Recent and ongoing events in Florida and Wisconsin demonstrate
how difficult it’s going to be to rein in incontinent government
spending, especially when it comes to lushly paid public employees
and crackpot infrastructure scams.
Public employees in Wisconsin, addicted to the
over-generous pay and benefits packages their unions and politician
enablers have put on the backs of cheese-heads not on the
government gravy-train, indulged in a very public tantrum when
asked to do at least part of their share in dealing with new
economic realities.
The media, big corporate, and political establishments in
Florida, including way too many Republicans, were set on a roar
last week when Florida Governor Rick Scott became the third
Republican governor in the nation, sensibly and courageously, to
say no to high-speed rail, the boondoggle’s boondoggle.
Last week Scott told the Obama administration “thanks, but
no thanks” to $2.4 billion in “federal money” (definition: money we
don’t have that has to be borrowed or printed and that future
generations must pay back) to help build a 90-mile rail project to
connect Orlando with Tampa, two spread-out metropolitan areas
already connected by an interstate highway. The response was
operatic.
Wisconsin teachers, in the finest tradition of public
employee unions, abandoned their posts, bringing many of their
young charges along with them to help pitch a hissy-fit at the
State House in Madison (no reports yet on whether students were
offered extra credit for this activity, which is more fun than
passing notes or texting friends in class).
The occasion for this self-indulgent display is a state
bill requiring, among other things, that teachers make
contributions to their retirement plan at a level about half that
required of workers in the private sector (they pay nothing now).
Their didoes are, to put it as charitably as possible,
unseemly.
President Obama, with more time on his hands than you’d
imagine, what with the Middle East popping rivets and the country
lurching toward bankruptcy, has chosen to insert himself into the
Wisconsin budget debate on the side of the local public employee
unions. (TAS readers may here amuse themselves by
imagining the fertilizer storm that would follow on a Republican
president suggesting that unionized workers in a particular state
be paid less.)
Mr. President, today’s vocabulary word is federalism.
You’ll obviously have to look it up, as it appears nowhere in the
handbooks for community organizers or teachers unions (motto: We
got ours; ——you).
Not satisfied just to oppose the stringent budget and new
rules for public employee unions, Wisconsin Democratic state
senators, demonstrating the true spirit of the pleas from national
Democrats for more hands-across-the-aisle comity in our political
transactions, bugged out of the state altogether, denying the
Wisconsin Senate the quorum necessary to conduct any business.
(When the going gets tough, the tough go AWOL.) Perhaps the
Democrats mean comedy rather than comity.
The players opposing fiscal restraint in Wisconsin are
almost exclusively Democrats, who can always be counted on to
defend big government, big unions, and big spending. So no
surprise. It’s in the natural order of things. But in Florida it’s
disturbing to see how many Republicans object to Scott’s vetoing
one of the worst transportation “investments” devised by the mind
of man.
If times were flush and the country not on the brink of
financial disaster, high-speed rail would be a bad idea. Today it’s
a horrible one. Measured by cost per passenger-mile, rail is not
only the most expensive form of transportation, it’s the most
expensive by a multiple over everything else.
Rail projects across the country have in almost all cases:
cost way more than original estimates to construct, attracted fewer
riders than pre-construction estimates, generated less revenue than
anticipated, did not significantly reduce road traffic congestion,
did not improve the local environment, and generated large annual
expenses for operation and maintenance. Expenses that taxpayers
have to pick up, whether or not they take the train.
So why did a majority of members of the Florida Senate,
where Republicans hold a 2-1 majority, send a letter to U.S.
Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood asking for time to find a
way to circumvent Scott’s rejection of the non-existent money? Why
did the Florida delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives,
3-1 Republican, meet with LaHood in an attempt to create an entity
other than the state that could receive the federal
money?
The short answer is that high-speed rail is popular in
Florida and elsewhere. The arguments against it, based on
hardheaded economic analysis, hardly ever appear in the left-stream
media. So a majority of Floridians believe high-speed rail will:
create jobs and economic prosperity, eliminate or at least reduce
congestion on Florida roads and highways, and improve the state’s
environment. These are the phantasms that rail supporters have been
retailing for years. Sadly, too many Florida Republicans have
decided to cover their political butts on this one instead of
leading. Instead of getting Governor Scott’s back on this one,
they’re plunging an ice pick into it.
Congressman John Mica (R-Winter Park), chairman of the
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, claims Scott’s
no-rail money decision “defies logic.” He says he’s cooking up a
plan to save the Orlando to Tampa train set, starting with a
project to connect Orlando International Airport to Disney
World.
There are better ways for Mica to spend his time. If
there’s a great need for the Orlando airport and Disney World to be
connected by rail, he might inquire why Disney hasn’t done it yet,
despite prospering in Florida since 1971.
But job one for Mica should be to try to torpedo the $63
billion down payment Obama wishes to make on high-speed projects
across the nation. He also needs to pay more attention to the
backlog of repairs necessary to the nation’s highways and
bridges.
Federal spending has reached World War II levels. State
and local spending are at historic highs. Americans reading stories
about our debt and budget projections can be excused for thinking
the numbers are in lire rather than dollars. We’re clearly on the
road to financial ruin if we don’t reverse course. But the news out
of Wisconsin and Florida shows us that turning this train around
ain’t gonna be easy.
