Elected to the US House of Representatives in 1996, Congressman Earl Blumenauer has become a national leader on transportation, planning, and public participation. He has spent his entire career in public service. After being elected to the Oregon Legislature for two terms, he served as a County Commissioner and as a member of the Portland City Council, where his policies helped Portland, Oregon earn an international reputation as one of America’s most livable cities – places where people are safe, healthy and economically secure.
After serving on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for ten years, Blumenauer now sits on the powerful Committee on Ways and Means and on the Committee on the Budget, putting him in a particularly critical position as America seeks to navigate the current financial crisis and develop funding mechanisms to rebuild America’s infrastructure. He was also chosen by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to be a member of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, charged with battling global climate change and reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil. Ever committed to partnerships with his colleagues on Capitol Hill, Blumenauer has been instrumental in forming a task force on livable communities and the bipartisan Bicycle Caucus.
Blumenauer founded Rail~Volution, now in its 14th year, which hosts an annual conference to bring together passionate practitioners who believe in the role of land use and transit as equal partners in the quest for greater livability. He has had success as a legislator advancing Community Streetcar legislation, which became the Small Starts program in the last transportation authorization bill, and the Bike Commuter Act, which was recently enacted into law. Blumenauer is currently working on legislation to promote transportation choices and smart growth as solutions to global warming. Earlier this year, he introduced a bill to create a much needed National Plan for Rebuilding and Renewing America, which develops a comprehensive vision of how our country grows, and prioritizes our infrastructure investments.
We have a unique opportunity for the administration and Congress to put the pieces together to save money, make communities work better, and advance the goals of community health, environmental protection, and sustainable development. With this administration, we’re seeing a real step forward that will level the playing field and make the federal government a better partner to state and local governments. By providing the right incentives, we can give people more transportation options, reduce our dependence on oil, improve public health, and invest in local jobs. Local communities around the country are taking advantage of new opportunities, including… Read more
The unprecedented, unfortunate, and destructive effort by the Republican leadership in the House to politicize the already complex and difficult reauthorization process shows why the Obama Administration has been reluctant to make transportation yet another “front burner” issue. After receiving no Republican support for the economic recovery, they understandably have little interest in providing another target for demagogic, misleading, and inflammatory partisan political attacks (think “Death Panel”). The good news is that there is sufficient momentum, broad based support, and clarity of objective to move this agenda forward. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has been hard at work… Read more
The United States is currently in the midst of a severe infrastructure funding crisis. The highway trust fund – between modest vehicle fuel efficiency and inflation – has lost about 33 percent of its funding capacity since the gas tax was last increased in 1993. At current funding levels, we are about $90 billion short of maintaining our existing program, let alone doingwhat most experts feel is necessary in the future. It is important that we not rule out funding options, including tolls, until we have a strategy in place and start replenishing the trust fund. This is especially… Read more
Today we are facing a perfect storm of problems associated with transportation financing and infrastructure. The system is deteriorating faster than we can keep up with repairs and new capacity. At the same time, the funding mechanisms employed for 90 years are no longer sustainable, resulting in growing deficits and a bleak financial future. Luckily, a perfect storm is also aligning for solutions. These solutions start with a new vision for transportation that focuses on extracting more value from each federal dollar invested. By improving federal approval processes to save time, we not only make the federal dollar more valuable,… Read more
Transportation is responsible for about one-third of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States; passenger automobiles and light trucks alone contribute 21 percent. The “built environment” – transportation plus the building sector -- accounts for two-thirds of the nation’s emissions and these sectors must be responsible for a proportionate amount of the solution. Certainly, increasing fuel efficiency and decreasing the carbon content of fuels can reduce vehicles’ greenhouse gas emissions, but the emissions reductions from technological fixes will be overtaken by the continuing growth in vehicle miles traveled (VMT). It’s clear that in order to reach our climate goals, we… Read more
Related Link: http://blumenauer.house.gov
