U.S. Senate

The Senate's climate change legislation will finally make its debut tomorrow, courtesy of environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and foreign relations committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA). But the Washington Post has already obtained a "close-to-final" version of the bill [PDF], which provides some details but leaves unanswered the key question of how much aid will go towards clean transport.

After a day of twists and turns, the House yesterday approved a three-month extension of the current law that governs spending on the nation's transit, bridges, and roads. Yet the 335-85 vote obscures an ongoing clash between the House and Senate that could extend into a fourth straight month.

While it pushes for an 18-month delay in the next federal infrastructure bill, the Obama administration has proposed a data collection effort that would help states and localities begin tracking ridership and usage of transit, roads, buses, and the like -- a small put pivotal step towards enacting national performance standards for transportation.

Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-OK) attempt to curb federal investment in bicycle and pedestrian paths, as well as other "transportation enhancements," was defeated on the Senate floor today -- but it managed to pick up two unlikely Democratic supporters in the process.

As Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) offered amendments striking money for more than 20 transit projects from the bill that funds the U.S. DOT next year. 

The White House has reiterated its commitment to a national infrastructure bank (NIB), urging the Senate to reconsider a 2010 transportation spending bill that would "substitute in its place" $1.1 billion in grants.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) announced this afternoon that he would stay on at the helm of the Banking Committee, which also has jurisdiction over federal transit issues, rather than move over to lead the health panel previously led by his friend, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA).

Health care and transportation funding are very different items on Congress' to-do list, but the Washington Post's assessment of the former issue fits the latter as well: Lawmakers return today from a month-long recess to find a political landscape that has barely shifted from the impasse of late July.

One of Washington's most enduring truisms is that "pork" is in the eye of the beholder. Self-styled anti-earmark crusaders are fond of bashing clean transportation projects as improper uses of taxpayer money, but most of them recognize privately that rail, bus, and bike investments are a good thing.