California Senator Barbara Boxer will be at the center of a battle over whether or not the reauthorization of the transportation bill will address the global warming impacts of transportation, given her Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee is responsible for writing much of the bill’s language. Any chance of reforming the transportation bill, which advocates are clamoring for, will require deft political maneuvering to mollify ranking committee member Senator James Inhofe. 

Several sources said that Boxer’s cooperation with Inhofe is simple math. The $312 billion baseline for transportation over six years is insufficient to meet state of good repair needs and set the country on a course for innovation. Minnesota Representative James Oberstar, chair of the House Transportation Committee, has suggested $400-500 billion would be needed, while the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Organizations (AASHTO) and the American Public Transit Association (APTA) argue in their Bottom Line Report that at least $160 billion will be needed annually. In order get from $312 billion to $500 billion or better, Boxer will need to get approval for new revenue streams, which would require a filibuster-proof majority, something she might not get without Inhofe and other reluctant members on the committee. 

Several interviewees also pointed to Senator Boxer’s alliance with Inhofe on an amendment in the federal stimulus bill for an additional $50 billion in highway money as a bad sign.

“You have polar bears and glaciers on your website… then throw people back in their cars?” said one official who insisted on anonymity.

Because Boxer has traditionally been a champion for environmental causes, several advocates said that monitoring her on this issue would be new and potentially uncomfortable. TransForm Executive Director Stuart Cohen said he first saw a red flag late in 2008 when Senator Boxer spoke in San Francisco about highway and road infrastructure needs in the stimulus bill while failing to mention transit.  But, Cohen added, “we would have to adjust to the idea of watchdogging Senator Boxer; she has been such a reliable ally.”

Transportation for America (T4A) Communications Director David Goldberg said an appropriately large sum of money is needed in any discussion of the transportation bill, but he was more concerned about how legislators would spend that money. “We think there is a need of at least $500 billion, but support is contingent on reforms that would make it a wise investment.”

Colin Peppard, Climate and Infrastructure Campaign Director for the Environmental Defense Fund echoed the T4A sentiment. “What we’ve gotten for our money so far is not a good deal,” he said. “The public wants a better product. Hopefully the authorization lays out priorities that enhance safety and focuses on investment in new capacity that increases energy independence and reduces greenhouse gases.”  

Getting Inhofe, one of the premier global warming deniers, to support a bill that calls for reducing greenhouse gas impacts from driving would be a political coup. He has said that environmental review is an onerous burden for infrastructure investment and that the inclusion of global warming rhetoric in a transportation act is unacceptable.

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