The Daily Caller68%
Getting What You Paid For — Paying For What You Get: Proposals for the Next Transportation Reauthorization (Policy Analysis) 34%
By null null92%
9/14/2009, 9:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Framing Effect, Politically Right Leaning Bias, and Biased Writer Voice, with Ambiguity (Equivocation) as the most egregious example at 11.8% saturation with 86 hits. Analysis detected 834 faulty-reasoning hits from 728 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 41.8% and a BS Rank of 34% (14,616 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 66.80% of the article peer group.
When Congress passed the Federal Aid Highway
Act of 1956, it gave the Bureau of Public
Roads a clear mission: oversee construction of a
safe, high-speed Interstate Highway System.
As
that system neared completion in the 1980s, the
mission of the Department of Transportation
became increasingly murky.
Now the department
is supposed to reduce congestion; attract people
out of their automobiles; clean the air; promote
economic development; improve livability; create
a sense of community: and accomplish a variety
of other often conflicting goals — most of which
are not easily quantifiable.
As the mission became muddied, each surface
transportation reauthorization since 1982 has
included an increasing number of earmarks,
divided revenues among more and more different
funds, and added lengthy rules for how those
funds may be spent.
Each earmark, apportionment,
and rule has made transportation spending
incrementally less efficient.
This increasing politicization of something
that began life as a fairly efficient program is the
predictable result of government involvement in
what is essentially a private economic activity.
The
inevitability of such decline is a good argument
for abolishing the U.S.
Department of Transportation
and devolving federal transportation programs
to the states.
Short of that, Congress should make every
effort to return to a system where people get what
they pay for — that is, transportation user fees are dedicated
to systems that benefit the people who paid
those fees — and people pay for what they get — that is,
people pay the full cost of the facilities they use.
As a second-best solution to abolishing the
Department of Transportation, this paper offers
eight proposals essential for the 2009 reauthorization
to achieve these goals.
These proposals
include
Apportion funds to states based on population,
land area, and user fees
Require that short-term plans be efficient
or cost efficient
Create a citizen-enforcement process that
will ensure efficiency and cost efficiency
Eliminate long-range transportation planning
Allow unlimited use of road tolls
Eliminate clean-air mandates
Avoid earmarks
Remove employee protective arrangements from transit law
When Congress passed the Federal Aid Highway
Act of 1956, it gave the Bureau of Public
Roads a clear mission: oversee construction of a
safe, high-speed Interstate Highway System.
As
that system neared completion in the 1980s, the
mission of the Department of Transportation
became increasingly murky.
Now the department
is supposed to reduce congestion; attract people
out of their automobiles; clean the air; promote
economic development; improve livability; create
a sense of community: and accomplish a variety
of other often conflicting goals — most of which
are not easily quantifiable.
As the mission became muddied, each surface
transportation reauthorization since 1982 has
included an increasing number of earmarks,
divided revenues among more and more different
funds, and added lengthy rules for how those
funds may be spent.
Each earmark, apportionment,
and rule has made transportation spending
incrementally less efficient.
This increasing politicization of something
that began life as a fairly efficient program is the
predictable result of government involvement in
what is essentially a private economic activity.
The
inevitability of such decline is a good argument
for abolishing the U.S.
Department of Transportation
and devolving federal transportation programs
to the states.
Short of that, Congress should make every
effort to return to a system where people get what
they pay for — that is, transportation user fees are dedicated
to systems that benefit the people who paid
those fees — and people pay for what they get — that is,
people pay the full cost of the facilities they use.
As a second-best solution to abolishing the
Department of Transportation, this paper offers
eight proposals essential for the 2009 reauthorization
to achieve these goals.
These proposals
include
Apportion funds to states based on population,
land area, and user fees
Require that short-term plans be efficient
or cost efficient
Create a citizen-enforcement process that
will ensure efficiency and cost efficiency
Eliminate long-range transportation planning
Allow unlimited use of road tolls
Eliminate clean-air mandates
Avoid earmarks
Remove employee protective arrangements from transit law
Randal O’Toole
is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute and author of
The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future
and the forthcoming
Gridlock: Why We’re Stuck in Traffic and What to Do about It
.
Speakers
1speaker6.0%attributed speech684writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Selected voice
89%flagged-word coverageRandal O’Toole
44 attributed words100% of attributed speech62% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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Analysis
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