How Not to Plan for the Future
The agreement between Congress and the White House to virtually eliminate money for high-speed rail is harebrained. France, China, Brazil, even Russia, understand that high-speed rail is central to future development. Not Washington.
The budget package eliminated about $1 billion that President Obama had wanted to add to the current budget, and it rescinded $400 million of $2.4 billion that was already designated for high-speed rail this year.
That money was supposed to go to Florida, but it’s now up for grabs after Gov. Rick Scott mindlessly rejected a plan to build the first high-speed rail corridor between Orlando and Tampa. Despite the vast support of business, Governor Scott claimed it would be too costly for the state government. It turns out that a lot of other governors — including 11 of Mr. Scott’s Republican colleagues — would love that money.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has to choose among 90 proposals from 24 states, the District of Columbia and Amtrak — $10 billion worth in all. The real scandal is that Washington won’t pay most of them.
Two areas stand out on that list: the Northeast corridor from Boston to Washington; and California, which has ambitions to build a high-speed rail system from San Francisco and Sacramento to San Diego. California voters have approved almost $10 billion in bonds for the project (which has an ultimate price tag of some $45 billion), but the state wants the $2 billion for an extension.
That is a promising project, for later. The overall price is not practical now, and the Northeast already has the fastest train in the country, the Acela, which is running on tracks that do not allow it to reach its full speed.
Amtrak, backed by regional governors, is asking for $1.3 billion that would help speed up Acela trains. Some would go to signal, electrical and track improvements to boost the Acela’s speed from 135 miles per hour to 160 m.p.h. in a long stretch between Philadelphia and New York City. New York has another request to clear a path for Acela through an overloaded exchange near New York City’s Pennsylvania Station. Right now more than 750 Long Island Rail Road, Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains pass through there daily.
Other requests in the Northeast proposal include money for Amtrak to start work on two tunnels under the Hudson River. Those tunnels, vital to rail and road travel through the region, would replace a project that New Jersey’s governor, Chris Christie, canceled last year, costing his state $3 billion in federal funds.
After making that terrible mistake, Mr. Christie now says he wants $570 million in funds to replace another choke point for the Acela — the 100-year-old Portal Bridge across the Hackensack River. He is even willing to put up $150 million of state money, since the bridge is also used by New Jersey commuter trains. In his letter asking for federal funds, he lamented that the bridge, which swings open for river traffic, is “beyond its useful life” and delays trains. That’s rich coming from the man who canceled a project that was vital to ending train delays in the future.
There are many requests, even one from Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican who earlier rejected $810 million of these funds. Now he wants $150 million for a modest rail project between Milwaukee and Chicago.
President Obama originally proposed spending more than $50 billion over the next six years to make America’s passenger rails compete with other industrialized nations. He wants 80 percent of the nation to have access to high-speed rail in 25 years. That’s not likely to happen with this Congress. Perhaps Governors Christie and Walker, and other Republicans who have a sudden fervor for high-speed rail, can help make his case.
Time for Plan B
A 14-year effort to negotiate an international treaty banning the production of nuclear weapons fuel is getting nowhere. Under the terms of the United Nations’ Conference on Disarmament, all 65 participants must agree. Pakistan, which is racing to develop the world’s fifth largest arsenal, is refusing to let the talks move forward.
It is clearly time for a new approach. So we are encouraged that the Obama administration has begun discussing with Britain and France and others the possibility of negotiating a ban outside the conference, much like the 2008 convention on cluster munitions and the 1997 land-mine treaty. While the United States, Russia and China still are not signatories — they should be — many others are, and the two agreements are credited with greatly diminishing, although not eliminating, the use of both weapons.
Russia and China, which must be part of any fissile material ban, are resisting the idea of ad hoc negotiations. They should tell Pakistan to let the conference do its job, or they should accept the alternative. China has particular influence as Pakistan’s longtime supplier of nuclear technology, including a fourth reactor for producing even more nuclear fuel.
Islamabad dug in its heels after the George W. Bush administration persuaded the international community to lift a ban on civilian nuclear trade with India. The ban remains in place for Pakistan.
India, unlike Pakistan, isn’t a serious proliferation risk. Still, the deal was deeply flawed. It did not require India — estimated to have at least 100 nuclear warheads — to halt fissile material production. And now that New Delhi can buy foreign uranium for its power reactors it can husband its domestic uranium for weapons.
Islamabad argues that the fissile material ban would further lock in a military advantage for India. Pakistan already has 95 or more deployed nuclear weapons, up from the mid- to high-70s two years ago. It should be less fixated on India and more focused on using scarce resources to educate its children and battle home-grown extremists. Along with the test ban treaty (which the Senate still must ratify), getting countries to stop producing fissile material is essential for curbing the world’s most lethal weapons. A ban would give the United States and others more leverage to pressure North Korea and Iran to abandon their nuclear efforts. Serious negotiations need to start now.
77 Cents on the Dollar Isn’t Fair
In a disappointing defeat for women, Senate Republicans worked overtime in December to ensure that a measure addressing gender-based wage discrimination never reached the Senate floor where it likely would have passed by a sizable majority. Fortunately, supporters of the Paycheck Fairness Act have not given up.
Last week, Senators Harry Reid, the majority leader from Nevada, and Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, reintroduced the bill. Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat of Connecticut, has reintroduced the legislation in the House.
Women now make up almost half of the American work force, but, according to data compiled by the Census Bureau, full-time female employees still make, on average, only 77 cents for every $1 earned by men.
The bill, a much-needed updating and strengthening of the nation’s half-century-old Equal Pay Act, would enhance remedies for victims of gender-based wage discrimination, shield employees from retaliation for sharing salary information with co-workers and require employers to show that wage differences are job-related rather than sex-based, and justified by business necessity.
President Obama has pledged to “keep up the fight” to pass the bill. In a recent radio address, he explained that he takes the issue personally, “as the father of two daughters who wants to see his girls grow up in a world where there are no limits to what they can achieve.”
With Republicans now in charge of the House and the Senate’s Democratic majority whittled down, securing the needed votes will be tough.
Women around the country — from both parties — need to speak up. Lawmakers might think twice about refusing to act if they knew that female voters were taking down the names of those who would rather please corporate interests than stand up for a woman’s right to earn equal pay for equal work.
A Good Law That’s Working
After years of overfishing, many fish populations have begun to recover. On Monday, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced that New England’s fishermen will be allowed to increase their catch of 11 commercially important fish stocks in Atlantic waters this summer.
This progress, and that announcement, can be traced directly to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, a 35-year-old law that imposes ambitious timetables for rebuilding depleted fish stocks and gives scientists a major say in setting limits. So it is disturbing that New York’s two Democratic senators, Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand — both with solid environmental records — want to weaken the law.
Along with two senators from North Carolina, Kay Hagan, a Democrat, and Richard Burr, a Republican, they have introduced the Flexibility in Rebuilding American Fisheries Act. It would extend the deadlines for rebuilding fish populations and give greater weight to the “economic consequences” of fishing restrictions — another way of saying that science should play a less-decisive role.
Senators Schumer and Gillibrand are responding to the complaints of Long Island fishermen who say they are seeing more fish like summer flounder and argue that they should be allowed to exceed existing quotas. But they should ask themselves this: Why are they seeing more fish? As in New England, the reason is Magnuson-Stevens, and the limits on overfishing it imposes.
The senators need to show more patience. As fish populations improve, catch limits are relaxed. The summer flounder quota has gone up by 89 percent since 2008 — a healthy jump for fishermen but not enough to slow the species’ steady recovery. Since many other species around the country have not fared as well as those in eastern waters, and still need time, the message here is clear: Leave Magnuson-Stevens alone.
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