Trumps cuts to transportation would hurt economy
Someone will have to explain to us the logic in following a call for $1 trillion in infrastructure spending during a presidential campaign with a budget proposal that seeks to cut and in some cases eliminate federal support for a range of transportation projects and services that are vital to the state’s and nation’s economy and quality of life.
President Trump, in order to pay for some $58 billion in new spending in his budget proposal — $54 billion of it to balloon the Defense Department budget to $639 billion — proposes $58 billion in cuts in discretionary spending at 19 other agencies and several other programs. The Environmental Protection Agency and State Department suffer the deepest cuts. But significant cuts are made throughout the federal government, including about $2.4 billion, a 13 percent reduction, for the Transportation Department, reducing its budget to $16.2 billion.
Those cuts, if adopted by Congress, would reach Snohomish County and the rest of Washington state. Among projects in the county that could lose federal funding:
Community Transit’s Swift II bus line, a bus rapid transit route that is supposed to begin service in 2018, connecting the Boeing plant at Paine Field, the park-and-ride at McCollum Park and the park-and-ride at Canyon Park in Bothell. The $66.6 million project was to be split, 70 percent through federal New Starts transportation grants, about 25 percent from state funding and about 5 percent from local tax revenue and other local sources.
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Lynnwood’s extension to Sound Transit’s Link light rail system, which is to connect a Lynnwood station to the larger light rail system by 2023. The $2.35 billion project was to be split with 50 percent federal funding and 50 percent from local and state sources, including car tabs, sales tax and rental car tax.
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http://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-trumps-cuts-to-transportation-would-hurt-economy/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=8ce98b8e35-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-8ce98b8e35-228635337
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