National Corridors Initiative, Inc.

The National Corridors Initiative, Inc. 35 Terminal Road Suite 210 Providence, RI 02905 MA Office: 59 Gates Street, Boston MA, 02128 CT Office: 8 Riverbend Drive, Mystic, CT, 06355

Editorial - November 13, 2006 Voice: 617-269-5478 Email: jprepass@nationalcorridors.org James P. RePass President & CEO

WASHINGTON --- The polls turned out to be right, this time.

Riding on a sustained wave of anti-Bush sentiment generated by troubled Administration policies in Iraq and a host of more domestic problems, including old-fashioned political scandals and voter revulsion against the Karl Rove Doctrine of Smear, Smear, and Smear, American voters went to the polls last week and threw the GOP out of power in both the United States House of Representatives, which was expected by most pundits, and the United States Senate, which was not.

What does that mean for transportation?

First, it writes “fini” to the already-moribund “Kill Amtrak” policy of the past six years, which culminated in the firing of the brilliant Amtrak CEO David Gunn in a move that brought instant shame to the Bush White House. While the kill-Amtrak policy was never a personal priority of George W. Bush – when Governor of Texas, Bush cooperated with a local mayor-driven effort to fund and enhance Amtrak service in that state --- his passivity did allow it to move forward, and that hurt him.

Centered in the Office of Management and Budget, and part of an ideologically-driven mission to cut back on any and all spending on items that might benefit working and middle class people (read: “Democrats”), the anti-Amtrak policy backfired when moderate Republicans as well as Democratic Congressmen and Senators voted to ignore OMB budget proposals and fund Amtrak at the bare-bones but survivable level of $1.3 billion, as opposed to zero (2005), $360 million (budget estimate, 2006), and other equally ludicrous numbers over the past six years. It should be noted that the Bush Administration has consistently proposed a funding level for the 22,000-mile Amtrak national passenger rail system that is, for example, less than the cost of the single I-95 interchange under construction (for the past decade and more) at the Capital Beltway.

Secondly, the new Democratic committee chairs in Congress, while more favorably inclined toward rail and public investment therein, will be joined by new Republican ranking members (the former Republican majority committee chairmen) who are far less ideologically skewed than the White House from which they got their [increasingly dysfunctional] marching orders. In other words, in addition to the nice words about bi-partisanship being uttered this past week by the victorious Democrats, the good working bi-partisan relationship created by many, although not all, of the House and Senate GOP [former] chairmen bodes well for actual progress on the issue of settling, once and for all, how we are to create, fund, and build an American ground-based transportation system that is not entirely highway-dependent --- and that no longer has to take an embarrassed back seat to the systems in Europe and Asia.

Thirdly, George W. Bush will be President for the next two years. And, lest the Democrats think they can begin measuring for the now-proverbial drapes in the Oval Office for 2009, the results of Tuesday last were not an endorsement of hard-core Democratic dreams, but a weariness with the same kind [if polar opposite] extremism found in the hard-right core of the GOP base. Bush himself is not an ideologue – now there’s an interesting statement --- but rather very much the MBA he is (and no, despite the media’s portrayal of his image, he is not stupid. Just a little goofy when he lets his hair down).

Bush will work with the circumstances he’s been given. He’s done that all his political life, and has had considerable success in doing so – remember, he has been elected President twice, a feat accomplished by only 14 of the 43 men elected President of the United States since 1789. So to write him off would be not only short-sighted, but damaging to the cause.

And what is that cause?

Since 1989 NCI has stood for balanced transportation investment for America. This election, although not without pain – our esteemed first Executive Director, Senator Republican Lincoln Chafee, went down to defeat in the Democratic Tsunami of November 7 --- signals the rebirth of a political philosophy that says --- instead of the GOP’s “devil-take-the-hindmost” --- that we are all in this together. It will be messy – Democratic party-led Congresses are never, ever, neat, at least in the modern era --- but it will produce some new ideas, and maybe even a solution to the nearly 40-year-old question, “Can America find some way, other than asphalt, to get Americans to work, and their goods to market.”

We think so. We’ll work for it.