{"id":7062,"date":"2012-02-10T00:00:51","date_gmt":"2012-02-10T08:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=7062"},"modified":"2012-02-10T00:00:51","modified_gmt":"2012-02-10T08:00:51","slug":"republicans-greedy-on-transit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/10\/republicans-greedy-on-transit\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans Greedy on Transit"},"content":{"rendered":"

House Republicans have just put together a transportation bill so horrid, that even Obama\u2019s Republican Secretary of Transportation has called it \u201cthe worst transportation bill\u201d he had ever seen.  The crux of this measure is gutting federal support for public transit, a slap in the faces of poor Americans, minorities and environmentalists, while providing benefits for Big Oil.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"10MAX\"House Republicans have released a transportation bill that would eliminate the government\u2019s dedicated funding stream for mass transit, instead counting on a plan that the Congressional Budget Office found would cover just 5 percent of transit costs<\/a><\/font>. The New York Times called the bill \u201cuniquely terrible<\/a><\/font>,\u201d while Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a Republican, called it \u201cthe worst transportation bill<\/a><\/font> I\u2019ve ever seen during 35 years of public service.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n

Cuts to mass transit fall hard on low-income people who count on public transportation to get to work, go to school, and go about their lives. And they fall hardest on low-income minorities<\/a><\/font>, who, as the research organization PolicyLink noted, as disproportionately likely to not own an automobile:<\/font><\/p>\n

As housing and jobs have moved farther apart, the distance has created employment barriers for anyone without unlimited ability to drive. Nineteen percent of African Americans and 13.7 percent of Latinos lack access to automobiles, compared with 4.6 percent of whites. Poverty complicates the problem: 33 percent of poor African Americans and 25 percent of poor Latinos lack automobile access, compared with 12.1 percent of poor whites.<\/strong><\/span> Cars owned by low-income people tend to be older, less reliable, and less fuel-efficient. This makes commuting to work unpredictable and more expensive, at best.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cCommunities of color, low-income Americans and people with disabilities will be disproportionately impacted<\/a><\/font> since they are the most transit dependent communities and negotiate their daily lives on mass transportation to reach employment, health care, and educational centers,\u201d said the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. \u201cThese funding provisions will impact the millions of Americans<\/a><\/font> who rely on public transit systems to get to work, to school, or to the doctor,\u201d agreed the American Transit Association.<\/font><\/p>\n

In addition to shortchanging transit and those who depend on it, the bill would also open up nearly all of America\u2019s coastal waters<\/a><\/font> to oil drilling\u2026 [emphasis original<\/em><\/span>]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n

As a disabled American, I depend on busses and the train pictured above to get around, but I used public transit exclusively, even before that was the case, because it reduced my own carbon footprint.  As if the increased pollution and congestion from additional automobile use were not bad enough, Republicans have also slipped \u201cdrill, baby drill\u201d into the bill as well.  This measure must be defeated in the Senate.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House Republicans have just put together a transportation bill so horrid, that even Obama\u2019s Republican Secretary of Transportation has called it \u201cthe worst transportation bill\u201d he had ever seen.  The crux of this measure is gutting federal support for public transit, a slap in the faces of poor Americans, minorities and environmentalists, while providing benefits […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}