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Transportation bill is a bust

Is the budget deficit a problem or not? The U.S. Senate doesn't seem to think so. It defied a veto threat from President Bush by passing a transportation bill that would cost $11-billion more than he said he would accept.

We can understand why Senate Republicans who wrote the bill didn't take the threat seriously. Bush hasn't vetoed a single spending bill yet, as he turned a budget surplus into a deficit. The Senate even used one of Bush's tricks - fear politics - to justify the bloated bill. "If we don't pass this, people are going to die," said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the bill's sponsor.

Inhofe was referring to the fact that a certain percentage of traffic fatalities are attributable to poor roads. Of course, the last highway spending bill expired in 2003 and Congress hasn't felt guilty enough to pass a new one.

Bush, who made a show during his re-election campaign of taking the expected $400-billion deficit seriously, said he would force spending constraints on Congress. He set the transportation bill limit at $284-billion, hardly a starvation diet, and the House stuck to that amount. Yet the House bill is irresponsible in other ways.

While the House loaded its bill with member projects, also known as pork, the Senate approved a spending formula for the states. In fact, the Senate is trying to make transportation spending more equitable for states such as Florida, which pay more in federal gas taxes than they receive back in highway funding.

The two chambers only have until the end of the month to resolve their differences, when an extension of the overdue transportation bill expires. Neither side is hopeful.

At a time when the nation needs budgetary restraint and effective spending on highways, bridges and mass transportation rather than pork projects, Congress is likely to give us impasse once again. If it manages to send an irresponsible bill to Bush, Americans should hold him to his word. The White House may not have a VETO stamp handy, but they're not that expensive to make.

[Last modified May 19, 2005, 00:43:18]