House of Representatives

If I told you there was a fantastic, $35 billion federal program to lend money for railroads to improve their infrastructure, you’d probably assume one of the following:

Bet you weren’t expecting to hear any good news from the floor of the House today, were you? Turns out not everyone in Congress is as axe-happy as some high-profile Republicans. For example, Amtrak survived one attempt to cut all its funding and another to cut $447 million. (Amtrak funding does stand to lose $224 million in cuts already included in HR 1, the budget bill for the rest of FY2011.)

As the House returns for an unusual Friday session to finish (one hopes) debating and voting on HR 1, the continuing budget resolution for FY2011, with its 583 amendments, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is breaking dates all over the country.

House Speaker John Boehner won’t take no for an answer. As the House struggles to consider and vote on nearly 600 amendments to the FY2011 budget – in a process the GOP is heralding as unprecedented democracy and the Democrats are calling chaos – the prospects for consensus on the continuing resolution is becoming increasingly narrow.

Before crafting their $556 billion transportation proposal, Obama administration officials toured the country, holding a series of listening sessions to hear what people wanted in a long-term transportation bill. Now, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is doing the same thing -- but don’t expect committee Republicans to come to the same conclusions as the administration.

Highway projects can take 10 to 15 years from planning through construction. The length of the process leads to cost overruns, some due to inflation, some from having to pay engineers and contractors for years on end. No matter how you feel about the worthiness of road capacity expansion, if a project gets built it doesn't do anybody any good to have that project cost twice what it ought to because of delays. Plus, reducing delays is going to be a key element in upcoming debates over cost-effectiveness in the transportation sector.

On Valentine’s Day, President Obama’s heart-shaped box of chocolates to Congress will come in the form of his budget request for 2012. It will include the president’s proposal for a six-year transportation reauthorization.

The House Appropriations Committee voted last night to move ahead with deep spending cuts, totaling $32 billion, to the remainder of the FY2011 budget. It’s still not the $100 billion the GOP wanted to cut, and some committee Republicans voted no, saying the cuts were still too small.

Hasn’t it felt lately like Capitol Hill is in some kind of bizarre vortex?