Legislative Blog
J.B. Williams, J.D.
Federal Surface Transportation for 2022
A Blog about Invest in America 2021
A Bit of Background
The following backgrounds help summarize the author's views on both the general topic: Federal and more specifically Invest in America 2021 as it relates to that topic.
Brief Summary of Federal
This should be a fairly limited bills area for management the overall structures like highways, military, federal buildings, federal laws, and the like. However it has become the micro manager of all micro managers. They get involved in areas that no federal government should be involved in, and shift more power upward. This has led to each party trying to run over the other party in the eyes of the voters, all the while doing everything possible to maintain their power. They do this by holding onto all of the money, and claiming they know best how it should be spent. But they run debts so badly that no one should be looking to them as an example of anything other than the way to overspend and go further into debt.
Summary of Invest in America 2021
Expanding infrastructure and including the federal government in state decisions.
Blog Summary
Millions of dollars are allocated here. While they are to be used for highways, the federal government further breaks down how the states should spend the money. This equates to a few poor outcomes. First, it presumes that every state is the same in their individual needs/desires. Second, it encourages the money to be spent regardless of whether it is needed for that particular area or not. Otherwise the funding reverts to the federal government.
Federal Surface Transportation for 2022
Published: 2021-09-09
This section was dealing with the Highway Trust fund for both mass transit and non-mass transit. Five-hundred sixteen million dollars was appropriated for administrative costs and just over thirty milion dollars granted for administrative expenses. Mass transit administrative expenses was appropriated one-hundred thirty-one million, five-hundred thousand dollars. For 2022 alone mass transit is granted $3,250,000,000.
They limited highway funds for 2022 to just over fourty-six billion dollars ($46,400,494,311), while granting the highway trust fund $14,742,808,640. They spend a great deal of time enumerating how those funds are to be appropriated. Funds sent to states, territories, or tribes must meet federal approval for spending, with the focus being on metropolitan areas. The problem with this is the federal government making decisions for a state that would be best left for the state or locality to decide. For those concerned that our state or locality would not spend the money wisely, remember the closer the government entity is to you the more control the individual voter has. And if you are worried they won't spend appropriately to maintain highways, remember that goods travel on those roads and the voters want those goods. Moving control up generally equates to more waste in the system, less capitalism.
Freight and Highway projects are funded at $700 million, a $100 million over what was previously sought.
Mass transit grants are being made to those that are focusing on disabled, low-income, seniors and riders from communities of color. The grants can cover up to 90% of the cost. $1 billion is appropriated for 2022. And maintenance and operations can be covered by federal funds for up to two years. Although federal funds can only be used for 50% of operating costs. Further stipulations include 40% of projects should result in the creation of union jobs. This is an interesting item since the Supreme Court has ruled several times that unions cannot force membership or take funds from all employees just because the union represents some of those employees. Yet federal funds are requiring union jobs be created for some portion of the funds.
This may result in expanding mass transit into areas where there is little to no demand. Perhaps hoping demand would expand before 100% of the cost fell to the state entity doing the expansion. Or perhaps even hoping that once built, if demand did not increase, there might be federal funding made available for maintenance and operating costs. Resulting in more tax payers funds being used from the limited funds. One look at Amtrak, it only being profitable in the NE corridor, and overall being a loss. Yet Amtrak is still federally funded.
An Environmental Justice Scorecard website was created in February 2022, actually the beta version was made available. Interestingly when I search for it, Harvard University had a page that provided a good link to it. But I didn't find it on a quick look at the federal pages where items were discussed. And it really seems to be a place to look for areas that would meet underprivileged people or communities of color as opposedto a scorecard that shows how an entity is doing.
The Highway Trust Account was appropriated $244,514,000 for 2022. Of this, $2.5 million will be used for cooperative research and evaluation program to research and evaluate priority highway safety countermeasures. These are a list of the specific number of projects in each state: 3 in Alaska, 12 in Alabama, 1 in Arkansas, 24 in Arizona, 215 in California, 19 in Colorado, 21 in Connecticut, 6 in DC, 2 in Delaware, 67 in Florida, 39 in Georgia, 1 in Guam, 9 in Hawaii, 10 in Iowa, 5 in Idaho, 116 Illinois, 6 in Indiana, 17 in Kansas, 15 in Kentucky, 7 in Louisiana, 60 in Massachusetts, 20 in Maryland, 8 in Maine, 67 in Michigan, 18 in Minnesota, 58 in Montana, 12 in Northern Mariana Islands, 5 in Mississippi, 28 in North Carolina, 3 in Nebraska, 22 in New Hampshire, 78 in New Jersey, 7 in New Mexico, 11 in Nevada, 84 in New York, 62 in Ohio, 9 in Oklahoma, 20 in Oregon, 76 in Pennsylvania, 3 in Puerto Rico, 7 in Rhode Island, 8 in South Carolina, 17 in Tennessee, 50 in Texas, 21 in Utah, 33 in Virginia, 1 in Virgin Islands, 4 in Vermont, 56 in Washington, 15 in Wisconsin, 8 in Wisconsin.
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