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TODAY Monday 23 March 1998 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: Unattractive Progress on Transportation

Winston Churchill said that it was best not to watch how sausages and laws were actually made. His advice is particularly apt these days in Washington, where only a robust digestive system can keep up with the unappealing job of watching our national legislature forge transportation policy.

Transportation spending is important from any angle. No federal outlays besides defense, Social Security, and Medicare are bigger. And this year the fictive balancing of the federal budget provides members with the license to lavish more attention on ribbon-cutting possibilities than they would have been allowed twelve months ago. Thus we will probably see House and Senate agreeing on funding levels just short of $220 billion over six years. $37 billion a year is a big program any way you dice it; throw in state and local transportation spending and you appreciate the fiscal impacts.

And, of course, transportation is arguably the most important sector of the American economy from an environmental point of view. For almost any bad thing having to do with the atmosphere -- smog to acid rain to climate change -- what comes out of an automobile tailpipe is Problem Number One. Then there's water pollution from runoffs and seepages, habitat loss from sprawl, and the costs and energy-inefficiencies of maintaining state troopers, emergency rooms, and the Sixth Fleet off the Persian Gulf.

So what's under discussion in the Capitol these days is probably the most influential environmental legislation of the year. And it's not pretty. For late-breaking particulars of who's proposing what, check in with the legislation watch website maintained by the vigilant staffers of the Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP). But here are the basics:

• Everybody says that the final price tag will be somewhere between the Senate's $214 billion and the $220 billion called for by many House members.
• The balanced-budget chimera basically allows Congress to avoid fistfights that would have occurred if there were a mood of fiscal stringency. The roadbuilders get lots of highway money, the Northeasterners get a boost for mass transit, and Senator Moynihan gets the Post Office on Eighth Avenue. Enviros get an expanded "enhancements" program, language reaffirming the link between federal funds and compliance with the Clean Air Act, and the continuance of the controversial Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) program, which the roadbuilders regard (correctly) as a Trojan Horse in the fight against the supremacy of the single-occupant internal combustion vehicle and its attendant infrastructure.
• Controversy remains on a number of outstanding issues, particularly those that impinge on questions of tax deductibility. Why is employer-provided parking not a taxable benefit, for example? (I am glad that STPP is brave enough to raise this issue, but there's not a barroom anywhere in America where I would dare to bring it up.) Why can't employers give tax-free mass transit stipends to their employees?
• A list of "demonstration projects" must still be agreed upon by both houses and the President. This is where the sausage-making comes in. Guided by no policy but the near-universal desire to win credit for tactile improvements back home, legislators will trade support for a series of amendments wildly inconsistent in ideology, utility, and environmental impact. It ain't pretty, but the process generally takes place behind closed doors, and almost all parties agree to hold their nose and ship the ensuing mess down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Where, we hope, the President will sign the most significant law of early 1998.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE

Greater Portland, Oregon leads every other metropolis west of the Hudson River in the benevolence of its transportation and land-use planning. Instrumental in that achievement has been a citizens' group called 1000 Friends of Oregon. The man who runs 1000 Friends, Keith Bartholomew, tells you about the best websites on land use in our In The Trenches section.

 

Recent "Today" columns:

3/20: The Thrill of Demography
3/19: About This Global Economy Business...
3/18: Toilet Heresy
3/17: St Patrick and Your Asteroid Insurance
3/16: Rebellion in Tennessee
3/13: Good News from the Senate
3/12: Children and Cancer
3/11: Save Our Beaches!
3/10: Die Gruenen und der SDP
3/9: In Search for the Holy Grail of the Forests
3/6: My Doom, Your Gloom
3/5: The Great D. P. Moynihan
3/4: "An Earthquake in Insurance"
3/3: Salmon Farming
3/2: Our Friends the Duck Killers
2/27: Trust El Nino
2/26: That Darn Triple-A
2/25: Cutting a Deal on Endangered Species
2/24: Fire? Again?
2/23: Garbage
2/20: Population Rebellion in the Sierra Club
2/19: The Trouble With Cattle

To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.