WSJ: Highway Lu-Lu

The Wall Street Journal

Highway Lu-Lu
March 18, 2005; Page A12

Republicans are bragging this week about passing a stingy new budget, but old spending habits die hard. Consider the $284 billion highway bill that passed the House last week, a 33% increase over the previous six-year spending level.

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The biggest winner is Transportation Chairman Don Young, who by one estimate brought home $722 million for his state of Alaska, about $1,500 a resident. Mr. Young felt so good about the bill that he "affectionately" named it after his wife, Lu. It's the Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, or TEA-LU. Couldn't he have just sent her flowers?

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What is it about freshly laid asphalt that causes Republicans to abandon their economic principles? In promoting the bill, Messrs. Hastert and Young described this higher federal spending as an economic boon that will create some "47,500 jobs" for every $1 billion spent. But by that logic, why not spend $1 trillion on highways? They seem to have forgotten that the money has to come from somewhere, which means it will be taken from the more productive private sector in the form of higher taxes now, or down the road (painful pun intended).

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Republicans are slowly figuring out the damage that these spending binges are doing to their fiscal image, which is why their new budget resolution claims to be tough. But a budget outline means nothing if actual spending continues to increase. It's true that the highway boondoggle is bipartisan, but as the party in charge Republicans will get the blame if all of this spending forces them to raise taxes.

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