Jim Bunning, Kentucky's contrary U.S. senator, singlehandedly has shut down road construction projects across the nation, including many in national parks, because he doesn't want to help middle-class families weather the economic storm, U.S. Department of Transportation officials said Monday.
The Republican's move to block key legislation forced the department to furlough nearly 2,000 employees and shut down highway reimbursements to states worth hundreds of millions of dollars, national anti-drunk driving efforts, and multi-million dollar construction projects across the country, DOT officials said in a release. Specifically, Sen. Bunning blocked legislation that covered tax credits for COBRA health coverage, unemployment insurance for 400,000 people, as well as the short-term extension of the Highway Trust Fund. The Fund supports all surface transportation programs for the nation – highways, bridges, transit and safety inspections, as well as efforts to encourage seat belt use and to fight distracted and impaired driving, the department said.
“As American families are struggling in tough economic times, I am keenly disappointed that political games are putting a stop to important construction projects around the country,” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “This means that construction workers will be sent home from job sites because federal inspectors must be furloughed.”
Because of the shutdown, federal inspectors will be removed from critical construction projects, forcing work to come to a halt on federal lands, the agency said. National parks impacted by the shutdown range from Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where reconstruction of the Cades Cove Loop was to start in earnest Monday and Sequoia National Park, which has a huge construction project at its main entrance scheduled to Vicksburg National Military Park and even Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
Here's a breakdown of affected national park projects:
* Coronado National Monument, main park entrance, $1,500,000
* Sequoia National Park, main entrance, $15,000,000
* Golden Gate National Recreation Area, road construction, $8,700,000
* Chicakamauga & Chattanogga National Military Park, construction, $634,000
* Great Falls Park, entrance road construction, $3,100,000
* Piscataway National Park, erosion and slope damage repair, $89,000
* Natchez Trace Parkway, resurfacing, $8,100,000
* Natchez Trace Parkway, trail construction (Ridgeland County, Mississippi), $5,600,000
* Vicksburg National Military Park, road rehabilitation and resurfacing, $5,000,000
* Natchez Trace Parkway, trail construction (Madison County, Mississippi), $4,700,000
* Carlsbad Caverns National Park, roadway rehabilitation, $9,000,000
* Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Newfound Gap road rehabilitation, $9,900,000
* Blue Ridge Parkway, reconstruction and resurfacing, $6,000,000
* Fort Sumter Historic Site, entrance road and parking area rehabilitation, $262,000
* Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cades Cove Loop Road rehabilitation, $6,700,000
* Shilo National Park, tour roads and parking area rehabilitation, $3,000,000
* George Washington Parkway, Humpback Bridge replacement, $36,000,000
* Blue Ridge Parkway, reconstruction and resurfacing, $12,000,000
* Virgin Islands National Park, Centerline Road reconstruction, $9,000,000
* Virgin Islands National Park, St. John roundabout construction, $7,200,000
Furloughs will affect employees funded by the Highway Trust Fund at the following agencies: the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Research and Innovative Technology Administration.
Comments
Concerned Taxpayer, to use your approach, what's $10 billion against a national debt of $12.5 trillion? Not even close.
"Davids" won't work under the current system. The system needs to be overhauled. As long as there's no balanced budget amendment, no line-item veto, and no real oversight on earmarks, the outlook is grim without a rip-roaring economy.
Chris M, I'm fully awake, thank you very much. Now, I've said it many times before on these pages: one way to begin to bring spending under control is to do away with earmarks ... even those for the national parks. Then put a moratorium on Congress creating new units of the National Park System if they can't find a way to properly fund the ones we already have. You want pay-go? That's one way to achieve it for the parks. I alluded recently to one small way the NPS could actually raise some money without raising anyone's taxes: Congress needs to give the NPS the authority to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars it collects in entrance fees. Now, this won't generate enough interest to erase all the red ink in the NPS, but it's one small way to raise millions of dollars.
There are other approaches, such as means testing for Social Security benefits, that would help move us back in the direction of a balanced budget. Perhaps Sen. Bunning could have attracted just as much attention, without hurting potentially hundreds of thousands of people, if he seriously took on any one of these approaches. But then, he's got his congressional health care and his congressional pension.
Kurt,
Your last comments are more on the mark than your article. I read your article again and it smacks of an agenda. I'm sorry. If you truly don't have a political agenda then you should just stick to the facts about the contents of the bill rather than repeating Obama administration propaganda. You would get more mileage out of your articles that way.
Regarding entrance fees, I have often wondered why the entrance fees on our parks are not substantially higher. It costs me about $40 for a family of four to buy tickets to a professional baseball game (a 3 hour event). Or $60 for two tickets to a local college football game. But I can drive a van load of people into Rocky Mountain National Park for $20 for 7 days!!! Now that's a bargain like none other. If NPS could charge $20 per *day* they'd probably pave more roads on their own. I can take the same van load of people into Smoky Mountain National Park for free!!! That's insane if you think about it.
Getting back on my political soap box for a moment, before you complain too much about the Senator causing construction workers to be laid off, consider that President Obama canceled NASA's Constellation Program after some of the hardware has been built. Heck, the launch tower has been built too. The latest estimate on job losses is about 30,000. That's 30,000 high tech jobs lost during an economic down turn when we can least afford to lose such jobs. Right now I'm more concerned about whether or not my city is going to be decimated by job losses rather than whether or not a bridge in a park is going to be rebuilt or not.
The simple fact of the matter is that our government has run out of money and the population can't afford a tax increase to fix the problem. We can no longer afford everything that we want. Next year you might be writing an article about our government being bankrupt and the NPS budget being $0.00 because we don't have any money left.
As I write this the bill has now passed the Senate. Back to paving those roads. Quickly, while the US dollar is still worth enough to buy asphalt.
Just for fun, let's toss in another idea: Cut off funding for the House and Senate until our august leaders can identify how to pay for those activities without contributing to the deficit :-)
Should we raise taxes? Absolutely. Bunning's question is a good one. He won't like my answer.
Your waste of money is my important project. Which is why we have a political process. As reported today his temper tantrum is over.
Looks like you finally got it the spending needs to get in control. Davids will work in this system...if Bunning gets his way perhaps it will give another congressional person a desire to get a set of brass ones. I find it amazing how some people look at adversity and give up before fighting the fight.
Critics of Bunning should read this quote from Roosevelt and maybe they will understand why people take chances knowing there are adverse consequences.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
Sorry, but it's kinda hard to take those right wing Obamaspendingourgrandkids folks seriously when such a significant portion of our deficit was raised by our previous President and his personal wars. Kinda drowns out the drop in a bucket for unemployment benefits or, more on topic, the entire NPS budget.
You guys just don't get it...it doesn't matter how we got this mess...but it does matter how we get out. Continued unfunded spending must end...period. I can place go on for years playing tit for tat on placing blame but it is a waste of energy. It will take Congressional Leaders that have a set of brass ones to tackle this issue and I commend Bunning for taking a stand...but he lost because no one in Congress or the media had the guts to support him.
I guess government workers view the economy different than those who work in privaste industry.
It's stupid beyond belief to grandstand over spending for a STOPGAP measure. If Bunning wants to debate how to pay for things, debate it when you're debating the actual bill to fund the program - not the temporary measure that's only there to continue funding to give time for exactly this sort of debate.