The House of Representatives is considering a behemoth surface transportation bill this week, designed to fund the roads, highways, and bridges that connect our country.  It has nothing to do with the public lands that belong to all of us, but that didn’t stop three Republicans from Arizona from filing an amendment to the bill that would override Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s January decision to protect 1 million acres around Grand Canyon National Park from new uranium mining requests.

Reps. Trent Franks (R-AZ), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) penned the amendment:

SEC. __ . TERMINATION OF PUBLIC LAND ORDER 7787.

Public Land Order 7787 (77 Fed. Reg. 2563) and the withdrawal of lands by that Public Land Order shall have no force or effect, and the provisions of the land use plans applicable to such lands immediately before the issuance of such Public Land Order shall remain in effect.

If this sounds familiar, it is because this trio of lawmakers has tried three times in the last two years to undo new protections for one of our nation’s great places.  Here is a list of their other attempts to do the National Mining Association’s bidding:

– They added roll back language in the text of last year’s budget bill (which did not pass) where it was dubbed “the Flake earmark for the mining industry.”

– In October, Franks introduced the Northern Arizona Mining Continuity Act of 2011, an attempt to halt the mineral withdrawal.

– Franks introduced legislation in the last Congress to stop the mineral withdrawal.

As ThinkProgress has outlined before, the Grand Canyon is incredibly important to the economy of Arizona.  Tourists spending money in and around the Grand Canyon create jobs. Headwaters Economics found that Grand Canyon National Park supported over 6,000 jobs in 2009 and those tourists spent more than $400 million.

In addition, mining for uranium around the canyon poses risks to drinking water for 25 million people reliant on the Colorado River, as seen in the legacy of old, abandoned, and hazardous mines.     

It remains to be seen whether Congressional rules will allow the amendment to be considered.  But House Republicans have made their position clear—despite the fact that the battle over the Grand Canyon has been fought, and these three Congressmen lost, they will keep fighting another day.  Franks recently stated to E&E News that “anything that we can do to promote the legislation we will.”

Then, yesterday, three Republican senators ignored Inhofe and Boxer’s calls to keep the bill free from controversy and attempted to attach an amendment mandating the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which Democrats warned could “kill the bill.” Now, Sen. Rand Paul (R) has put a hold on the bill until leadership promises him a vote on an amendment that would suspend foreign aid to Egypt, Politico reports:

Paul wants to offer an amendment to the Senate transportation bill that would cut off aid to Egypt if nongovernmental employees working with the U.S. government are detained or held in the country, as Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s son, Sam, currently is. And unless the senator decides to offer consent to move forward to the transportation bill, the Senate would be stuck in a 30-hour holding pattern.

“We’re not going to grant back our 30 hours unless we get a discussion on Egypt. We’re not asking for a lot of time; we just want a discussion and a vote on whether or not we should continue sending money to Egypt,” Paul told POLITICO.

Paul said he is taking action now because he fears his amendment won’t be allowed if he waits until debate on the transportation bill begins.

Noting the urgency of the transportation bill, Boxer and Inhofe agreed not to attach amendments or provisions that could be controversial. It contains no taxes and none of the other traditionally controversial measures included in such bills.

“2.8 million jobs hang in the balance” of the bill’s passage before the current transportation package expires, Boxer told Politico. “And we have obstruction from our friends on the Republican side.”

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has publicly raised objection to the measure, arguing that it will ultimately “kill the bill.” Passage of the highway bill is crucial, as the Highway Trust Fund faces insolvency in 2013, and the bill consists of much needed reforms that will ensure “current resources are used effectively so that Congress can continue investing in the Highway Trust Fund without adding to the federal deficit.”

Before taking the bill to the floor, both sides agreed not to attach controversial amendments:

The Senate’s $109 billion bill is a two-year bipartisan proposal that on Thursday survived a test vote of 85-11 on a measure that limits debate to 30 hours and prevents a filibuster of the bill.

The Senate bill also has the support of the Obama Administration.

In an effort to build bipartisan backing, from the start of their deliberations last year, the bill’s sponsors, Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.), agreed not to include anything controversial in the measure.

The bill contains no new taxes, no changes to rail programs, and does not address truck weights or lengths, although it would mandate electronic onboard recorders for trucks.

The Senate bill is one of two transportation bills moving through Congress, but the House is also working on a version that is riddled with ill-effects for low- and middle-income Americans, making the Senate version the best option under consideration. The Keystone amendment, which would authorize construction on all but the most sensitive Nebraska portion of the pipeline, would jeopardize its passage.

Senate leaders are still trying to decide which amendments will get a vote, but if the Keystone XL pipeline reaches the Senate floor, the measure will require 60 votes for approval. At present, there are 47 Republicans in the Senate, although some Democrats have voiced support for the massive oil pipeline project in the past. Grassroots activists are mobilizing in opposition to the Republican Keystone push.

– Fatima Najiy

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, who, as the research organization PolicyLink noted, as disproportionately likely to not own an automobile:

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. 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.

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

In addition to shortchanging transit and those who depend on it, the bill would also open up nearly all of America’s coastal waters to oil drilling. “It is really just one more attempt to promote the Republicans’ drill-now-drill-everywhere agenda and the interests of their industry patrons,” the Times editorialized.

In the end, neither the House GOP’s nor the Senate’s transportation bills do enough to help the country’s crumbling infrastructure. But for the House in particular, the bill is simply an excuse to drill-baby-drill and make it that much harder for people without cars to go about their lives.

The new eco-friendly buses have electric motors, and don’t use fuel of any kind, meaning they don’t produce emissions. Instead they are powered by a network of rechargeable batteries.

The buses cost $100,000, about the same as traditional buses, but they are quieter, cleaner, and cheaper to maintain.

“It doesn’t have a transmission. It has very few moving parts, and the vehicle is charged up overnight when the electric grid is being used the least so it’s off-peak,” said Bart Marksohn of WE Transport Inc.

The district is starting out with a one-bust test run over the next 60 days. If approved, the first electric buses will be on the roads in September 2012. The decision to go green was simple for district officials. As one put it, “In implementing this we’re only echoing what the students are learning — to care about their environment. So we’re just building upon what’s being taught in the classroom on a daily basis.”

by Kiley Kroh

Today the House Natural Resources Committee will take up a trio of “drill, baby, drill” bills that would partially pay for the House surface transportation reauthorization bill, designed to fund our nation’s programs for trains and automobiles.

As it stands right now, the bill would last four years and cost $260 billion. Unfortunately, the House Republicans’ version of the transportation bill would throw open protected pristine places for dirty petroleum production.  One proposal opens Alaska’s pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. Another measure opens the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to be drilled and mandates more drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The third proposal makes available millions of acres in the western U.S. to oil shale development.  Despite Boehner’s characterization of the measure as a “job creation package,” it seems to be little more than another Republican giveaway to Big Oil.

Transportation advocates have sought a long-term reauthorization of highway and transit programs, which currently expire on March 31. Traditionally, improvements to roads, bridges, and public transportation are funded by the federal gasoline tax, but GOP leaders in the House are taking the unprecedented step to tie funding to an unnecessary and ineffective increase in fossil fuel production.  As CAP’s Donna Cooper writes, “Congressional Republicans are making this push so they can block movement to create jobs and rebuild our infrastructure while sounding like they are in favor of policies that do both.” Here are the key reasons this package is no solution to repair our nation’s aging transportation infrastructure.

We’re already running more drill rigs than the rest of the world combined. As of last Friday, there were 2,008 drill rigs operating in the U.S. and 1,862 rigs operating in the rest of the world, according to industry statistics. In 2010, total U.S. production (onshore and offshore) was the highest it has been since 2003.  And the Obama administration’s latest five-year offshore leasing plan already makes more than 75% of recoverable offshore resources available for exploration and development.  Clearly, the number of acres available to be drilled is not the problem.

And despite decades of effort, oil shale has never been shown to be economically viable. In addition, it would consume huge amounts of western water in the Colorado River basin that is already facing predictions of severe and prolonged drought and which is relied upon by more than 25 million people in the southwest.

Oil companies are letting the vast majority of their leases sit idle. A Department of Interior report released last year found that more than 70 percent of the tens of millions of offshore acres under lease are inactive, neither producing nor currently subject to approved or pending exploration or development plans.  For onshore leases, 22 million out of a total of 38 million leased onshore acres sit idle.   Instead of opening more of our protected lands and oceans to be drilled, companies should be forced to use the leases they already have, or lose them.

Proposed drilling bills wouldn’t generate enough revenue to meet transportation needs: As Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, emphasizes, the current funding shortfall to just keep our bridges, roads, airports and other existing transportation elements running is $12 billion for the next two years, and more than $75 billion over the next six years – “even using the most optimistic projections, Republican drilling proposals would generate, at most, a little more than $5 billion over 10 years. This is well short of the revenue needed to just to maintain inadequate current investment levels.”

More importantly, the revenue from increased drilling isn’t even guaranteed.  At a hearing late last year, Ryan Alexander of the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense spoke strongly against relying on “speculative” future revenue, stating,

“Paying for a couple of years of transportation funding with expected revenues from an increase in oil and gas drilling that will likely take many years to get rolling is not a responsible budget approach … It’s like buying the Ferrari tomorrow because you are sure a raise is coming sometime in the future.”

Using expanded drilling to lure Republican support has drawn harsh criticism from conservatives, as well.  As Heritage Action for America CEO Michael Needham told Politico, “One of the problems you have in Washington, is you take really bad legislation, which the highway bill is, and you put a sweetener in it … That’s what’s going on here.”

An oil import fee is a real solution for raising revenue. As CAP’s Daniel J. Weiss outlines, “An oil import fee could raise revenue to reduce oil consumption by investing in oil demand reduction programs. Such funds could also reduce the budget deficit—a top priority of congressional Republicans.” A temporary, extremely modest $2.50 per barrel fee on imported oil could raise $8 billion annually.  This would only increase gasoline prices made from foreign oil by six and a half cents per gallon.

It’s clear the House GOP priority is not repairing our crumbling transportation infrastructure, or even creating jobs – it’s simply a way to justify a reckless expansion of fossil fuel production into our last wild places and precious beaches to benefit Big Oil.  In this scenario, they win and the American people lose.

Kiley Kroh is Associate Director of Oceans Communications at the Center for American Progress.

But consumer advocates say the changes are a positive development for travelers who have been swindled by airlines for too long:

Advertisements that make airfares seem enticingly low will soon lose that asterisk pointing to a dense paragraph of additional taxes and fees that make a cheap ticket much more costly.

Beginning Jan. 24, the Transportation Department will enforce a rule requiring that any advertised price for air travel include all government taxes and fees. For the last 25 years, the department has allowed airlines and travel agencies to list government-imposed fees separately, resulting in a paragraph of fine print disclaimers about charges that can add 20 percent or more to a ticket’s price.

But with airlines now promoting fares on Web ads, Facebook and Twitter, and adopting a menu of fees for services that used to be part of the ticket price, the government decided it was time for a change so travelers have a clearer sense of the total price they must pay.

Kate Hanni of FlyersRights.org describes an all-too-common scenario: “People would get up against the point where they were about to make a purchase, and suddenly the cost of their ticket went up because of these taxes and charges.”

“Requiring all mandatory charges to be included in a single advertised price will help consumers compare airfares and make it easier for them to determine the full cost of their trip,” said Bill Mosley, a Transportation department spokesman. The advertising rule is one of a dozen passenger protections the department adopted last spring.

But airlines like Spirit that have built their profits on advertising $9 fares, then charging much more, are determined to resist the new rules. They are also objecting to changes that “allow passengers to cancel a ticket purchase without penalty within 24 hours of booking; include information about baggage fees on e-ticket confirmations; and notify passengers more promptly about flight cancellations and delays.”

The government’s move was prompted by a dramatic increase in deceptive advertising. This year, the Transportation Department issued 21 penalties totaling $1 million in fines for fare advertising violations, compared to 14 penalties and $379,000 in fines in 2001. Spirit, for instance, advertised a $9 fare on Twitter, then forced customers to click links to two more Web pages to find out the full price.

There’s a lot of people still out there, and they want to work. And they need jobs. And this is a great start.

Watch it:

“It’s a step to the future,” Herrera concludes, enthused not only about finding a job but also about being part of the greater mission to repower our nation.

Rep. John Mica (R-FL)

In late July, House Republicans forced a nearly two-week shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration, furloughing thousands of federal employees and bringing construction projects supporting tens of thousands of jobs to a grinding halt. Airline inspectors were forced to work without pay during the shutdown.

The GOP refused to reauthorize funding for the FAA without including in the legislation a union-busting provision that had nothing to do with aviation. In the aftermath of the shutdown, House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-FL) — who helped engineer the shutdown — attempted the play the victim, whining that he’d “had a brutal week, getting beat up by everybody” after putting thousands out of work.

And now, evidently believing that everyone has forgotten the contempt that he showed for the FAA, Mica is touting an FAA grant to the airport in his district:

Congressman John L. Mica (R-Sanford) today announced that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has awarded the Orlando Sanford International Airport a $10.6 million grant to assist in the purchase of land needed to expand runway 9L.

“Orlando Sanford International Airport is a significant contributor to the local economy of Seminole County,” says Congressman John Mica. “By acquiring the land to improve and expand the runway at the airport, we can bring in newer quieter passenger aircraft and improve safety. This will further allow us to expand business and economic activity at the airport, creating more jobs for the region.”

Of course, just a few months ago Mica seemed far more concerned with union-busting, and doing the bidding of some of his biggest campaign contributors, than in the FAA’s ability to generate economic activity and jobs. Adding insult to injury, the anti-union provision that Mica wanted to make law (which would change the way union elections operate) was so nonsensical that, if the same rule applied to congressional elections, Mica wouldn’t be in Congress in the first place.

In addition to his FAA shenanigans, Mica has proposed slashing overall transportation infrastructure funding, “even though our current infrastructure spending as a percentage of GDP (2 percent) is already at half what it was in 1960 and less than one-quarter of what China spends today (9 percent).” But he’s more than happy to wholeheartedly cheer the job creation potential of projects in his own district.

“Amtrak is fulfilling its national mission and is part of the solution to meet America’s growing transportation and energy needs,” said Joseph Boardman, Amtrak’s CEO. However, Republicans in Congress are ready to take Amtrak out at the knees:

A House appropriations subcommittee passed a bill [in September] that provides Amtrak with $227 million for operations in 2012, down from $563 million in each of the past two years. Amtrak also would get $899 million for capital expenditures, down $25 million.

In addition to this 60 percent cut, the bill “would prohibit using Amtrak’s federal funding to operate state-supported train service.” Earlier this year, House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-FL) “proposed soliciting bids from other railroads for the right to service the 456-mile Northeast Corridor, which is the heart of Amtrak’s operations.”

“Americans are returning to the rails in record numbers, yet Republicans are pulling out all of the stops in their rush to auction off Amtrak’s assets to the highest bidder on Wall Street,” said Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV). The National Association of Railroad Passengers has warned that the GOP’s cuts “would be tantamount to shutting down the entire Amtrak network, because the remaining routes could not cover the system’s overhead costs.”

Infosys employees in Bangalore:

From a banner-making party in Jaca, Spain:

Georgia Tea Party argues that a light rail system will be a national security risk:

“If anyone doesn’t believe me — England and Spain. Now, if we have a more decentralized mass transit system using buses, if the terrorists blow up a single bus, we can work around that. When they blow up a rail, that just brings the system to a grinding halt. So how much security are we going to have on this rail system, and how much will it cost?”

This just has to be a sign of how weirdly enmeshed in culture war politics American transportation policy has become, right? Even in the Georgia Tea Party people must understand that terrorists detonate a bomb that blows up a section of the Downtown Connector freeway that’ll be a huge problem for automobile traffic and bring the system to a grinding halt, right?