In response to the President’s tough talk on congressional big spenders, this week a House Committee week passed a “leaner” $275 billion Transportation bill. The new version is like many other products that are marketed as “fat-free”: it’s loaded with junk and leaves a bad taste in our mouths.

Despite claims of a slimmer bill it is becoming more and more apparent that any proposed highway bill will bust the gut of the federal deficit. The Senate and the House bill writers have drawn up a complicated package of tax changes that would supposedly pay for part of the legislation, but are merely shell games. The House tax package adds money to the highway trust fund (that’s primarily funded by the gas tax) by taking it away from general revenues. The Senate’s version of the bill is no better in that it proposes $3.2 billion in tax breaks for items like archery products and liquor. Most of these provisions are recycled proposals that have been rejected in past legislation and have nothing to do with transportation, but are trying to hitchhike their way passage.

The “le.png” bill passed last week has more pork than any highway bill our nation has ever seen. From the North Pole to American Samoa, there are treats in this bill for all the good little boys and girls who supported the bill. Highlights include:

• A $500,000 landscaping job at an airport in Sanford, FL, in the district of Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL).

• $600,000 for screetscaping in Bainbridge, GA, courtesy of Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-GA).

• A $1 million offramp to the Desert Farming Institute in Imperial County in California, thanks to Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA).

Santa even wins with $1 million for repaving the North Pole. Each of the lawmakers listed above happen to sit in a good place — the committee that wrote the legislation.

But, remember, Santa’s list includes the naughty ones too; pork was denied to lawmakers that didn’t support the bill. The committee provided Colorado at least $90 million in special projects, but not one penny is earmarked for the district of Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, the Republican who opposed Rep. Young’s efforts to raise the 18-cent gas tax to finance his mega-$375 billion version of the bill.

The problem with the bill was that from the beginning, the goalposts were too expensive. The President said that he would only accept a transportation bill that was $256 billion, the House came back with $375 billion and the Senate split the difference at $318 billion. Now we end up with a bill that is $19 billion more than the President wants and its likely to expand its waistline as soon as the election is over.

Rep. Don Young (R-AK) is confident he will eventually get another $100 billion into this the bill. “This game is not over,” he told reporters, “In reality, $375 [billion] is the very, very bare minimum.” If you read the fine print, you’ll find an unprecedented reopener clause that, like the recent Medicare debacle, squeezes a fat man into size 28 jeans. The clause will enable Congress to increase the cost of this legislation by billions after the November election.

The language in the reopener clause will essentially force Congress to have to fork more money over to transportation projects before September 2005. The hope is that after the elections, the whoever is in the White House might support a larger bill and other politicians might stomach Young’s proposed gas tax hike. It’s amazing what a few months and a short-term memory can do.

This would have all changed if the President had issued a much stronger veto message. Now he has no choice, the President needs to cut the big spenders off at the knees by vetoing his first bill. We can think of no better veto candidate. The highway bill is a pork-barrelers delight, loaded with more than 2,800 earmarks, multimillion-dollar boondoggles that do very little to reduce our transportation woes.