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Mr. Lynne asks about "Schumer's transit hopes" and links over to BlueMassGroup where we learn that the gentleman from New York is rightfully displeased with the funding for transit in the stimulus bill:
Senator Charles Schumer said that he was unhappy about the amount of stimulus money set aside for mass transit and rail. He indicated that several other Senators from highly urbanized states were also unhappy about this portion of the stimulus, and that when the legislation reached the Senate, they would be jointly pushing for an increase in money set aside for mass transit and rail. The current amount for mass transit and rail in the stimulus bill is only $10 billion.Whats actually interesting here is the political economy of the play: Schumer is trying to band together with other Senators from "highly urbanized states" to more effectively advocate for urban interests. Tough lift. The Senate is designed to screw over urbanized, which is to say populated, states. Every state gets two senators, no matter the state's population. Thus, the 21 smallest states have the population of California but 42 Senators compared to California's two. Those 21 smallest states thus have the power to filibuster legislation on their own even though they represent exactly as many people as Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. You can't redress this imbalance without changing the Senate. And you can't really change the Senate.The question is what other forces can come into play. Environmental groups, presumably, could step up to the plate here. A greener country is a more transit-dense country. Pundits and intellectuals can argue that the stimulus shouldn't save the economy at the expense of the planet. But the obvious transit advocates were President Barack Obama, a Chicagoan who frequently argues for the need to act swiftly on global warming, and well-known Amtrak enthusiast Joe Biden. But it's unclear they ever put much muscle behind transit. Representative Jim Oberstar said that funding for transit and other infrastructure priorities was cut because "the tax cut initiative that had to be paid for in some way by keeping the entire package in the range of $850 billion." If true, this makes a hash of Obama's claims that he was doing all he could for transit and that the tax cuts were a function of his having maxed out transit spending.
