Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Federal Funding

Fact Check: Sen. Sessions Gets It Wrong On Bike Paths in His Hometown

By Tanya Snyder | Sep 12, 2011 | 9 Comments

Last week, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) told Streetsblog freelancer Alice Ollstein that he had good reason to oppose Transportation Enhancements, the program that funds bicycle and pedestrian facilities. “I just saw that in my hometown, they stopped construction of a highway because the federal government insisted on bike paths,” Sessions said. “It’s going to delay […]

House and Senate Agree on 6-Month Transpo Extension

By Tanya Snyder | Sep 12, 2011 | 5 Comments

Just days after a Senate committee asked the full chamber to consider a four-month extension of SAFETEA-LU, new negotiations have replaced that idea with a six-month extension at current spending levels. The bill also extends the gas tax. Over the weekend, the House and Senate decided to combine the long-overdue FAA reauthorization with the pending […]

Rail Advocates: House Bill Would Kill Amtrak

By Tanya Snyder | Sep 9, 2011 | 8 Comments

The 2012 transportation budget passed by a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee yesterday cut all high-speed rail funding and slashes Amtrak’s operating grant by 60 percent. What’s more, it forbids Amtrak from using that money to fund short corridors. Ridership on those short corridors grew five percent in the last year [PDF]. Twenty-seven train […]

House GOP’s 2012 Transportation Budget: Deep Cuts, Especially for Livability

By Tanya Snyder | Sep 8, 2011 | 3 Comments

In about an hour, Congressional appropriators will vote on how much money to allocate for transportation in the next fiscal year. It won’t be pretty. The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) is planning deep cuts to many programs, some reminiscent of House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan’s notorious budget proposal, […]

Inhofe Supports Clean Extension, Won’t Vote Against Bike/Ped (This Time)

By Alice Ollstein and Tanya Snyder | Sep 8, 2011 | 1 Comment

The Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously agreed this morning to send a four-month extension of the transportation bill to the full Senate. Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) emphasized that it wasn’t easy to get consensus on the extension, especially with many members wanting to move forward with the full two-year bill. And yesterday, as frazzled […]

The Senate’s “Dr. No” Says He’ll Block An Extension Unless Bike/Ped Is Cut

By Tanya Snyder | Sep 6, 2011 | 22 Comments

Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn is known around the Senate as “Dr. No” for his propensity to hold up key legislation, single-handedly, because it contains something not to his liking (or sometimes because he’s upset about something else entirely.) On Veterans Day in 2009, he shocked even his GOP colleagues by blocking veterans’ benefits because he […]

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