Brakes Still on Transportation Bill

Despite an undisputed need and the prospect of thousands of construction jobs, Congress continues to struggle with legislation that would unlock funding for highway, mass transit and bike projects across the nation.

Authorization for federal surface transportation projects expired the end of 2009. Congress is now working against a June 30 deadline of the ninth extension of that statute, known as SAFETEA-LU. 

A 47-member House-Senate conference committee, which includes Oregon Congressmen Peter DeFazio and Earl Blumenauer and Washington Congresswoman Jamie Herrera Beutler, is only debating a 15-month reauthorization. Most of the "debate" is being handled so far by professional staffers and a handful of conservative House members, who have rained on the idea of any compromise.

Many wonder how transportation ended up in such a partisan stand-off. House Republicans attached an amendment to approve the Keystone oil pipeline. The Senate added language to create a competitive grant program to pay for downtown redevelopment, trails, bike lanes and sidewalks.

The pending reauthorization would establish a $1 billion fund to finance projects of national significance, such as the new I-5 bridge over the Columbia River. But even if the reauthorization manages to pass, Congress hasn't agreed on a revenue source for the mega-project fund. House GOP conservatives have voiced dissatisfaction that there is any funding in the bill.

Major interest groups are pressuring Congress to act, but there are mixed views inside Capitol Hill political caucuses. Some think it is better to extend the current transportation statute for the 10th time and angle for a much better bill in the next Congress. There are different views on what constitutes a better bill.

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Skilling Up Discouraged Workers

The word "jobs" is on the lips of virtually every politician. Political campaigns pivot on what a candidate has done to create jobs or an opponent to deep-six them. However, there is little talk of filling the skilled jobs that sit vacant.

Catherine Rampell of The New York Times reports that more than half of U.S. employers claim they have jobs they can't fill, despite an unemployment rate exceeding 8 percent. It is a problem, she says, we share at about the same rate with rapidly developing economies in Brazil and India, which have much lower jobless rates.

In her "Dollars to doughnuts" blog, Rampell speculates there may be difficulties matching qualified workers with work-ready employers. But it is more likely, she says, there is a real shortage of people with the skills many businesses need.

U.S. manufacturers have warned about a mismatch of skills and available jobs for years. The problem keeps growing more serious as older workers retire and there is no one trained to replace them.

New machinery has increased productivity and lessened reliance on human skills on many manufacturing floors. Even so, there are still jobs only people can perform, but people with the required skills and work habits aren't anywhere to be found.

Think what would happen if there was a war-time scramble to skill up workers to fill those vacant, good-paying jobs in American businesses. The unemployment rate would drop, the economy would get an infusion of spending and tax revenues would increase. What politician wouldn't put that achievement on his or her campaign brochure?

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Getting to DC Directly

For Oregonians traveling to the nation's capital for business or pleasure, life just got simpler and more convenient. Alaska Airlines was awarded a slot to provide direct, non-stop service between Portland and Reagan National Airport, just a short subway ride away from the White House, Smithsonian Institutions and the Capitol.

The direct flight has been a hard-fought goal for the Port of Portland, Oregon's congressional delegation and business leaders, as well as anybody who has been forced to fly to D.C. through Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis, Dallas or even Atlanta.

There is a direct flight between Portland and Dulles International, but it always seems like you land closer to Monticello than the Jefferson Memorial. Land at the wrong time of day and you can experience rings of endless traffic jams. The Metro is being extended to Dulles, but it will still seem like a long, 28-mile train ride into the center of the city.

Alaska Airlines, which was awarded the right in 2001 to fly between Seattle and Reagan National, is required to start its new non-stop service between Portland and Reagan National by September 8. The Oregonian speculated the service could start sooner.

Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley praised the decision by the federal Department of Transportation, saying it would promote economic growth in the state. Washington Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell agreed the direct flight would boost the business climate in Oregon and Southwest Washington. Murray also said it was a matter of respect.

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Hashtag Warfare

If politics is war, then Twitter is the neutron bomb. Politicians are engaging in hashtag warfare to stake out positions and target opponents without ever talking to a reporter or entering a TV studio.

You know you have a powerful weapon, says The Washington Post, when the President of the United States incorporates hashtags into his speeches, as he did last week — #dontdoublemyrate — in pressuring the GOP-led House to block an increase in student loan interest rates. After whipping up a student crowd in Chapel Hill that chanted the hashtag, there were almost instantaneously 20,000 tweets with the hashtag. 

Within 45 minutes, House Speaker John Boehner responded, using the hashtag, blaming Democrats for the student loan rate increase. Conservative groups seized on the hashtag to rip Obama over gas prices and lingering high unemployment rates, a risk you run in hashtag warfare.

Ann Romney chose Twitter to respond to criticism about her being a stay-at-home mom. Her tweet — "I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work." — reframed the conversation in thousands of retweets. Critics changed the subject.

Twitter-bombing isn't just an American political phenomenon. It played a huge role in the Arab Spring upheavals. Reportedly the new president of Chile instructed his cabinet ministers to tweet to build grassroots support for his new policies.

Facebook has tons more users, but Twitter has become the go-to place to find out the latest news. That is just the kind of battlefront that attracts political operatives. Shots fired on Twitter wind up ricocheting on Facebook and, ultimately, populate searches on Google.

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Health Care System in Limbo

If the U.S. Supreme Court finds the federal health care reform act unconstitutional later this year, experts say it could unravel more of the nation's health care system than anticipated, including Medicare.

Judy Feder, a former Clinton administration official, tells NPR's Julie Rovner that the push toward more integrated and coordinated health care delivery would be disrupted.

Gail Wilensky, who ran Medicare and Medicaid programs for President H.W. Bush, says voiding federal health care reform would erase the most recent benchmarks for doctor and hospital payment rates. 

"Hospitals might not get paid. Nursing homes might not get paid. Doctors might not get paid," Wilensky says. "Changes in coverage that have begun to take effect for the elderly, such as closing the donut hole, might not happen." The effects, she adds, would undoubtedly spill over to everyone in the health care system.

Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law, likens it a train wreck. "We could find ourselves at a grand stopping point for the entire health care system." One problem she cites is the possibility of thousands of Medicare policies being suddenly null and void.

Jeremy Lazarus, president-elect of the American Medical Association, says, "With countless hours of work already done to implement the law, it is hard to imagine the full impact of it disappearing."

Dan Mendelson, a health care consultant with Clinton administration ties, says the high court's decision could put most of health care in America in a legally murky place. Lazarus calls it "political never-never land."

Repeal or partial repeal of what Republicans like to call Obamacare would make a pretty big policy crater in Congress, which already is staring at big holes in long-term funding for Medicare and Social Security. Trustees for those entitlement programs released reports showing Medicare hits the financial wall in 2024 and Social Security's Waterloo has inched closer by three years to 2033.

More than 56 million American retirees or disabled workers and their spouses and children receive Social Security payments, which average $1,232 per month. It doesn't take a calculator to realize that is a lot of money rippling through the economy because Social Security recipients spend what they receive on food, rent, transportation, utilities and medical bills.

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