Streetsblog Capitol Hill

From left: Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue, Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, Rep. John Mica, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Sen. Barbara Boxer, AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka. Photo: Senate Photographic Studio

The “Tom and Rich Show” continued on Capitol Hill yesterday. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue and AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka joined up for yet another event to show that business and labor, which don’t agree on anything, agree on a major infusion of federal investment for infrastructure.

They weren’t the only strange bedfellows there. Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer and Republican Congressman John Mica were practically holding hands through the entire press conference. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (a Democrat) found common cause with Mesa Mayor Scott Smith (a Republican).

“We have Democrats, Republicans, House, Senate, labor, business, lambs, lions, cats, dogs lying down together,” said Mayor Smith. “But there’s no apocalypse on the horizon. There’s a new dawn.”

In the past, even as other leaders in Boxer’s party have called for an infrastructure bank, she has hesitated to join them, expressing support for a strengthened and expanded TIFIA loan program instead. She’s said that rather than create a new federal bureaucracy, she’d rather stick with an existing program with a proven track record. But now she’s saying those approaches can each work in conjunction. “They’re definitely complementary,” she said yesterday. “I’m supporting the infrastructure bank, a strengthened TIFIA, and the Wyden approach [to renew the Build America Bonds program]. They’re all complementary. It’s all about leverage, leverage, leverage.”

Tom Donohue’s persistent, at times strident calls for strong federal infrastructure investment have been at odds with the calls from the fiscal conservatives the Chamber helped elect. While many in the House are bracing for a smaller reauthorization bill than hoped for – possibly even smaller than the last one, passed in 2005 – and calling for increased public-private partnerships to pick up the slack, Donohue knows that’s not going to cut it. He’s calling for a big bill, funded with a significant increase in the gas tax, which everyone in the transportation industry supports and everyone in Washington shuns.

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At today's EPW hearing, Sen. Boxer helped fellow Senators visualize what 2 million out-of-work construction workers looks like -- 20 Dallas Cowboys stadiums, with 100,000 seats each, packed to the gills. She hopes a new infrastructure bill will help put them back to work. Photo courtesy of the Senate EPW Committee.

Business and labor came together to make a rare show of unity today to push for a robust transportation reauthorization with adequate investment for infrastructure. And they spoke out loud and clear for a higher gas tax. Most surprising of all – it seemed that Senators were finally ready to have a mature discussion about it.

The gas tax has been a third rail issue lately. While finance and infrastructure experts roundly agree on the need to raise the tax – which hasn’t been increased since 1993 and whose purchasing power has been gutted by inflation and improved fuel efficiency – politicians have been unwilling to get behind a tax hike during a down economy.

Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue. Photo: AP

Enter Tom Donohue and Richard Trumka, two towering figures in U.S. economic life. Donohue, the cantankerous chief of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Trumka, the man’s man who heads the AFL-CIO, don’t agree on much. In fact, a favorite joke of today’s Senate hearing, where the two appeared together, centered on the strange-bedfellow nature of their joint push for infrastructure investment.

“The fact that Tom Donohue and I appear before you today does not mean that hell has frozen over or unicorns are now roaming the land,” Trumka joked in his opening statement at the Environment and Public Works Committee hearing. Delaware Democrat Tom Carper interjected, “When I walked up here from the train station this morning I did see a pig fly overhead.”

Carper noted that he was one of the only people on the Hill willing to support a modest increase in the gas tax to pay for infrastructure and deficit reduction. He has suggested raising it a penny a month for 25 months. The deficit commission has moderated that proposal, recommending a penny a quarter for three and a half years (resulting in a 15-cent increase), with all of the revenues going to infrastructure. Carper says that works fine, too.
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President Obama paid a visit to the Chamber of Commerce this morning, trying to make nice after a hot-and-cold couple of years.

“I’m here in the interest of being more neighborly,” Obama said by way of introduction. “Maybe we would have gotten off on a better foot if I had brought over a fruitcake when we first moved in.”

The Chamber supported Obama’s effort to keep the economy from “falling off the cliff” by passing the stimulus act. And it’s a big fan of Obama’s push for infrastructure investment, though as Bill Scher of Campaign for America’s Future notes, the Chamber’s support of infrastructure investment might have been more convincing if it hadn’t spent $31 million to get conservatives elected who would oppose essential spending.

But the Chamber was angry enough about the health care law and financial reform that it was ready to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The business association also fought with Obama last fall over charges that they were facilitating foreign campaign contributions.

Indeed, in his “State of American Business” speech last month, Chamber President Tom Donohue spent only 178 words – out of almost 4,500 – on infrastructure, not mentioning it until he was about three-quarters of the way done his speech. Still, noting that traffic congestion is “dragging down our economy,” the Chamber continues to advocate for greater investment. “The U.S. Chamber will work with anyone who shares our goals,” Donohue said in a statement following the State of the Union, “and we don’t care who gets the credit.”

In today’s appearance, which has been described in the media alternately as an “olive branch” and “the ultimate photo opportunity”, Obama got around to talking up the need to rebuild the nation’s transportation system a little earlier on. Starting with language borrowed from the State of the Union about “out-innovating, out-educating, and out-building our competitors”, Obama launched into his now-familiar push for investment:

We also have a responsibility as a nation to provide our people and our businesses with the fastest, most reliable way to move goods and information. The costs to business from the outdated and inadequate infrastructure we currently have are enormous. That’s why I want to put more people to work rebuilding crumbling roads and bridges. And that’s why I’ve proposed connecting 80 percent of the country to high-speed rail, and making it possible for companies to put high-speed internet coverage in reach of virtually all Americans.

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