pre-recession levels. In 2008, the federal government spent $77 billion on transportation. In what would be Romney's first full fiscal year in office (FY 2014), the Ryan budget calls for $84 billion in transportation spending. That's not a "slash" in spending.

Obama on the other hand, takes the same level of spending that has failed to produce jobs and reduce commute times under his stimulus, and hits the accelerator. In 2000, the last year before President Bush took office, President Clinton spent $46 billion on transportation. By 2016, Obama plans to spend $107 billion a year, an increase of more than 130 percent.

Is your commute 130 percent faster? We didn't think so.

If Obama was actually spending all this money on roads and bridges designed to get you to work and home quicker, then maybe this transportation spending explosion would be worth it. But he's not. In 2009, the highway trust fund spent $52.7 billion, but only 62 percent of that went to general purpose roads and safety programs. The rest was diverted into pet liberal causes like trolleys, bicycles, buses, scenic byways, historic covered bridges and "community preservation."

And those are the dollars that are supposed to be going to highways. The rest of Obama's transportation spending is even more wasteful. His budget calls for billions in subsidies for Amtrak, which can't even manage to run a monopoly food concession without losing $800 million annually.

Then there is the $47 billion that Obama wants to spend on brand new high-speed rail projects across the country. One need only look at how his signature rail project in California is progressing to get a sense of how well this money will be spent.

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The train boondoggle is part of his vision for getting us out of vehicles we like into public transportation even for cross country trips.  If is a result of his carbon phobic view of transportation.  The same could be said for money wasted on bike trials, trolleys and other boondoggles.  His transportation goals are not what most commuters goals are.