Article from For Liberty by Norm Leahy.

While many folks have their attention focused on other issues, it’s worth diverting a bit of it back to Congress, which is mulling a new, multi-billion dollar transportation bill.

That’s not new. It does so every few years. What’s different this time is the size of the bill under consideration in the House – nearly half-a-trillion dollars – and that to pay for it Congress would have to double the current federal tax on gasoline.

Except House Democrats don’t want to hike the gas tax. Instead, they want to finance everything with more deficit spending.

There’s also the climate change angle that has industry lobbyists upset:

The House bill goes farther, explicitly discouraging the construction of new highway capacity, massively increasing investment in low-carbon modes and requiring cities and states to consider greenhouse gas emissions when drafting their transportation plans, among other provisions.

Transportation analyst Randal O’Toole writes the bill would spend substantially more on mass transit than previous transportation packages did. The result, he says is legislation that “would spend wildly on things we don’t need simply based on the whims and prejudices of the appropriators.”

In other words, it’s “business as usual.”