Photo: Washington Post

Yesterday, details leaked of Congressman John Mica (R-PA) proposed bill for funding the U.S. government’s transportation priorities through 2018. Over at Streetsblog, Tanya Snyder explains that Mica’s bill represents a 40% spending cut compared to current levels, while many pro-transit, pro-density priorities, such as high-speed rail and “complete streets” programs, are totally ignored. High-speed rail and sustainability programs usually involve massive government spending, social engineering or both—and are typically supported by the political left. But Mica axes an important and seemingly bi-partisan proposal that would neither increase the deficit nor impose the government’s will on an unwitting citizenry: the creation of a national infrastructure bank.

Mica’s justification is that many states already have their own infrastructure banks, so the creation of a centralized one in Washington would only saddle projects with more bureaucracy than need be:

Instead of establishing a national infrastructure bank, the legislation will provide state infrastructure banks with more money, committee Chairman John Mica, a Republican, said on Wednesday. A little less than two-thirds of the states — 32 — have infrastructure banks.

“They don’t have to come to Washington to get approval. They don’t have to go through the red tape,” Mica said about the banks. “We’re looking at evolving that for the states.”

This sounds like an excuse. Almost by definition, a national infrastructure bank would fund projects that no state could individually undertake—things like highway improvements, rail lines and the construction of new roads and bridges. And it would fund projects from which more than one state would benefit. Mica assumedly realizes that a national infrastructure bank, which would be both privately and publically capitalized and give out low-interest loans for major infrastructural projects, wouldn’t replace the state banks, but supplement them by providing a rational means for both funding and authorizing major projects at the national level. So his opposition must be ideological. Mica, who also introduced last month’s Amtrak privatization bill, probably disagrees with any centralized control over infrastructure—even if it’s the relatively soft control of a privately-capitalized government bank.

Streetsblog also compiled a list of reactions from Democrats opposed to Mica’s bill. Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL) blames the bill’s weaknesses on the toxic atmosphere in Congress:

“I’m finding that if any proposal doesn’t go the way the chairman wants, he wipes it out,” added Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL). “We’ve always been able to sit down and talk and work through issues in the past, but it is just not the way we’re working now. It’s like we’re under a new regime.”

Brown added that the deep cuts and unwillingness to work together is “all about politics for 2012.”

Perhaps “politics” are partly to blame for this. But Snyder notes that Mica’s 40% in cuts exceeds the 30% cut in transportation spending included in Sen. Paul Ryan (R-Il) proposed federal budget. His bill exceeds the already highly-political recommendations of the most hawkish of all congressional budget hawks. Mica seems motivated by the ideological conviction that infrastructure is simply too important to be entrusted to the federal government.