As Barack Obama said during his speech yesterday, government spending has to work or the money shouldn’t be spent. And while we need a massive economic stimulus both to prevent economic freefall and to begin the hardwork of rebuilding our economy, we shouldn’t assume that all spending is good spending.
That’s why some in the environmental community are ready to do battle over plans currently being crafted.
According to The Washington Independent,
a growing chorus of environmental groups says it falls short of those goals, providing too much funding for new roads and too little for public transportation and other green initiatives.
Under the current proposal, new construction could consume three times as much funding as public transportation. The environmental groups hope more public transit money will be added when lawmakers make changes to the proposal in committee, an amendment process which began Wednesday afternoon.
“At a time of erratic energy prices, Congress should use this opportunity to move
America away from highways and toward railways and mass transit,” said Karen Wayland, legislative director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group. “The transportation component of the stimulus package underfunds mass transit in deference to highways and bridges.”
They say there is
plenty of room to improve the Democrats’ blueprint. At the forefront of their criticism, the proposal includes $30 billion for highway construction but dedicates only $10 billion to public transit and rail — a discrepancy prioritizing new roads at the expense of public transportation.
Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth, says the spending on new roads will only act to increase pollution and fuel consumption — two problems the Democrats’ proposal was designed to alleviate.
“It is particularly disappointing to see that, unlike highway funds, public transportation and passenger rail funds have been cut below the levels suggested by the House Transportation Committee, limiting job creation in these areas,” Blackwelder said in a statement. “Public transportation investments create 19 percent more jobs per dollar spent than investments in new highways.”
Daniel Becker, head of the Safe Climate Campaign, said the proposal is a significant step in the direction of cutting pollution and increasing energy efficiency, but there are notable holes that could use plugging. “There’s a lot of new asphalt-laying [in the bill],” Becker said, “and that will undercut a lot of the green efforts.”
Marchant Wentworth, legislative representative for clean energy with the Union of Concerned Scientists, agreed that the $10 billion for public transit is insufficient to accomplish the Democrats’ goals. “You could triple that and still have needs out there for relieving congestion,” he said.
I’m not saying that a good chunk of the road money is not needed — some of it definitely is. But road money would be best spent on repairs and upgrades to existing infrastructure, rather than carving out new thoroughfares that will just lead to sprawl and more congestion down the road. If some of the money were shifted from asphalt to mass transit, that would go a long way toward greening the stimulus.
And if the tax cuts were to be scrapped, that money could then go toward other green projects — or “to provide further relief to Americans in distress — enhanced unemployment benefits, expanded Medicaid and more.”
Hank Kalet 
