Ted Budd does not want taxpayers to fund projects in blue states [View all]

His letter in today's WSJ:

Last week President Trump urged House Speaker Paul Ryan to deny federal funding for the Gateway Program, a proposed rail upgrade between New York City and Newark, N.J. The amendment I wrote to defund Gateway failed to pass the House in September despite bipartisan support, but the president is absolutely right to resume the effort. The project should not receive another dime of federal funding.

Gateway has all the usual trappings of a rail-infrastructure boondoggle. Cost estimates have risen from $13.5 billion in 2011 to $29.5 billion. Implementation will be overseen by Amtrak, which manages to lose millions selling food to its own passengers along with countless other inefficiencies.

The project would also be subject to the enormous upward cost pressures of building infrastructure in New York City, home of the most expensive mile of subway track in the world. Gateway is not primarily a Metropolitan Transportation Authority project, but it would still face the same regulatory and wage factors that make New York’s rail projects cost as much as seven times the price of similar works in comparable cities.

For federal taxpayers, the shifty details of Gateway’s history add insult to the program’s injurious costs. In 2012 New Jersey’s then- Gov. Chris Christie canceled a primarily state-funded version of the rail upgrade because it would have cost residents too much money. Mr. Christie took the estimated $3 billion in fees collected to finance the project and diverted them into the state highway trust fund—a bit of budgetary sleight-of-hand that helped him avoid raising New Jersey’s gasoline tax before his 2013 re-election bid.

(snip)

Maybe this is a project of national importance that ought to be funded, but officials in New York and New Jersey don’t act as if it is when their own taxpayers are on the hook for any cost overruns. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo summed up the local mindset when he criticized the lack of federal support in 2015: “Why don’t you pay for it? It’s not my tunnel. It is an Amtrak tunnel that is used by Amtrak and by New Jersey Transit.”

(snip)

The hypocrisy of the funding process convinced me to set my sights on the Gateway Program and risk challenging one of the more powerful officials in the House Republican Conference. Gateway’s history is a grim catalog of state irresponsibility being rewarded by federal largess. President Trump is right to make clear: Gateway is not our tunnel.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-northeasts-costly-tunnel-vision-1520466054

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I hope that he will have a Democratic challenger who will teach the voters about takers and givers states.