Oberstar reacts to Obama’s transportation plan

Six year deal is necessary

Jon Boyd, Sep 16, 10.

President Obama unveiled a new transportation plan on Labor Day weekend for $50 billion of spending in a frontloaded package, as previously reported in Houston Tomorrow. Any plan from the White House will require cooperation from Representative James Oberstar (MN-8th District), Chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
Chairman Oberstar believes agencies need to plan transportation through a six-year bill, according to Derek Wallbank of MinnPost.com:

For all of 2009 and [most] of this year, the White House had been pushing an 18-month reauthorization, which Oberstar has said is too short to make a difference. His logic: Agencies would have the money to begin multi-year projects, but that short timeframe wouldn’t provide assurances that the federal dollars they’d need to complete the job would be around when those projects wrap up.

Obama’s softened language Friday pledging his commitment to a six-year reauthorization came as welcome news to Oberstar, who has been agitating for a long-term bill since Obama took office.

“President Obama demonstrated that he is serious about making transportation a top priority in his administration,” Oberstar said. “He is the first president in decades to tackle this issue head on.”

Some of the language coming from Oberstar and the White House emphasizes automobiles, roads, bridges and highways, based on the quotes from MinnPost.com:

“And if they don’t understand that at the White House, then I suggest that those highfalutin economists get out of their chauffeured limousines and get on the street and drive like the rest of America and choke in the congestion that is stifling America’s economy and choking our cities. We are ready to move.”

So far, legislative gridlock has given the president his wish - it is a year and a half now since this issue first came up. Now however, for the first time the president and the chairman seem to on the same page, or at least reading out of the same book.

“On infrastructure, we’ve got a highway bill that traditionally is done every six years,” Obama said, outlining his plan. “And what we’re saying is let’s ramp up what we’re doing, let’s beef it up a little bit — because we’ve got this infrastructure all across the country that everybody from governors to mayors to economists to engineers of all political stripes have said is holding us back in terms of our long-term competitiveness - let’s get started now rebuilding America.”

The earliest it looks like that the overall bill could come up is in the lame duck session - and that’s a small window of time - but Oberstar and administration officials sounded a confident tone.

“I am certain,” said Oberstar, “that we will be able to make real progress on legislation to put Americans to work fixing our roads and bridges before the end of this year.”

Vice President Biden’s senior staff emphasized the automobile in a statement this week, according to The Street:

Vice President Joe Biden’s chief economist made an interesting comment trying to defend President Obama’s plan to jump-start the stalled US economy by paving $50 billion worth of roads. “The car…is finally moving in the right direction, but it needs to go a lot faster,” wrote Jared Bernstein, chief economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, in a White House blog post arguing in favor of Stimulus: the Sequel.