Politico’s David Rogers Catches Republicans Lying About High-Speed Rail, Won’t Call Them Liars
David Rogers has a piece in Politico that offers a nice summary of the recovery plan’s actual high-speed rail provisions and the direct role of the White House in securing them:
The $787.2 billion economic recovery bill — to be signed by President Barack Obama on Tuesday — dedicates $8 billion to high-speed rail, most of which was added in the final closed-door bargaining at the instigation of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. [...] The same Maine and Pennsylvania Republican moderates who had criticized Obama’s school construction initiative were more accepting of the rail funds, since the Northeast corridor has a major stake in more improvements. To help pay for the added cost, a business tax break — providing a five-year carry back for net operating losses — was narrowed to keep the focus more on smaller firms with receipts of less than $15 million.
Needless to say, this reality is at odds with the made-up story conservatives have been telling all weekend about $8 billion being earmarked for a train to Las Vegas. And Rogers, as we’ll see, knows what the truth is, knows what conservatives have been saying, and knows that the two are different things, but he can’t quite seem to describe what’s happening with regular English words:
At the same time, conservative Republicans seemed almost blind to Obama’s role. Instead, in their campaign to find pork barrel projects in the stimulus bill, they painted the whole funding as a scheme by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on behalf of Las Vegas interests seeking a rail link to Los Angeles. “Sin City to Tomorrow Land” was one description.
Here is Rep. Candice S. Miller (R-Mich.) explaining her vote against the bill Friday despite the benefits to her home state: “Michigan is a state of about 10 million people, and we are the hardest hit, as I said, by this economy. And yet we are expected to get approximately $7 billion from this bill. And apparently the Senate majority leader has earmarked $8 billion for a rail system from Las Vegas to Los Angeles? You have got to be kidding. You have got to be kidding.”
Rep Miller wasn’t “explaining” anything, she was lying to her constituents. Nor were conservatives running a “campaign to find pork barrel projects int he stimulus bill” they were inventing fictional projects. Nor were obscure House backbenchers like Miller running a rogue operation here. House Minority Leader John Boehner led the charge on peddling this lie, and Senator Jim Demint was on the case as well.
53 Responses to “Politico’s David Rogers Catches Republicans Lying About High-Speed Rail, Won’t Call Them Liars”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
February 17th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Rep. Candice S. Miller (R-Mich.)should be given her walking papers next year.
Michigan is one of the hardest hit states even before everything went into the shitter.
February 17th, 2009 at 9:53 am
NPR had a piece this morning that mentioned that there were Republican Members of Congress that wanted to vote for the recovery package and said so but in the end voted no because of Eric Cantor. But it didn’t say what he could really do to them. What can he do?
February 17th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Wait, but doesn’t the article suggest that the money won’t be spent in the northeast, and thus that it will be spent on the LA-Vegas line?
And, really, we can’t criticize Miller for getting the facts wrong on this one. I mean, it isn’t as if she’d been given a chance to review the bill. Emergency high speed rail construction required the vote to be held with the members–all of them–in ignorance.
February 17th, 2009 at 9:55 am
I’m not on the high-speed rail bandwagon. Restoring our rail infrastructure is a great idea, but I don’t understand the need for moving faster. Its a modern sickness– the notion that we need to get there quicker. Let’s just calm down and move at a civilized pace.
February 17th, 2009 at 9:55 am
The point is not that Miller is lying. If their lips are moving they are lying. It’s the “one side says” media that’s the issue. By Politico standards, I’d say Rogers is doing a better than average job making it clear who is telling the truth here.
February 17th, 2009 at 9:59 am
The fact that every single Republican in the House and all but three of them in the Senate voted against Obama’s stimulus package tells us a lot about their mindset. They are more interested in clinging to their tribal beliefs than anything. In a rational world, some GOP members of Congress would have come across the aisle and voted ‘Yes.’ But their leadership has them in a vise grip, and they lack the intellectual integrity to do anything but follow the leader.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:05 am
This is one of those things where “it’s true if you think it’s true.” There are certain cultural myths that bind the Republican party members together, and this was one of them.
There was an old man at a party I was at on Friday spouting off this very lie. Because I was a guest, and because he was a Republican friend of a Republican hill staffer, I refrained from calling him a liar and demanding that he not lie in front of me, and instead calmly pointed out that this was not in the bill. I don’t think he heard me, as, like many Republicans, he believes that John Boehner is telling the truth and has his best interests in mind.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Voters in California approved a bullet train running north to south.
Is the federal government gonna pay for it?
February 17th, 2009 at 10:13 am
I’m not even sure what’s wrong with a LA/Vegas line, other than the fact that Republicans can blather about Vegas and sin and vice. That line would be immensely popular and probably one of the few profitable mass transit projects. Indianapolis to Cleveland to Detroit…not so much.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:33 am
For Matt Young at #9 — California just voted a whopping bond measure to pay for at least the LA-SF segment and maybe more. With the state destitute and Der Governator having failed spectacularly after wingnuts kicked the Democrat out of office, it may be a while before that gets started.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:36 am
17 million people in the Greater LA region. 34 million trips per year to the Greater Las Vegas region. Thanks to all the hacks in the press (it’s mostly WaPo) who describe a potential modern rail system connecting what amounts to 1/15th of the US population as little more than a toy monorail at Disneyland.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Caterpillar Corp., the big dog in the central Illinois economy announced 20K layoffs. The stimulus package contains $100 billion in capital construction, translation–Caterpillar equipment sales. Cong. Aaron Schock of Peoria stood with appeared with President Obama in Peoria last Thursday at a rally for the stimulus package. Did Schock vote yes? Nope. Schock votged “No” twice. He’s a young republican-in-love with D.C., a first termer, following the wingnutball leaders of the GOP.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:40 am
A Republican? Lying?
No one could have predicted! No one!
February 17th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Ah, but you see, that’s the problem right there. If you have a profitable mass transit line that helps underwrite the cost of other mass transit lines, then what do you get? A successful government project. Can’t have that, or the people whose worldview is based on the belief that Government Is Always Bad might reconsider, and then they might stop giving money and votes to Republicans.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Joejoejoe
Good point. You cite numbers, which are hard facts. How novel, numbers and facts, something the MS media abhors. I did some back of the envelope calculating, simple-minded math.
As I rcall the LA-Vegas trip is 5 hours, about 400 miles, 800 miles round trip @ 20 miles per gallon. that’s 40 gallons (conservative number)per trip.
If one third of those trips, 10 million, use high speed rail, that’s a savings of 400 million gallons. 8 million barrels a year saved @ $50 a barrel.$400 million dollars net saved annually. High speed rail easily pays for itself in 10 or 15 years. Sooner if the price of oil jumps up to $100 again.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Californians are against building and funding a rail line that would encourage spending in Vegas.Let Nevada pay for the line and see how that works out.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:56 am
adding to what Jeff S. says about the “one side says…” media. It seems they’re having a difficult time dealing with public response, positive, to the stimulus plan and Barack. The villiage idiot pundit groupthink mindset is being challenged. No longer does “all GOP good, all Dem bad” reportage work. See feministing and the link to comments on Bill Mayor’s Journal about how threatened the gasbag class feels about the new game in town. They’re like cheerleaders with the home team down 20-0 in the first quarter. They hope hope hope the conservatives can come back, but it ain’t looking good. Oh how they struggle…LOL!
February 17th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Californians are against building and funding a rail line that would encourage spending in Vegas.Let Nevada pay for the line and see how that works out
While I’m sure that a great deal of the traffic would be going in that direction, does this mean that Los Angeles no longer has attraction to people in Vegas (or flying into Vegas for a vacation) as a weekend or week away?
February 17th, 2009 at 11:55 am
gizmo Says:
February 17th, 2009 at 9:55 am
We heavily subsidize the interstate air and road transport systems, and because of that, trains running at “civilized” speed will often take six hours between metro areas, and will not attract the patronage to cover their operating costs.
Speeding up from 79mph, and frequently slower to wait for freight trains, to 110mph on a system designed to avoid being held up by freight trains, helps the operating budget on the fare revenues side.
It also reduces the operating costs, since in the range of 50mph to 110mph, maintaining a steady high speed is more fuel efficient per mile than slowing down and speeding up constantly, a la Amtrak, and labor cost per mile (together with all other “per hour” operating costs) go down as the effective trip speed is made faster.
That is why the Ohio Hub analysis by the Ohio Rail Development Corporation shows operating recovery of 70% to 90% for a 79mph Ohio Hub system, and 120%+ operating recovery for a 110mph Ohio Hub system … the operating cost per service is lower, and it appeals to a broader range of the traveling public.
Of course, we should invest in local rail too … local rail and HSR is not “either/or”, any more than city streets and Interstate Highways are “either/or” … but with well chosen HSR corridors, we can start a trunk system that covers its operating cost and yields a surplus that can be devoted to expanding the system further. So it makes quite a lot of sense to dedicate funds to that in a stimulus bill of this sort.
As far as Boehner, he’s just lying … the funding goes to Federally Designated corridors, and there is no Federally Designated corridor yet between Las Vegas and the LA basin, while there is a Federally Designated corridor that runs through John Boehner’s district.
Trying to sabotage the HSR funding is undermining a program where his constituents are in line in front of the people he is complaining about.
On the “didn’t have time to read it” … the HSR funding was in the Senate bill. Not at the amount agreed to in conference, but the same program line. So if he really cared about it, he could easily have verified before the conference that the HSR funding put his constituents in line in front of Harry Reid’s constituents.
February 17th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Thousands of tourists from Asia and Europe fly into either SoCal or Las Vegas. High speed rail between the two would increase revenue throughout the region. I live in Vegas with family in SoCal. This wish of high speed rail has been a wish for years. Hearing some Congresswoman from Michigan say “are you kidding me?” about this….well she doesn’t know what she is talking about. Taking away a rail project in the west is not going to solve Michigan’s deep problems.
February 17th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
I am getting a bad feeling that the Stimulus will be bedeviled by Republicans who see it in their interests to make sure it doesn’t work. Tell the public the Stimulus is all wasted, then steal is mis-spend the money, win-win.
February 17th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
There is a problem, as long as one way tickets on Amtrak between DC and Manhattan start at $123 while bus tickets can be has for $20, I will take the bus — I don’t care if the rail is gold plated.
For more see my DailyKos posting.
Bookwormhole.net — over 8000 published book reviews.
February 17th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Interguru, February 17th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
That’s only a problem for those looking for a one-size-fits-all solution, and if people look for one-size-fits-all solutions, they are bound to fail.
Specific transport services are, IOW, to be judged on the people they serve. Its one thing to say that we should not spend money on a new Interstate Highway lane because a HSR line will provide the same effective transport capacity for much less money and, unlike the Interstate Highway lane, will cover its own operating costs out of revenues …
… its another thing to say that we should not build a new Interstate Highway lane because my dear Aunt Sally is scared to drive on the interstate. “HSR is a waste of money because it will capture market share from air travelers instead of from people willing to spend 5 hours on a bus if its a cheap ticket” is an equally silly argument.
February 17th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Rep Miller wasn’t “explaining” anything, she was lying to her constituents. Nor were conservatives running a “campaign to find pork barrel projects int he stimulus bill” they were inventing fictional projects.
You mean fictional projects like the real high-speed rail project in the bill? It isn’t fiction if it’s real.
I would also add that Mr. Yglesias avoided one of the key pieces within the story:
I’m guessing the conferees and Emanuel might have been the only ones who knew about this addition, being that it was added in a closed-door session, and that rank-and-file members of Congress like Rep. Miller (or the others mentioned by Yglesias) wouldn’t have found out how it was added until later. In fact, Mr. Rogers mentions an interview with Emanuel, but doesn’t say when it happened.
Knowing that Democrats ramrodded this travesty through Congress, without input by any Republicans except the three liberal Republican Senators, the only one not telling the truth is this post’s author.
February 17th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
The Acela is so expensive that few leisure travelers are willing or able to pay its exorbitant fares. That’s why 80% of Acela riders are business travelers. And even they only cover the operating costs, not total costs. A “true” HSR would require even higher fares. The Acela is a huge form of corporate welfare.
February 17th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Funny how Republican tactics at forced legislation are only complained about when Democrats use them. This selective memory of our fellow Republicans is raising itself to the level of actual mental derangement. Knowing that Democrats ramrodded this travesty through Congress, without input by any Republicans and yet how soon they forget about 1996 to 2006 when the Republicans were in charge and ramrodded every piece of legislation they passed through Congress in the dead of night. Only difference is the Dems actually read their legislation, unlike the Republicans who just vote however their leadership tells them without question and for fear of retribution and for reimbursable votes. Gee, they can’t even remember the time John Boehner handed out checks from the Tobacco lobby on the floor of the House.
(By the way, I’m still looking for either a YouTube video or a picture of that event. Please post if you find one. Thanks.)
February 17th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
SteveIL, February 17th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
There is no “high speed rail project” in the bill. There is funding of $8b for HSR projects to be proposed by the authorities in the designated corridors … crybaby John Boehner has a designated corridor running through his district, while Nevada does not have a designated corridor.
Unlike the limp-wristed impact of corporate tax breaks, the spending on HSR is genuine stimulus spending … but no matter how many times the Republican noise machine repeats the myth, Nevada does not have a designated corridor, … no designation, no share of the $8b.
Now, pragmatically, if Nevada were to get off the stick, abandon their silly maglev fantasy project, and start preliminary study of a bullet train system based on a junction with the the California HSR Stage 1 at Mojave, they ought to be able to get designation for that as part of the CA-HSR system, but meanwhile states like Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, California, Oregon and Washington already have designated corridors, so they can apply for funding now, while Nevada is still trying to drag its head down from fantasy cloud land.
February 17th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Oops, forgot Arkansas.
February 17th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
The so-called libertarian segment of the American right with its cult like worship of the market is finished–that’s the really upside. Look for Reason Magazine (currently begging its readers to donate) to go belly up by the end of the year.
February 17th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Rail transit is a monstrously expensive boondogle. It makes zero sense except for the very densest urban environments, and even there it typically doesn’t come close to paying for it’s own operating costs, to say nothing of the even larger capital costs (capital that’s going to need to be completely replaced in 30 years or so). It almost always amounts to an enormous subsidy to a relatively small number of riders. For the capital price tag on most rail projects, you could buy every regular rider a new Prius. For the operating costs you could buy them gas for life.
More buses and routes make a ton more sense, at a fraction of the price. But those just aren’t sexy enough for politicians…
February 17th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Um, wouldn’t it be a federal project? What about the analogy of the interstate highway system?
February 17th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
MAGLEV is monstrously expensive; other high-speed rail is not. As for Caterpillar and the stimulus package, the company was dead-set against the US-made steel provision. I’m sure their Congressman’s no vote didn’t bother them any more than laying off 20,000 did, which is to say a tiny bit.
February 17th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
You mean that after the Republicans made it clear that they had no interest in a workable bill, they were left out of the negotiations to get a workable bill?
My stars! Next thing I know, you’ll be telling me that I shouldn’t complain that I was left out of the planning for my parents’ vacation after I made it clear I wasn’t going with them. Why shouldn’t I get to dictate where they can go on vacation even if I’m not going to participate?
February 17th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
More buses make sense for intra-city and intra-county trips of reasonably short distances, but you really think that more bus routes on the 270 miles between Los Angeles and Las Vegas would be superior to high-speed rail between the two cities?
The point of high-speed rail is to get you quickly from one major metropolitan area to another — Los Angeles to San Francisco or Phoenix, not Los Angeles to Santa Monica. It’s not supposed to get you cross-town to your office, unless you plan to live in Los Angeles and work in San Francisco.
February 17th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
BruceMcF said:
Thanks for confirming that Democrats put in this piece of pork in the “stimulus” bill. The stimulus was supposed to create jobs fairly quickly, right? Because the U.S. is in some sort of emergency? So, this HSR project isn’t even the drawing board, is it? I don’t care who put it in, whether it was Obama, Emanuel, or Reid. The whole stimulus is a lie by the Democrats. You’ve just confirmed it.
February 17th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Bullet train vs. flying is more apt a comparison than bullet train or buses. If you have to travel a long distance, buses and trains don’t even compare.
February 17th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
BruceMcF said:
There is funding of $8b for HSR projects to be proposed by the authorities in the designated corridors …
Thanks for confirming that Democrats put in this piece of pork in the “stimulus” bill… So, this HSR project isn’t even the drawing board, is it? I don’t care who put it in, whether it was Obama, Emanuel, or Reid. The whole stimulus is a lie by the Democrats. You’ve just confirmed it.”
If it’s not even on the drawing board yet, where’d the map showing the designated corridors come from? My imagination?
February 17th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
SteveIl: You have to be trying very hard in order to not understand what BruceMcF is telling you:
—There is no Vegas>LA project in the bill
—in fact, there aren’ any specific HSR projects enumerated at all in the bill. IMO, this makes it not “pork”.
—There are HSR projects in a long list state of states that was provided to you that have “designated” corridors where projects could begin. This stimulus would come from the spending on these projects.
February 17th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Reminder: if you feed the trolls, they will just bite your hand and come back at you — that’s what identifies them most clearly as trolls. SteveIL’s behavior in this thread demonstrates this quite clearly.
First he complained about the HSR funding ‘ramrodded’ through without Republic party members’ knowledge. When reminded that the item was in the original Senate bill, and was restored in negotiations that were — as is often the case in Washington, among those in a position to affect the outcome — ‘closed-door’, but everyone had a chance to know what it was about, he pivots to thank everyone for confirming that the projects are ‘fictional’ — another piece of disinformation based on lack of knowledge (and lack of interest in knowledge), or else based on outright mendacity (less likely, because that would presume that a person of his ilk would actually care to know).
There are serious critics from libertarian and Republican positions, who deserve serious responses (and who have gotten them here today); but trolls should simply be ignored.
February 18th, 2009 at 9:49 am
“There is a problem, as long as one way tickets on Amtrak between DC and Manhattan start at $123 while bus tickets can be has for $20″
I made the trip from NYC to Washington last November and paid $72 for a trip that took about 3.5 hours. The bus, as one earlier commenter noted, takes abut 5 hours; and the difference in comfort is enormous. Amtrak seats are huge an comfortable, the train has a club car, and you can actually get up and walk around if you need/want to. I’d consider the dfference in cost negligible, given what your addition $50 buys you.
Incidentally, the Acela cost $130 and shaved only about 45 minutes off the trip time because it has to wait so often for slower trains to clear the track. And by contrast, one-way airfare from LaGuardia to Dulles runs a little under $200 and takes almost exactly the same amount of time the Acela does to reach DC – not counting the enormous hassle of having to get to the airport an hour or so early to wait through security lines.
February 18th, 2009 at 10:04 am
There is a reason John Boehner has an 18% approval rating.
There is a reason Congressional Republicans have a much lower approval rating than Congressional Democrats.
Americans are not dumb – they watched in horror as their country was being raped by a few bad men.
Republicans have one thing against them – they live with an ideology.
Democrats have one thing for them – they live in and with reality.
February 20th, 2009 at 11:01 am
jjcomet, February 18th, 2009 at 9:49 am
… its not only that, its also that the overhead electric infrastructure was built in the Great Depression, and does not have the constant tensioning equipment required to support speeds over 135mph … the Acela could shave more time off of the DC / NYC route if it could run at 150mph on its full speed segments. And its in the trip time, between 2 and 3 hours, where there is strong demand benefits from each 15 minutes shaved off the trip.
March 1st, 2009 at 4:56 am
viagra
Great site. Good info
March 1st, 2009 at 5:34 pm
cialis
Great site. Good info
March 11th, 2009 at 4:07 am
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
March 17th, 2009 at 2:16 am
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
tramadol
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:14 am
viagra
Great site. Good info
March 25th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Hello. Great job. I did not expect this… This is a great story. Thanks!
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:19 am
It is the coolest site,keep so!
buy cheap viagra
April 3rd, 2009 at 3:58 am
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
cheap brand pfizer viagra
April 9th, 2009 at 1:48 am
Great site, Good info viagra
April 15th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
I got a speeding ticket a couple of weeks ago and my lawyer got the charges dropped. Anyway, I promised him to promote his services – http://ticketvoid.com
April 18th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
I got a DUI ticket and my lawyers ( http://ticketvoid.com ) convinced the judge that the police don’t know how to administer the drinking test.