In rejecting $2.4 billion in federal funds for high-speed rail in Florida yesterday, Gov. Rick Scott came up with a great idea to solve the state’s burgeoning traffic problems – more highways!
At the same time he was denouncing fast trains as wasteful government spending at a hastily arranged press conference, he was imploring U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to funnel billions of federal dollars into new road projects.
The peculiar letter Scott sent to LaHood yesterday proposed a laundry list of major highway undertakings. Among them, expanding I-395 in Miami-Dade County, widening I-95 down the state’s southern spine, building a new bridge over Choctawhatchee Bay, and adding lanes to I-4 where the high-speed line was supposed to be built between Tampa and Orlando.
The fact that all these projects would cost considerably more than the rail line somehow escaped the governor’s request that he and LaHood “work together” to meet “the broad array of transportation needs in our state.”
There are many reasons why turning aside the chance to become the first state to realize high-speed rail’s promise is foolhardy (such as giving up thousands of construction jobs and boosting Florida’s tourism economy). But the bottom line is that Scott, who won election last November with Tea Party support, feels threatened by projects outside the box of the old car culture.
This same reflexive fear – mixed with bitter hatred of President Obama’s “stimulus spending,” especially if it might economically stimulate – has been consuming many rookie House Republicans, who are seeking to cancel all federal spending for high-speed rail in the 2011 budget.
In other words, high-speed rail has become the latest stage for the battle between progressives seeking to advance America’s competitiveness with strategic public investment and conservatives inveighing against non-defense government spending as “waste.”
Not all Republicans have swallowed the Kool Aid – Florida’s prior governor, Charlie Crist, was a firm backer of the Tampa-Orlando project, and John Mica (R-Fla), chairman of the powerful House Transportation Committee, yesterday denounced Scott’s decision as “a huge setback for the state of Florida.”
What Scott decries others enthusiastically endorse. The governors of California, New York, and Illinois greeted Scott’s announcement with delight, saying they’d gladly accept the money rejected by Florida to build 21st-century rail transportation in their state.
