More Republican Hypocrisy
Bobby Jindal thinks that money provided in Pres. Obama’s stimulus package for high-speed rail projects is wasteful pork — for Las Vegas and Anaheim, California, but not for Louisiana:
Explore posts in the same categories: PoliticsLouisiana’s transportation department plans to request federal dollars for a New Orleans to Baton Rouge passenger rail service from the same pot of railroad money in the president’s economic stimulus package that Gov. Bobby Jindal criticized as unnecessary pork on national television Tuesday night.
The high-speed rail line, a topic of discussion for years, would require $110 million to upgrade existing freight lines and terminals to handle a passenger train operation, said Mark Lambert, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development.
Jindal on Tuesday delivered the official Republican Party response to President Barack Obama’s address to Congress. He criticized the stimulus package passed by the Democratic-majority in Congress and the president and noted examples of projects that he found objectionable.
“While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending,” Jindal said. “It includes … $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a ‘magnetic levitation’ line from Las Vegas to Disneyland.”
The $8 billion pot is for high-speed rail and inter-city passenger rail service projects. The Federal Railroad Administration will make decisions about which grant applications to approve but has not yet released the rules and requirements that will determine the awards process. Emphasis will be placed on projects that are near ready for implementation so that the stimulus money can hit the streets soon.
Jindal oversees the state transportation department and appointed its secretary.
Liberty Street 
February 28, 2009 at 10:56 pm
As a state government, it doesn’t really matter if you think the money is wasteful or not. A state still needs to try hard to get that money spent in the state. Otherwise, you would have the situation where the federal government taxes your populace, but spends the money in all the other states. So, even if every citizen in Louisiana thought it was wasteful, they would still need to fight to get the dollars back that already left their state.
It really illustrates how out of balance it is to have a federal government that can tax without restriction. It undermines the state governments.