Via MarketWatch, Basav Sen of the Climate Policy Program at the Institute for Policy Studies details how Exxon Mobil dictated key elements of the bill, stripping out some vital measures that would deal with climate — but hurt Exxon Mobil’s bottom line. Can’t have that. And all it took was spreading some money around…
(The editorial is also at the Institute)
...Any plan that doesn’t lay the groundwork for tackling the climate crisis with urgency isn’t worth taking seriously. Unfortunately, measured this way, the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plannow before the Senate is not a serious plan.
In his $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, President Joe Biden had proposed investing $100 billion in renewable energy generation (paired with an energy efficiency and clean electricity standard), $85 billion in mass transit, and $174 billion in vehicle electrification.
The American Jobs Plan fell far short of the scale that grass-roots coalitions like the Green New Deal Network wanted, but it was a start. The bipartisan compromise takes that already compromised plan and cuts it further to make it completely pointless.
The bipartisan plan cuts Biden’s proposed mass transit funding by 44%. It cuts vehicle electrification funding by a stunning 91%. And it cuts renewable energy by 100%—right on down to $0...
emphasis added
How did it happen? The usual way.
Recently, Exxon Mobil XOM, +1.22% lobbyists were caught on video bragging about stripping renewable energy from the infrastructure proposal and turning the package into a “highway bill”—with $109 billion for the highway infrastructure that perpetuates the captive market for Exxon’s products.
The lobbyists revealed that they specifically targeted 11 senators for lobbying—including several Democrats who signed on to the bipartisan deal.
They backed that lobbying with plenty of campaign cash—a total of $333,000 from Exxon and its hired guns over the last decade to just the six Democrats that Exxon targeted. So it was for a very good reason that the bipartisan deal has been ridiculed on social media as the #ExxonPlan.
emphasis added
Here’s the 11 Senators that were targeted by Exxon Mobil:
The role of Exxon in burning up the planet is no secret. Exxon knew decades ago that global warming was inevitable if we kept burning fossil fuels. Their response was to spread disinformation and engage in active climate denial. Campaign contributions from Exxon and the rest of the fossil fuel industry are blood money.
But it’s not the fossil fuel industry alone that’s to blame. Highway interests and politicians culling favor with people who like seeing money spent so they can drive everywhere but aren’t crazy about subsidizing “those people” and their urban lifestyle that needs good transit to function. There has been systematic bias in transportation funding long before most people became aware of global warming. Basav Sen has more:
Fund Public Transit, Not More Roads — We should stop subsidizing sprawl and spend those savings on our resource-starved mass transit systems.
...For decades, the federal government has spent 80% of transportation infrastructure funds on highways, with only 20% left for public transit. Such lopsided spending leads to serious adverse consequences.
Transportation is the largest and fastest growing source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, ahead of even coal or gas-fired power plants. Vehicle tailpipes also emit other toxic pollutants including nitrogen oxides. These are serious health hazards, especially for the poor and people of color, who are disproportionately exposed.
Our transportation system kills people more directly as well. Roadway deaths climbed from 33,000 in 2010 to more than 36,000 in 2019, with the growth mostly driven by pedestrian fatalities.
Our government’s 80-20 policy is subsidizing sprawl and traffic, even as traffic deaths and pollution keep rising. Meanwhile, it underfunds mass transit, passenger rail and pedestrian and bicycle safety.
Because it relies on people owning and operating personal vehicles, our current transportation system leaves out millions of Americans who can’t afford a car, or can’t operate one because of age or disability. It excludes the nearly one-third of Black households — and nearly 38% of low-income households — that don’t own a car.
David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo has some additional insight on the funding disparity. It’s not just about following the money — it’s also political.
Paving Over Their Differences
Over the last 18 hours, two new generations of Americans have inadvertently discovered the travesty that is federal transportation funding.
- Baked into congressional funding formulas since the 1980s is a deep imbalance: a whopping 80% of the federal transportation money goes to highways, and the balance of 20% goes to public transit. (If you’re really into this stuff, this Congressional Research Service report offers a lot of the history; see the “Great Compromise” section.)
- This dated old formula from the car-centric last century is in the spotlight because the senators trying to strike a bipartisan infrastructure deal in the Senate are squabbling over which side is deviating from that already-imbalanced formula. And when I say deviating, I mean by a percentage point or two! Not a fundamental reworking of the formula.
- Punchbowl explains nicely:
Democrats say that Republicans are trying to break the 80% highway, 20% public transit split that’s been in place for 39 years. …
Republicans tell us that this complaint is all bunk. They say the funding split over the last five years has been better than 82% highway to just under 18% transit — so highways have gotten more. And over 30 years, it’s been even lower for transit. Republicans said Democrats need to come toward them, or they risk blowing up a deal.
- It’s an enormous inequity that tilts in favor of rural areas over urban ones (it was also for many years a racist dog whistle, with “urban” meaning black and brown).
- With Democrats pushing hard for climate change provisions in their infrastructure bills, highway funding at the expense of mass transit is another example of how fossil fuels are heavily subsidized, even if indirectly (more below).
- I don’t know how the politics of this plays out in the end, but it’s one of those glaring flaws in the system that is hard to reconcile, especially to anyone coming fresh to the conversation:
So Now What?
Several points. The bipartisan bill is the lesser of two bills in the works. Democrats are hoping to use reconciliation to pass a far more ambitious bill — although the usual suspects with their chronic concerns about spending too much are making the usual objection, but are now getting pushback.
Basav Sen is concerned Biden may give ground in pursuit of ‘bipartisanship’.
Meanwhile, there has been some worrying backtracking by the White House on the reconciliation package.
The administration has suggested it won’t support any more funding in the reconciliation bill for items already funded by the bipartisan deal. This includes mass transit and vehicle electrification, both critical to tackling the climate crisis—and both areas where the bipartisan deal cuts funding to unacceptably low levels.
This is nothing short of political cowardice. It’s an exercise in futility as well, since even the bipartisan bill faces a rocky road in the Senate.
In a hopeful development, a growing number of progressive House members are expressing frustration with the bipartisan Senate negotiations, both in private and at a public rally. Hopefully they can use their political leverage to ensure that we get a just infrastructure bill.
But ultimately, a lot depends on Biden.
Biden can continue down the dangerous road of pursuing “bipartisanship.” Or he can reverse course and tell the “Exxon 11” and their colleagues that the bipartisan deal is a nonstarter. Instead, he must demand a plan that actually addresses today’s crises with just solutions.
A bipartisan shit sandwich is still a shit sandwich. We need better.
It’s not a done deal yet — the House and the Senate have to hammer out the differences between their versions, and it still has to be voted on to pass in both chambers. So…
Contact your Representatives and let them know in no uncertain terms that climate MUST be a priority. Ditto for your Senators — especially the Exxon 11. It’s end of the month time — they’re all out there begging for money.
And while you’re at it, dropping Biden a line wouldn’t hurt either. Also let Pete Buttigieg know we need some priorities adjusted.
Again from Basav Sen:
The truth is, we need a freeze on all highway expansion, except under the rarest circumstances (for example, expanding evacuation routes out of disaster-prone areas).
To the extent that we’re spending federal money on roads, we should be investing in pedestrian and bicycle safety infrastructure and repairing structurally unsound bridges. And aid for other roadway maintenance, such as repairing potholes, should be conditioned on a highway expansion freeze.
Expanding highways to alleviate congestion is a losing proposition, because growing capacity leads to growing traffic, a phenomenon known as “induced demand.” And this, of course, leads to more pollution, carbon emissions and traffic deaths.
Instead, we should stop subsidizing sprawl and spend those savings on our resource-starved mass transit systems. Currently, as many as 45% of Americans have no access to public transit. Many of the remaining 55% may only have access to a bus that runs once every hour and stops running by 6 p.m., perhaps only on weekdays.
Like new fossil fuel pipelines, we need to start making highway expansion politically toxic. Let’s dump highways and invest in transit.
Some work to make existing highways better adapted to withstand the ‘new normal’ climate is probably in order as well… as is the case for ALL of our infrastructure.
I would consider it a personal favor if you would throw in a mention of Solutionary Rail while sending out those cards and letters — and don’t forget to contact state and local politicians as well.
