Matt Yglesias

John McCain Repeats Vegas HSR Lie, Adds New Non-True Details

Given that legislators who want to provide accurate information to their constituents have no had ample time to learn that the stimulus package does not contain an $8 billion earmark for high-speed rail between LA and Las Vegas, I’m going to go ahead and call John McCain a liar:

So, we will be seeking fair and transparent use of the money. I believe that Arizona can compete with any other state or locality to get the much-needed money. Already we’re seeing a good example. There was $2 billion in the Senate bill of the stimulus package for light rail; there was zero in the House. It came out of conference – only Democrats, no Republicans in the room – with $8 billion for light rail. And guess where it’s going to go? A light rail between Las Vegas and L.A. Everybody knows that.

Could we have competed for that money? Maybe so. So it’s business as usual in Washington, and I think that Americans are generally very disappointed. Sorry for the long answer.

It can’t be the case that “everybody” knows that because it’s not true. The thing that John McCain wants where different states can compete for the high-speed rail money is what the bill already says. Except McCain has piled ignorance onto dishonesty by confusing high-speed rail (advanced passenger trains that run between cities) with light-rail (relatively low-capacity trains used for intra-city mass transit). They have a light rail system right in Phoenix so it’s not as if there’s no way he could have informed himself about these issues.

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.

Boehner Slams Mythical Vegas HSR Project, Ignores Ohio Rail Opportunity

The madness continues on the right-wing’s crusade against a mythical high-speed rail to Las Vegas project that Harry Reid is alleged to have snuck into the stimulus bill. “Tell me how spending $8 billion,” asked House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) on the floor, “in this bill to have a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and Las Vegas is going to help the construction worker in my district.”

For one thing, if we stuck by the standard that members of congress should only agree to fund infrastructure projects located in their own districts, then obviously we’d have no infrastructure at all. This is a debate that I thought we settled in the days of Henry Clay. But beyond that there is no such provision in the bill. This, by contrast, is an accurate description of the high-speed rail provisions of the Recovery Act:

The Stimulus Plan includes two provisions modeled after the Act that finance high-speed rail development. First, the Stimulus Plan provides a $2 billion grant for high-speed rail projects that will remain available until September 30, 2011. The grant will be distributed among applicant states, interstate compacts, public agencies having responsibility for providing high-speed rail service and Amtrak for capital projects associated with inter-city passenger rail services reasonably expected to reach speeds of at least 110 miles per hour. The Secretary of Transportation will have discretion to award grants based on an extensive set of criteria, including the legal, financial and technical capacity of the applicant to carry out the project; compatibility with relevant national plans; and anticipated economic, environmental and transportation effects.

In a last-minute change, the total quantity of funds available was increased. But there’s no special plan for Las Vegas. The money will be spread all across the country. As it happens, I think an LA-Vegas HSR line is a perfectly reasonable project. But in practice the areas that will get a leg up should be the Federal Railroad Administration’s officially designated high-speed rail corridors. As it happens, LA-Vegas doesn’t make the cut. But guess who does have such a corridor? Ohio!

Indeed, the existing plan is a bit freakishly Ohio-centric, offering both a Cleveland-Toledo-Chicago line and a Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati-Indianapolis corridor while leaving things like Houston-Dallas and Orlando-Jacksonville (and, indeed, LA-Vegas) off the list. Long story short, John Boehner doesn’t know what he’s talking about and his position on this issue would imperil both short term jobs for Ohioans and an opportunity to substantially improve Ohio’s long-run capacity for economic growth.

High-Speed Rail in the Stimulus

Good news for people who like fast trains as it seems a significant amount of high speed rail funds made it into the stimulus:

And while many initiatives were scaled back as Congress and the White House sought to cut the overall cost, there were some surprise increases, including a quadrupling of money for high-speed rail projects to $8 billion.

The White House pushed for the added money in the final rapid-fire negotiations, seeing it as a tangible way to create jobs and benefit different parts of the country. It also added a futuristic element to legislation that has been criticized as lacking forward vision.

I’m glad to see this happen, though it’s still the case that my first, second, and third preferences for transportation funding in the stimulus would have been money for mass transit system operating costs. The really good news about this is that my understanding is that the President took a personal interest in this provision, which is crucial because building-out an HSR network in such a big country would require a lot of followthrough.

Meanwhile, it seems that Harry Reid was talking about this provision and mentioned the idea that a high-speed rail corridor from Los Angeles to Las Vegas might be eligible for some of the money. That’s true. It’s also, I think, a pretty good idea. But some conservatives have decided to portray this as Reid sneaking a special “high speed rail to Las Vegas” provision into the stimulus package. There is no such provision and he did no such thing. The United States has many metropolitan areas and no true high-speed rail corridors. Consequently there are a lot of plausible city pairs and corridors that could benefit from these measures. My guess would be that the folks best-positioned to take advantage of this would be in California where they’ve already got the HSR ball rolling. Pennsylvania also has an actively ongoing initiative to upgrade service to Pittsburgh and Ed Rendell puts a high priority on this sort of thing and Arlen Specter was a pivotal Senator in pulling the deal together, so they might benefit.