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WASHINGTON – The fate of the Senate land transport bill may be in the hands of a retired Republican senator who has emerged as one of the staunchest critics of Congressional transit.
While both the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation have marked their portions of the surface transportation bill, the Senate of Banking, Housing, and Urban Development has yet to announce its mark-up for the transit portions of the surface transportation bill .
Bill observers say they have a good idea why: Senator Pat Toomey, the senior Republican on the committee, has been increasingly critical of the federal investment in transit, arguing that the federal government has thrown dollars on systems but not requested them Reforms.
Toomey, R-Pa., Is particularly upset that Congress has spent around $ 70 billion on transit under a series of COVID-19 relief laws, some of which target the pandemic-hit transportation industry. That money is on top of the more than $ 12 billion that Congress typically invests in transit during a typical year.
“We spent an incredible amount of money,” he said, adding that Congress spent last year “more than the sum of the total operating budget and capital budget of all transportation companies in America combined.”
As part of his more than $ 2 trillion infrastructure proposal, President Joe Biden proposed spending an additional $ 85 billion on transit over eight years. Toomey, 59, was one of a group of Republicans led by Senator Shelley Moore Capito who tried unsuccessfully to negotiate a deal with Biden, and he made it clear during an April 15 hearing that he was exaggerating the amount proposed by Biden held.
“If we passed this bill that President Biden proposed and carried out the normal funding extension we were considering here at this hearing, and we combine that with the $ 82 billion we allocated last year, why is all that money enough ? that according to 2019 census data, we could buy any US commuter a car for $ 30,000, ”he said.
“I was surprised at the hostility,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America, who testified during the hearing. “I’ve never seen him do that before.”
She said that while Toomey has called for accountability in the past and has expressed some skepticism about federal investments in transit, “this is a completely different thing from someone from a state like Pennsylvania that has one of the country’s larger transit systems”. Part of the mission of your group is to work for transit.
“It was really terrifying for him not to understand the role it plays in a region’s economy,” she said.
However, Fletcher McClellan, a professor of political science at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, said Toomey’s skepticism was a product of both his ideology and the political division of the state.
“In this state we have a pretty big country-city divide,” he said, adding that Toomey will remain a voice in the party even though he is retiring. “It may be in the back of your mind that anything perceived as pro-Philadelphia is usually a red flag in Republican circles.”
“He’s always been like that,” said Yasha Zarrinkelk, coalition manager and organizer of Transit Forward Philadelphia. “I don’t think he understands how economical public transportation is, not just for the state of Pennsylvania but for the whole country.”
He said Toomey “has invested slightly less, if at all,” in the fight against transit spending than it did before he retired.
The Banking Committee has a split of 12-12, which means GOP support is vital. If the bill were tied at a markup, it would not be reported. Majority leader Charles E. Schumer, however, could proceed to dismiss him under Senate rules. Osborne predicted that if bank chief Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio and Toomey can’t close a deal on the transit, that title will go straight to the ground. “They only do markup if they pass it,” she said.
Osborne isn’t the only one wondering how Toomey’s concerns will affect the transit title.
“I really don’t know what’s going to happen here,” said David Ditch, a research fellow with the Conservative Heritage Foundation, who also testified at the April 15 hearing.
A Brown spokeswoman said the bank chief “continues to work with ranked Toomey in hopes of reaching a bipartisan agreement on a robust transit title for an overland shipping bill.”
In some ways, Toomey is a lonely voice – literally, as he was the only Republican lawmaker better spent building highways and helping rural areas at the hearing on the 15th.
It’s a tension that has existed since Congress decided in 1982 to siphon about 20 percent of the Highway Trust Fund for transit, and one that has become an increasingly partisan focal point, with Democrats arguing that dividing up 20% is not enough and the Republicans against it is too much.
But among the senior Republicans on the judiciary committees, Toomey is a minor anomaly, Ditch said. While Sens. Roger Wicker of Commerce and Capito of Environment and Public Works generally support investment in the portions of the land transportation bill within their respective committees’ jurisdictions, Toomey is skeptical.
“There’s a real contrast,” said Ditch.
Ditch said that while previous highway bills have been delayed due to disputes over payment method, transit is a quieter but still lingering chasm.
“The sticking points have always been banking and finance,” he said. “The transit title is one that Republicans, frankly, don’t have much enthusiasm for.”
Toomey’s reluctance to invest in Transit, however, was less evident in a counteroffer to Biden’s plan, which he was closely involved in in April. That $ 568 billion plan included $ 61 billion in transit. “It was what it was,” Toomey said when asked if he supported the raise.
Adie Tomer, head of the Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative at the temperate Brookings Institution, said Toomey’s fiscal conservatism was nothing new – he was president of the Club for Growth, after all. However, he points out that Toomey represents a “metropolitan state” with two pulsating transportation systems, as evidence that the Senator has no choice but to “be familiar with the importance of transportation.”
“I think Republicans have a luxury in transit where they can publicly oppose it and mean business, but then privately use this as a bargaining wedge to argue for other elements that they want better support for,” said Tomer.
While Toomey publicly criticizes transit, “it can be, but at the same time he’s willing to sacrifice that to get some of the things that really matter to him,” Tomer said.
“He could still be an enemy of transit, but that doesn’t mean he’s a life-threatening enemy. There really is a difference. “