Transportation For America » President signs HIRE Act, T4 America is on the scene

President signs HIRE Act, T4 America is on the scene

March 18, 2010
By Quentin Kelly

UPDATED: Read this analysis and summary from T4 America on the HIRE Act’s ramifications for transportation.

President Obama signed the HIRE Act this morning in the Rose Garden at the White House, and T4 America was fortunate enough to have been invited to the event.

I was especially pleased to be joined by Patricia Griffin from PolicyLink. Patricia and her organization have been strong partners with the Transportation for America campaign. Increasing access to transit and helping people reach employment, groceries and other essential daily needs are equity issues as much as they are economic issues.

We need groups like these on our side.

While this bill doesn’t contain the amount of money for transportation infrastructure like the stimulus had last year, it does have a few important provisions for transportation.

It extends the transportation bill to the end of 2010, which will spare Congress (and transportation workers across the country) the headache (and uncertainty) of the continual short-term extensions that have been standard operating procedure until now. As we saw a few weeks ago when Sen. Bunning singlehandedly held up the last extension of the transportation bill before it expired, causing a shutdown at DOT, the furlough of workers, and the suspension of crucial reimbursement checks to states, providing this little bit of certainty will at least avoid a repeat of that scenario. The bill also extends the special rule permitting urbanized areas to flex funding to transit operations, which is critical to restore and retain transit jobs and maintain services at a time when transit systems nationwide are hemorrhaging jobs, reducing service and increasing fares.

The bill also restores $19.5 billion in interest back to the highway trust fund to keep it from going bankrupt before the end of the year. With more fuel-efficient cars on the road and Americans driving less the last few years, the amount of money the federal government gets from gas taxes hasn’t been able to keep up with the authorized amounts of spending in the transportation bill.

It’s a short-term fix to a much larger issue of how we fund transportation, and doesn’t address what those billions are buying us. We need long-term solutions and answers to both of those issues.

The President’s remarks about the economy and job creation were resonant. He addressed the importance of infrastructure, in terms of both short-term job growth and longer term prosperity, noting that “this jobs bill will maintain crucial investments in our roads and our bridges as we head into the spring and summer months, when construction jobs are picking up.”

In addition to President Obama, other participants included Majority Leader Harry Reid, Majority Whip Richard Durbin, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman, Jim Oberstar.

Senator Boxer’s committee is currently developing their version of the transportation bill and we are eager to work with the Senator and her staff on shared priorities and new ideas. Senator Boxer is a passionate defender of the environment who understands that the status quo is no longer acceptable. And her home state of California has been hit hard by deep cuts in transit where people need it most.

The bill President Obama signed today helps stabilize our transportation program and enables us to focus our full attention on a long-term transformational bill that prepares us for the 21st Century. This is our chance to get the changes we have spent months fighting for — increasing access to public transportation and quality jobs for all people, rebuilding broken roads and crumbling bridges and setting benchmarks that help us measure success.

Today felt like a sign of good things to come.

Photos by Quentin Kelly and Patricia Griffin.

Filed under: Campaign Blog
Tags: boxer, EPW, featured, jobs, jobs bill, obama, senate

Emily Pease

Thanks for this report, Quentin. You do a good job of summarizing this bill and showing its relevance at the same time. I wonder how this bill will help the Commonwealth of Virginia, where our current administration and General Assembly can’t manage to find a dime to fix even the potholes we’ve got.
http://www.playactionpass.typepad.com Tom Scurlock

Great article. Glad to see you writing about a critical issue in the United States. Hopefully we’ll see positive changes to transportation initiatives this year.