A Repug Reckoning Over The D.C. Transit Tragedy

This Fox News story (I'll trust them with hard news) tells us the following…

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer expressed caution Tuesday over suggesting that a lack of federal money was to blame for Monday's fatal metro crash in Washington, D.C., that killed at least nine.

"I want to wait because before jumping to the conclusion that this was 'due to' a lack of money," Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters.

Washington, D.C.'s worst Metrorail collision occurred at the height of the evening rush hour Monday when one train heading into D.C. from Maryland slammed into the back of another.

Officials investigating the crash are eyeing whether the failure to upgrade old trains with key recording devices designed to prevent such collisions contributed to the crash.

Subsequent to that report, we learned the following from this Wall Street Journal story…

Federal investigators said Wednesday they found an "anomaly" in a circuit in the tracks near the site of the Washington, D.C., train collision that killed nine people Monday, suggesting that a communications system failure could have contributed to the crash.

National Transportation Safety Board member Deborah Hersman disclosed the discovery Wednesday afternoon as investigators continued to scour the scene in northeast Washington for clues. She said five of the six circuits investigators tested in the area near the crash were working well, but one showed "anomalies" that could suggest some kind of failure.

"These circuits are vital," Ms. Hersman said. "Our investigators are going to be taking a very close look at that."

Hoyer is right – it’s way too early for us to figure out exactly what caused the horrific Metro crash that, at last count, has taken 9 lives. However, when it comes to federal funding of the Metro, it would be foolish to ignore some recent history that had led us to this point.

But let's back up a bit for some history on this, shall we?

Last February, we learned about the following projects for the approximately $230 million in stimulus funds for the Metro (here)…

The transit authority wants to use the money for short-term projects that include replacing old buses, fixing part of the Red Line and upgrading the fare vending machines to handle more SmarTrip transactions.

Metro won unanimous approval for the spending this afternoon from the region's Transportation Planning Board. The panel's approval will be crucial for all of the transit or road projects that the Washington area's governments submit for federal funding under the stimulus measure signed Tuesday by President Obama.

And yes, the crash occurred on a stretch of the Metro red line; again, though, we won’t know the proximate cause, as they say, of the accident for awhile yet (and this story from April tells us that Virginia and Maryland “had (already completed) legislative action to modify the regional compact that governs the operation and funding of Metro, and they must agree to match the federal funds from dedicated funding sources. Each jurisdiction must also agree to the addition of two federally appointed voting board members”).

And the amount of money apart from stimulus funds is about $1.5 billion, as the WaPo tells us. But as far as D.C. goes…

"Ultimately, the three bills have to have the identical language," said Metro General Manager John B. Catoe Jr. "The District of Columbia will either have to change its bill or Virginia and Maryland will have to change theirs."

All of this is background to note that the Democrats are making this happen (Governor Tim Kaine in Virginia, Governor Martin O’Malley in Maryland, and the Democratic Congress on behalf of D.C., which, of course, still endures “taxation without representation,” Dem Eleanor Holmes-Norton notwithstanding).

And what of those “across the aisle”?

Well, taking the lead from their ideological puppet masters, the Heritage Foundation tells us (from here in September 2006, when Dubya still resided in An Oval Office)…

On July 17, 2006, the House of Representatives passed, by a one-vote margin, Representative Tom Davis’s (R-VA) H.R. 3496. The bill would divert $1.5 billion of federal revenues earned through offshore drilling to subsidize the troubled Metro transit system that serves Washington, D.C., and Davis’s congressional district in suburban Virginia.

…

If ultimately enacted, the Davis bill would be one of the largest earmarks ever passed—seven times more expensive than Alaska’s infamous Bridge to Nowhere earmark and twice as expensive as Mississippi’s Train to Nowhere. Given the wealth of Davis’s constituents—in 2004, the median household in Fairfax County, Virginia, the most populous part of Davis’s district, enjoyed income of $88,133, compared to a national median of $44,684—the earmark would be a costly exercise in “trickle up” economics, forcing Americans across the country to subsidize the transportation needs of a small slice of one of the nation’s most prosperous communities.

And to think, these people accuse Democrats of class warfare…

As troubling as this inequitable transfer would be, Mr. Davis’s proposal also requires that, as a condition of Metro receiving the $1.5 billion federal bailout, all communities in its service area establish a “dedicated funding source” (a euphemism for a tax increase) to match the federal subsidy. To date, the White House has been silent on this costly proposal, and this silence may have contributed to the bill’s victory in the House last July. The President has an opportunity to rectify this by issuing a statement expressing his opposition to the Metro bailout.

And somehow, I have a feeling that Heritage nonsense like this had more than a little bit to do with Tom Davis (one of the few centrist conservative Republicans in the House) deciding to chuck it all and return to private life, as he did last year.

And taking their lead from Heritage and their like-minded brethren, we have Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma saying here that he was “happy” to block Metro funding, and this tells us that congressional Repugs once threatened to hold up Metro funding “unless the transit agency renames its National Airport Station to honor Ronald Reagan.”

There is still a lot that we have yet to learn about the deadly Metro crash, and it’s true that it may not be possible to assign the continual, idiotic, partisan gamesmanship of the Repugs as the reason why the circuit “anomaly” occurred, which, at this moment, appears to be the cause.

But if nothing else, let us please use this tragedy as an opportunity to commit to funding the Metro and other existing and yet-to-be-implemented forms of mass transit once and for all.

And I can think of at least nine reasons (including Retired Major Gen. David Wherley Jr.) that outweigh any notion that it would be an “inequitable transfer.”