Why has bipartisan support for rail dwindled?

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CHamilton

CHamilton

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How transportation became the latest victim of America’s culture wars

If we are to have any hope of shifting infrastructure policy away from these culture wars and back toward solution-oriented pragmatism, it is incumbent on true infrastructure supporters to call out both sides’ arguments — the social engineering congestion caucus and the devolutionary liberty caucus — as flawed and damaging to the national interest. And both sides will need to get back to compromising in Congress.
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Some interesting insights into why bipartisan support for rail has become increasingly difficult.
 
The "both sides" statements are not accurate -- it's more "shape of earth: opinions differ" journamalism. It's quite well documented that it's nearly 100% the Republican Party in Congress becoming anti-pragmatic and refusing to compromise on anything, and this dates specifically to Newt Gingrich in 1994, though it's gotten more and more and extreme since then. Older Republicans have made very exasperated statements and even become Democrats due to this.

Democrats are in a very different position, with the *opposite* fault: If anything, Democrats are being excoriated for having no principles at all, and giving Republicans *too much* of what they demand (and these compromises ars still typically not acceptable to the Republicans in Congress).

These are just provable facts, evident from vote counts. Democrats voted for most of G W Bush's legislation, even the pieces which were most condemned by liberal organizations; Republicans are voting against most of Obama's legislation, even the bits which are supported by right-wing organizations.

There is no equivalence, and I wish the media would stop pretending that there is. Whichever attitude you prefer (and there is something to be said for standing on principle, as well as something to be said for pragmatic compromise), it's quite clear that the Republicans in Congress are (with a few exceptions) extremely doctrinaire and the Democrats are (with a few exceptions) nearly unprincipled. These are *not the same thing*.
 
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Bipartisanship in general has collapsed, and in its wake we're dealing with a political system that is behaving a lot more like, say, Britain's (with the highly-strung partisanship) in a structure designed not to accommodate it. That's a large part of the problem, and it feeds back into the fact that nobody feels like they've "won" (since 2006 we've had two years of unified government measured against eight of divided government) and there's no way to actually break the deadlock. I strongly suspect the ability of a government/Presidential administration to continue in office in spite of a massive rebuke by the voters is no small part of the problem. [1]

Transport policy has gotten wrapped up in this, but there are more complicated effects buried therein. For example, I'm not convinced we might not be better off designating a limited federal highway system...and making said system ENTIRELY federal rather than being a "partnership" with mixed funding. Outside of that, block grant the whole sum of money to "transport" and let the states deal with it...or better yet, just give the states the money as a blanket transfer and let them figure out priorities (e.g. transport vs. health care vs. education).

One thing that I think is often forgotten is how many strings federal funding comes with in terms of required studies, engineering work, etc. Yet even with those issues, rarely is anyone willing to eschew federal funding because in a lot of cases, the Feds will cover anywhere from 50-90% of a project...so we've seen decades of states not actually experimenting with transport policy but just following the Feds' lead and if the Feds won't fund something, not doing it. There are pros to this (highway standards generally come to mimnd) but there are also cons (NEPA studies and lost decades on projects because of required preliminary work, money being allocated to "silos" which can't be moved around, bad metrics being forced onto state and local governments for planning purposes, etc.).

I'm not thrilled with either side in this fight, but at least a straight devolution of decision-making would in many cases let people make their own decisions below the federal level (be they wise decisions or mistakes).

[1] I've mused, quite seriously, about what would have happened if on the day after the 2014 elections Obama had simply thrown up his hands and said "when the new Congress sits I'll sign pretty much whatever they send to me. The American people have spoken and I'll let them deal with the consequences of their actions."
 
If President Obama had done what you suggest he would have been impeached, and rightfully so, by Congress for failure to perform his job and violating his oath of office.

Our founding fathers couldn't have foreseen the gridlock that has occurred in our Government due to partinship and out and out dislike, and even hate, on the part of segments of the population for our elected leaders!

There's am old saying to the effect that America is a Great Country because it survives those who govern it!

In my view, "Citizens United" is the major cause of this mess becoming almost unsolveable.

Perhaps a solution is for everyone to exercise their right to vote. IMHO this would result in most, if not all, of the current cast of politicians being sent home as our founding fathers intended and replaced by representatives that would truely represent "We the people" and not the greedy rich, the Military-Industrual Complex and the Corporations that currently fund and own ( ie bribe) those currently in office? YMMV
 
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Nathanael pretty much nailed it in one.

When you have a party that makes it their number one goal to "make Barack Obama a one term President", and does their best impression of my three year old when I take her iPad away every time someone disagrees with them, there is one side that needs to get called out repeatedly and loudly until the folks that keep sending them to office come to their senses and vote for someone with more common sense than a bucket of rocks.

And the root cause of that one is (/me hoists out the soap box once again) is the pathetic job that gerrymandered districts do in ensuring that the representatives sent to Washington actually represent the will of the people. When more votes are cast for democratic representatives than there are republican representatives, and the seat apportionment swings wildly in the other direction, something is seriously wrong, and it sets the stage for disaster. Hopefully before 2020 we'll come to our senses.
 
Jim,

With all due respect I find the idea of a President being impeached for agreeing to do the will of the Congress to be farcically risible in the extreme. For all of my frustration and disdain with our elected officials, I have to say that I cannot see a Republican-held Congress in the position of getting their way opting to either (1) remove a President who is rolling over for them to replace him with one likely to give them more trouble or (2) trying to pull off a double removal. The former would be a mixed act of tactical ineptitude and political stupidity while the latter would be one of gross ineptitude (even in 1974 nobody realistically expected to be able to knock out Agnew after Nixon was removed, which is why the bribery stuff was brought up when it was) and would invite a rather spectacular wave of electoral backlash. Trying to explain pulling something like this on the grounds of "He's not blocking enough of our policies!" would go over like a ton of bricks.

As to the "rightful" nature of it, vetoes were quite uncommon in the first few decades of the United States. Aside from a defense-related bill that Washington vetoed on the advice of his Secretary of War, the first vetoes on strictly policy grounds (rather than constitutional grounds) were under Jackson and, I believe, Tyler. Most of the vetoes up through the Civil War seem to have been a case of "Congress passes some form of internal improvement, President vetoes on Constitutional grounds" or something similar. So there's clearly precedent for that, and it wouldn't be too different from how Clinton behaved in the second half of his first term (when he lost control of Congress...he let most of the Contract with America through).
 
Cliff:With all due respect, I was semi-kidding about the impeachment, but nobody except know nothings should want a President who is a Rubber stamp for Congress.

There's an old joke in politics about IKe that one day a leaf blew in the doors to the Oval office,landed on his desk and he signed it! LOL

My real point about impeachment is that of the three times Congress has used the process ( Andrew Johnson/Nixon/Clinton), two were totally politicial (Johnson and Clinton)and none of them were actually convicted and removed from office.

Other Presudenrs that actually could have, and probably should have been, impeached for "High Crimes and Misdemeaners" (ie John Adams, Jefferson, Jackson,Buchanan,Tyler,Lincoln,Grant,McKinnley,Teddy Roosevelt,Wilson,Harding,

FDR,Truman,JFK,LBJ,

Reagan,W Bush) weren't.

So bottom line, its all Political, and if anyone should be removed from office for failure to do their jobs it is the current Congress, all of them!(We the people have that power, its called Voting!)
 
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Ryan said:
And the root cause of that one is (/me hoists out the soap box once again) is the pathetic job that gerrymandered districts do in ensuring that the representatives sent to Washington actually represent the will of the people. When more votes are cast for democratic representatives than there are republican representatives, and the seat apportionment swings wildly in the other direction, something is seriously wrong, and it sets the stage for disaster.
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(/me hoists out my own soapbox) And the root cause of the gerrymandered districts is that we don't have *proportional representation*:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation

http://www.fairvote.org/reforms/fair-representation-voting/

http://www.proportional-representation.org/

http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/proportional-representation

Our main problem in the US is that most people don't even know that proportional representation is a *possibility*. Most people aren't even *thinking* about electoral systems.

But even in countries where people are thinking about it, it's very hard to implement it: the Electoral Reform Society has been trying to get proportional representation in the UK since 1884, but the vested interests have fought and fought and prevented it from happening.

When the US advisors advised countries on how to set up their new democratic Constitutions after the end of WWII and during decolonization in the 1960s, they told every last one of them to use proportional representation. So they nearly all do! And it's helped a lot! Countries which use proportional representation have had much more functional goverenments and much more peaceful transitions of power than comparable countries which have single-member districts -- those countries mostly became democratic in the 19th century or earlier, before the value of proportional representation was understood.

The same US advisors told 'em to use a parliamentary system. And to have either a unicameral legislature or a deadlock-breaking method. Again, parliamentary systems are more functional than Presidential systems like ours, and deadlock-prone legislatures are a disaster.

It's quite interesting that the US advisors who explained "best practice" for a new democracy said DON'T COPY US. If only we in the US could take our own advice...
 
Bob Dylan said:
My real point about impeachment is that of the three times Congress has used the process ( Andrew Johnson/Nixon/Clinton), two were totally politicial (Johnson and Clinton)a
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Review your Andrew Johnson history again. He literally refused to implement an act passed by Congress, the Enforcement Act, which was the law which punished election theft and KKK-type activities in the defeated Confederacy. You can call it political, but it was definitely a high crime, and Johnson absolutely should have been removed from office for his refusal to obey the law.

As a result of Johnson not being convicted (when he should have been), KKK-like groups (White League, etc.) ran wild threatening black people and stealing elections.

The idea that this was "merely political" was spread by racists who advocated election theft and the KKK... racists who later won, and who rewrote all our history books to be pro-Confederacy during the 1880s - 1920s period.

The KKK-type groups were suppressed when General Grant was elected, since Grant did send in the troops to enforce the law, and multiracial governments were democratically elected.

But after the Hayes-Tilden election, the KKK-type groups were again allowed to overthrow the elected multiracial governments in coups, in one of the most disgraceful periods of American history ever. The Jim Crow governments then prohibited black people from voting, and actively stole elections if they were losing among the white people. For decades.
 
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It is however quite unpopular to point out how broken our "democracy" in the US is, where many states deliberately are unable to hold elections that can be credibly called legitimate. People bristle when someone even jokingly suggests that there should be external monitoring of elections, something that US often tries to foist on others.
 
neroden said:
But even in countries where people are thinking about it, it's very hard to implement it: the Electoral Reform Society has been trying to get proportional representation in the UK since 1884, but the vested interests have fought and fought and prevented it from happening.
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Not entirely true.

It may not exist in Westminster but it does exist in the UK so people know what it is and how it works. The Scottish and Welsh assmeblies are at least partly proportional. Representation in Brussels is semi proportional.

In fact we could have had proportional in Westminster when the LibDems formed a coalition government as this was their electoral promiste. But instead of that they puit something esle to the vote which was so complicated that nobody really understood it and thus rejected it. They thus threw away that opportunity for a generation.
 
One of the pros of proportional representation is that it breaks you out of a two party system. If for example you are righ wingish but don't like the present main right wing party, you can vote for another right wing party that you find more acceptable. Same thing on the left. It would take a lot befoire a right winger would vote a left wing party (or vice versa) because of his disgust at the present right wing party. So there is generally little voter mobility outside of the center ground. In proportional representation, the parties need to stay on their toes much more and do what the people want as there are always smaller rival parties ready to pick up the disillusioned voters.

The downside to that is that no party ever gets enough votes to form a government alone so you get coalitions, and coalitions mean the parties have to throw some of their promises out of the window to form a coalition with a party that promised something different. Also, most coalitions tend to be center-left or center right so the center party is almost always in power and has kingmaking powers. In many European countries you will thus find that the political center is where most of the corruption is.
 
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To get back on topic, there were two pieces of legislation that garnered bipartisan support. In the Senate there was a bill put forth to streamline the permitting process for railroads to add additional capacity. In the House, a bill that sets aside 5%, I believe, of tariff revenues, as I recall, roughly 2 billion dollars, to upgrade and expand road and rail capacity from major ports on the East and Gulf coasts in advance of a wider and deeper Panama Canal coming online. If someone knows the fate of these two bills please let me know. On the larger matter of division in Congress, the truth is that we have a generation that grew up and came of age during the time of sit ins, teach ins, demonstrations and other acts of civil disobedience over Vietnam, Civil Rights and other issues. While many of these causes were worthy, I feel it has the side effect of breeding a them and us mentality in which each side sees the other as evil and wicked, unworthy of being dealt with except by some kind of force. Both sides are guilty of this, whether move on. org on the left or talk radio on the right.
 
Alex M. said:
Both sides are guilty of this, whether move on. org on the left or talk radio on the right.
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Quite frankly, that's crap.

One party has made statements such as "Our primary goal is to ensure Barack Obama is a one term President" and has conducted vote after vote after vote to repeal a law that they don't like that has no chance of being repealed while the current President is in office.

The other side, while opposing such nonsense at least stands for *something*, rather than just reflexively opposing the other side the way that a three year old rejects their vegetables. They're at least putting forth policy proposals and attempting to govern. Perhaps not as well as anyone would like, but a damn sight better than the party of "NO".
 
Bob Dylan said:
...

Our founding fathers couldn't have foreseen the gridlock that has occurred in our Government ...

In my view, "Citizens United" is the major cause of this mess becoming almost unsolvable.

...
Click to expand...
Alas, the gridlock was terrible even before Citizens United came along.

It goes back to the European idea of rigidly enforced party-line voting.

Under President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O'Neil, legislation was bargained over, as it had been since the Continental Congress. Usually compromises meant each side getting some of what it wanted, or the other side getting less of what it wanted, but both sides could live with it.

A little understood new rule in the House changed things profoundly. From Wikipedia:

The Hastert Rule, also known as the "majority of the majority" rule, is an informal governing principle used by Republican Speakers of the House of Representatives since the mid-1990s to ... limit the power of the minority party to bring bills up for a vote on the floor of the House.

Under the doctrine, the Speaker will not allow a floor vote on a bill unless a majority of the majority party supports the bill.

Under House rules, the Speaker [as always] schedules floor votes on pending legislation. The Hastert Rule says that the Speaker will not schedule a floor vote on any bill that does not have majority support within his or her party — even if the majority of the members of the House would vote to pass it. [Democratic Speakers do not enforce this rule.]

It takes 218 votes to pass a bill in the House. When the Democrats are the minority and the Republicans are the majority, the Hastert Rule would not allow 170 Democrats and 50 [defecting] Republicans together to pass a bill, because 50 Republicans votes is far short of a majority of the majority party. The Speaker would not allow a vote to take place.
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As it worked out, this new rule (actually begun by Speaker Newt Gingrich before Hastert) destroyed the "liberal Republican" wing of the party. Senators and Representatives who before had frequently "crossed the aisle" to join with Democrats on various issues, from Civil Rights enforcement to transportation budgets, could not do so, without risk of being expelled from their party caucus and losing their committee seniority.

But being forced to support the party line votes meant that the liberal Republicans were almost always bound to vote the same way as those from the ex-Confederacy. And these unReconstructed Southerners were becoming the majority of the majority. As a result, Sen. Jeffords VT and Arlen Spector PA switched parties, and Olympia Snowe (ME) and others retired rather than face strong challenges (both in primaries, for not being "pure enuff" and the general elections for being too right wing). (Meanwhile individual Democrats became less able to get anything done, because they could not team up with like-minded Republicans.)

Many old-fashioned Republicans are still wondering what happened to their father's party.

Today we look back on George Herbert Walker Bush as a normal, mainstream president. But the current crop of Republicans are calling each other extremists and Fascists ( ! ), so Democrats don't have to do that dirty work.

Specifically as for Amtrak, the strongest supporters are those in the regions best served by it, namely the Northeast Seacoast states and the Chicago Hub Midwest. The haters are largely in a band of states stretching from Sen McCain's AZ to Cong Mica's FL, and, alas, they form the majority of the majority. Meanwhile conservative Democrats from the old Solid South are almost extinct.

Now the few surviving Republicans from "purple" states, like Sen Mark Kirk of IL or Sen Kelly Ayotte of NH, in election years must seek special permission from their party leader to vote for something that is so clearly important to their constituents in every year.

(We are blessed that Rep Bill Shuster, the head of the House committee handling Amtrak, is from PA, where Amtrak has considerable support from its many, many riders. It could be much worse.)

Of course, the arcane Hastert Rule is part of an ideological shift. Republicans used to be the party of business and moderation, not opposed to government or spending as such, but conservatively frugal and watchful, and often favoring investment in infrastructure, like the Interstate Highways. But the emergent, cult-like ideology holds that almost all government is bad, and, except for war toys, it might be wasted on "the takers", if you know who I mean.

In the space left by refusing to govern by compromise, we have a hardline zealotry of unyielding opposition to anything done by government. At the local levels, the ideologues are trying to destroy public schools. At the national level they oppose medical care for the wide public and any other help for the non-rich.

To these haters, Amtrak is a star example they love to cite as evidence that government can't do anything right. They want an Amtrak that loses money and can't seem to make real progress. They want to mock and demean it, as in, "Soviet-style railroad" and "almost $1 Billion in losses on food service". (That number achieved by adding up 10 years, because the yearly number is too small to be calculated in D.C.). These haters need a failing Amtrak, and will fight any serious effort to invest to improve it.

Now with the help of sophisticated computer software, the haters have taken gerrymandering to a level not seen before. States that voted for Obama twice (Penn, Ohio, Mich, Wis, Va, Fla, and others that voted for him once, N.C. and Ind.), were gerrymandered after the mid-term election of 2010 almost repealed the incumbent administration. Now they have district lines so carefully drawn that their delegations are overwhelmingly -- like 2:1 or more -- made up of members of the losing side.

Democracy is being killed off before our eyes. It's painful to see. Selfishly, I'm glad that my own life expectancy is very little more than that of democracy in America.
 
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I am reminded of an editorial I read years ago in the Lewiston (ID) Tribune. This editorial was written in response to the editorial reins being handed down to the current editor of the paper from his retired grandfather, and in response to a massive land-use bill being passed by the Idaho State Legislature which had required much bi-partisanship, something very hard to come by in Idaho's hard right-leaning State Legislature, and resulted in both sides being very well pleased with the law that was enacted. In this editorial it was mentioned that while Idaho is a very "red" state, the Tribune was left-leaning owing to Lewiston's location in very close proximity to two left-leaning states in Washington and Oregon. And in mentioning this and in his comments about the effort it took to get the land-use bill passed, the editor made this point that I will remember as long as I remember anything: that a car whose wheels only turn to the left or to the right will do nothing but run around in circles. Both wheels need to work in tandem to keep going down the road in a forward direction.

Would it be the current crop of congressmen in Washington would heed the words of the editor of the Lewiston (ID) Tribune.
 
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WoodyinNYC said:
Bob Dylan said:
...

Our founding fathers couldn't have foreseen the gridlock that has occurred in our Government ...

In my view, "Citizens United" is the major cause of this mess becoming almost unsolvable.

...
Click to expand...
Alas, the gridlock was terrible even before Citizens United came along.

It goes back to the European idea of rigidly enforced party-line voting.

Under President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O'Neil, legislation was bargained over, as it had been since the Continental Congress. Usually compromises meant each side getting some of what it wanted, or the other side getting less of what it wanted, but both sides could live with it.

A little understood new rule in the House changed things profoundly. From Wikipedia:

The Hastert Rule, also known as the "majority of the majority" rule, is an informal governing principle used by Republican Speakers of the House of Representatives since the mid-1990s to ... limit the power of the minority party to bring bills up for a vote on the floor of the House.

Under the doctrine, the Speaker will not allow a floor vote on a bill unless a majority of the majority party supports the bill.

Under House rules, the Speaker [has always] schedules floor votes on pending legislation. The Hastert Rule says that the Speaker will not schedule a floor vote on any bill that does not have majority support within his or her party — even if the majority of the members of the House would vote to pass it. [Democratic Speakers do not enforce this rule.]

It takes 218 votes to pass a bill in the House. When the Democrats are the minority and the Republicans are the majority, the Hastert Rule would not allow 170 Democrats and 50 [defecting] Republicans together to pass a bill, because 50 Republicans votes is far short of a majority of the majority party. The Speaker would not allow a vote to take place.
Click to expand...
As it worked out, this new rule (actually begun by Speaker Newt Gingrich before Hastert) destroyed the "liberal Republican" wing of the party. Senators and Representatives who before had frequently "crossed the aisle" to join with Democrats on various issues, from Civil Rights enforcement to transportation budgets, could not do so, without risk of being expelled from their party caucus and losing their committee seniority.

But being forced to support the party line votes meant that the liberal Republicans were almost always bound to vote the same way as those from the ex-Confederacy. And these unReconstructed Southerners were becoming the majority of the majority. As a result, Sen. Jeffords VT and Arlen Spector PA switched parties, and Olympia Snowe (ME) and others retired rather than face strong challenges (both in primaries, for not being "pure enuff" and the general elections for being too right wing). (Meanwhile individual Democrats became less able to get anything done, because they could not team up with like-minded Republicans.)

Many old-fashioned Republicans are still wondering what happened to their father's party.

Today we look back on George Herbert Walker Bush as a normal, mainstream president. But the current crop of Republicans are calling each other extremists and Fascists ( ! ), so Democrats don't have to do that dirty work.

Specifically as for Amtrak, the strongest supporters are those in the regions best served by it, namely the Northeast Seacoast states and the Chicago Hub Midwest. The haters are largely in a band of states stretching from Sen McCain's AZ to Cong Mica's FL, and, alas, they form the majority of the majority. Meanwhile conservative Democrats from the old Solid South are almost extinct.

Now the few surviving Republicans from "purple" states, like Sen Mark Kirk of IL or Sen Kelly Ayotte of NH, in election years must seek special permission from their party leader to vote for something that is so clearly important to their constituents in every year.

(We are blessed that Rep Bill Shuster, the head of the House committee handling Amtrak, is from PA, where Amtrak has considerable support from its many, many riders. It could be much worse.)

Of course, the arcane Hastert Rule is part of an ideological shift. Republicans used to be the party of business and moderation, not opposed to government or spending as such, but conservatively frugal and watchful, and often favoring investment in infrastructure, like the Interstate Highways. But the emergent, cult-like ideology holds that almost all government is bad, and, except for war toys, it might be wasted on "the takers", if you know who I mean.

In the space left by refusing to govern by compromise, we have a hardline zealotry of unyielding opposition to anything done by government. At the local levels, the ideologues are trying to destroy public schools. At the national level they oppose medical care for the wide public and any other help for the non-rich.

To these haters, Amtrak is a star example they love to cite as evidence that government can't do anything right. They want an Amtrak that loses money and can't seem to make real progress. They want to mock and demean it, as in, "Soviet-style railroad" and "almost $1 Billion in losses on food service". (That number achieved by adding up 10 years, because the yearly number is too small to be calculated in D.C.). These haters need a failing Amtrak, and will fight any serious effort to invest to improve it.

Now with the help of sophisticated computer software, the haters have taken gerrymandering to a level not seen before. States that voted for Obama twice (Penn, Ohio, Mich, Wis, Va, Fla, and others that voted for him once N.C. and Ind.), were gerrymandered after the mid-term election of 2010 almost repealed the incumbent administration. Now they have district lines so carefully drawn that their delegations are overwhelmingly -- like 2:1 or more -- made up of members of the losing side.

Democracy is being killed off before our eyes. It's painful to see. Selfishly, I'm glad that my life own expectancy is very little more than that of democracy in America.
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But we good folks in Ohio just passed a state constitutional amendment ending some of the political maneuvering by the old apportionment board. Whether it will change things is still a big question, but it is a start. A bipartisan commission that must submit the maps to the public for scrutiny and approval.
 

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