Some national business leaders are outright opposing measures of fiscal responsibility. Fortunately, fiscal conservatives in Congress are fighting back. Case in point: reaction to House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee (T&I) Chairman John Mica’s (R–FL) proposed six-year reauthorization bill, which limits transportation spending to the federal fuel tax revenues flowing into the trust fund. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s reaction was to label the proposal “unacceptable.” Apparently in their view, the proposal doesn’t spend enough money on the business community. Chairman Mica quickly responded to the president of the Chamber on …
The House Republicans will soon debate and vote on a series of changes in the rules that govern how the House operates during the 112th Congress. Some of these rules are designed to facilitate the goal of greater spending restraint and, as a consequence, are being vigorously opposed by the trade associations whose members benefit from federal spending. In particular, proposed amendments to Rule XXI—which addresses the federal highway program—would amend the existing rule that was put in place earlier to guarantee full funding of the infamous SAFETEA-LU, a piece …
There was good news and bad news in the the House Democrat’s latest so-called stimulus plan. The good news is that the bill’s authors heeded the skepticism shared by many fiscal conservatives, and resisted the intense campaign of many lobbyists to make a massive spending commitment to transportation infrastructure – only about 7 percent of proposed spending is for transportation. Conservatives argued that an infrastructure spending plan would have only a limited impact on jobs and the recovery because such projects take many months to get off the ground and …
