Congressman John L. Mica is the Ranking Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the nine-term representative of Florida's 7th Congressional District, which stretches from the suburbs of Orlando to Jacksonville.
One of Mica's priorities as the Committee's top Republican has been the need to develop a comprehensive and national strategic transportation plan. Mica is a long-time champion of mass transit and is a proponent in Congress for developing a high-speed rail system in the United States that compares with the best systems of Europe and Asia. In October 2008, legislation that Mica helped to author was signed into law that will help bring high-speed rail to the United States.
A former Chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee, Mica was a principle author of the legislation that established the Transportation Security Administration, led Congressional efforts to create the programs to train and arm commercial airline pilots, and played an instrumental role in raising the retirement age for commercial airline pilots to age 65.
I continue to be concerned about the Transportation Security Administration’s failure to convert to a more efficient and effective security screening approach. Instead, the TSA has grown into a large bureaucracy of more than 61,000 employees nestled within a huge bureaucracy at DHS (16 Department Components, over 225,000 employees) that stifles innovation and private enterprise rather than embracing it. Over the last eight years (with the agency already going on its fifth administrator) we have spent more than $35 billion creating a centralized TSA that has resulted in great inefficiencies and inflexibility with little improvement in screener effectiveness. This money could… Read more
One of the problems with the stimulus is that it did not address the bureaucratic delays that plague the underlying infrastructure project approval process. Even CBO cautioned Congress about the ability to expedite expenditures of transportation funds because of the long approval process. Unfortunately, this bureaucratic process slows down projects to a crawl, wasting time and money. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the project delivery process can take up to 15 years from planning through construction. This is too long to build projects, and it hinders any effort to create more jobs quickly. Congress could have addressed the… Read more
I am disappointed the Obama Administration has proposed an 18-month extension of the current authorization. This action undermines Chairman Oberstar’s and my efforts to move forward with this important reauthorization process. An extension would have unfortunate and unintended consequences, delaying major infrastructure projects across the country. Numerous projects, capable of creating desperately needed jobs, would be left in the lurch for nearly two years. With the economy continuing to hemorrhage jobs, and less than seven percent of the “stimulus” devoted to transportation and infrastructure investment, the entire country needs a real effort that focuses on job creation.… Read more
The United States is far behind many developed nations in creating an intermodal transportation system. Developing a national strategic transportation plan must be one of the priorities of the next surface transportation reauthorization bill. In the past, these reauthorization bills have addressed highway, transit, and rail issues in stovepipes, but now we must develop intermodal systems that include all modes of transportation. It is time for vision and establishing a set of priorities. It is time to reject the status quo. With the condition of our economy, the growing deterioration of our infrastructure, and the mounting challenges of financing projects,… Read more
The $8 billion in stimulus funding provided by the Administration to invest in U.S. high-speed rail is certainly just a down payment, but it’s encouraging that they are willing to take this important step in finally establishing this significant transportation alternative for our nation. I am a long-time supporter of high-speed rail. For this nation to seriously consider developing this mode of transportation – long overdue, in my opinion – I thought it critical that we invite all potential participants, public and private sector, to offer proposals for developing high-speed systems in corridors around the country. I offered an initiative… Read more
Related Link: http://republicans.transportation.house.gov/
