As I reported Monday, Republicans are torn between acknowledging the need for infrastructure modernization and appeasing the right flank of their party. This has typically been bipartisan territory, but suddenly top Republicans, dragged to the right by the activist wing of their party, must disavow most new spending. So they spin their wheels when asked how to improve transportation infrastructure without new spending. But they’re also forced to reject projects they once cheered.
One of the main flanks of the Republican agenda is to reclaim the last unspent stimulus dollars — many billions of which are pegged to high-speed rail projects.
“If there is one thing that I think all of us here on both sides of the political aisle from all parts of the region agree with, it’s that we need to do all we can to promote jobs here in the Richmond area,” said then House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, shortly after the stimulus bill passed in 2009.
He was talking about a high-speed rail stimulus project that he claimed would bring scores of thousands jobs to the region.
“The estimates of job creation are 85,000 to 160-some thousand jobs for the commonwealth, most of that in this area,” he said.
But he can’t support projects like this anymore.
“We are in times that we need to go about shrinking the size of government, getting of rid of everything but absolute priority spending,” Cantor acknowledged at a press stakeout Tuesday morning. “I’ve already come out and said I would be in support of cutting that spending at this time.”
This is stuff Democrats like, the Chamber of Commerce likes, labor unions like, environmentalists like, and, once upon a time, “national greatness” Republicans liked. But genuflecting to their conservative base has become a higher priority for Republicans than supporting job-creating programs they once supported. That’s at least in part because of a political environment they helped foster.
