DHE on McRail

Barack Obama is about as big a rail and transit proponent as we’ve seen in presidential politics for decades. How about John McCain? Well, I was interesting to read these quotes from Doug Holtz-Eakin. Here’s what he said about building the Silver Line to Dulles Airport:

The most important thing that Sen. McCain is going to address, as president, is using transportation dollars more wisely. He has also made a clear commitment for having options on the table for rail.

On the Metro funding bill:

Sen. McCain has been busy campaigning and has missed a lot of votes. I don’t think anything special should be read into that one. The Senator recognizes the importance of the transportation sector to both our economy and our lifestyles and what we need going forward is some performance and accountability in our taxpayer dollars that go into infrastructure.

And on infrastructure in general:

There will be more infrastructure investments going forward — it is an imperative — but they have to be done wisely, and that is the top priority.

I suppose this is a reminder of Doug Holtz-Eakin, the widely respected conservative economist. Unfortunately, I don’t think these relatively mild statements really reflect McCain’s record or his positions very well. McCain has never been an advocate for public transit or rail at the federal level, and neither his economic plan nor his climate change plan say anything about expanded rail service. Indeed, he’s been a longtime opponent of Amtrak funding seeing it as a form of government waste. And of course his proposed across-the-board spending freeze would make it impossible to invest in new infrastructure of any kind.

UPDATE: Also, while Holtz-Eakin is right to say that McCain’s skipped a lot of votes, he actually showed up to vote against WMATA funding contrary to what DHE says.