Bill Straub: Light at the end of the bridge for Brent Spence, thanks to just about everyone but Massie

May I rise on a point of personal privilege to discuss, briefly, something I’ve been doing on-and-off for more than 30 years – writing a column.

It should be noted that, in this job there’s a constant fear of getting stale, writing about something or someone ad infinitum, thus boring even regular readers.

It happens.

On the other hand, it’s impossible to ignore a gift that keeps on giving. Immigrants in the republic’s early days were often convinced that crossing the Atlantic would provide an opportunity to pick gold nuggets off the street. Such a prospect proved irresistible to many.

It’s beginning to appear my gold nugget, fool’s gold really, representing an irresistible target, is the Whiz Kid, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-SomewhereorotherLewisCounty, who manages one dumbfounding – accent on the dumb – action after another.

He’s manna from heaven for a humble columnist.

I could write this week about his insane proposals about weaponry – eradicating the nation of gun-free zones in wake of San Bernardino – but that would prove too easy.

Let’s go with this. You’ll be rewarded toward the end.

After years of hemming and hawing, Congress finally got around to passing a five-year transportation plan that should be a needed first step in addressing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. The long-delayed measure – and it would be churlish not to give Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Louisville props for seeing it through – invests $305 billion toward upgrading quickly decaying highways and byways.

And it could be especially good news for Kentucky, particularly for those brave souls who approach with loathing the Brent Spence Bridge linking Covington with Cincinnati on a daily basis.

While folks in Louisville are celebrating the recent debut of the Abraham Lincoln Bridge connecting the commonwealth with Indiana and looking forward even further to the opening of an east end bridge next year, Northern Kentucky motorists are relegated to whispering Hail Marys and carrying water wings whenever they attempt to traverse the Ohio River via I-71/I-75.

The Brent Spence, a cantilever monstrosity if there ever was one, opened 52 years ago and is well past its sell-by date. The bridge was designed to carry 85,000 vehicles per day but by 2006 traffic already had reached 150,000 vehicles per day and growing, with about 200,000 vehicles per day expected by 2025.

In June 2011 chunks of concrete from the upper deck of the bridge fell onto the lower deck, an incident that likely led school children to change the words of “London Bridge is Falling Down.’’ It is functionally obsolete and in dire need of replacement.

Political concerns, as always, have been standing in the way but the big issue, as always, is money. The project is expected to cost $2.6 billion – the current double-decker cost about $10 million, by the way – and the federal government hasn’t exactly been benevolent in coughing up the dough to pay for at least part of it.

But opportunity may be knocking.

Included in the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act is a provision for Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects, which provides $4.5 billion for ventures like the Brent Spence. It also creates the National Highway Freight Program, with a pot of $6.2 billion, for infrastructure projects considered critical to the movement of freight.

Well, about $417 billion in freight passes over the bridge every year. That should qualify.

So there appears to be at least an opportunity for help. The feds won’t pick up the entire $2.6 billion tab, but it could wind up tossing in a substantial portion. And with McConnell using a little elbow grease, the picture has brightened considerably for what many Northern Kentucky community leaders consider the region’s top priority.

As expected, McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green, voted for the measure signed by President Obama. So did five of the commonwealth’s six congressmen, several of whom reside hundreds of miles from the vital project.

Rep. Steve Chabot, R-OH, whose Cincinnati district includes the span’s northern terminus, said the bill “is particularly important for Greater Cincinnati, because it finally establishes a framework for financing a transportation project that is critically important to the region – the replacement of the Brent Spence Bridge.’’

In fact, Chabot said, the bridge serves as “practically the poster child for this program, and hopefully it will provide Ohio and Kentucky with a path forward on the project.’’
The final vote in the House was 359-65. There was a single hold-out in the Kentucky delegation.

Ladies and gentlemen, guess who it was.

(Insert “Jeopardy’’ theme)

Right you are, folks. The lone lawmaker to oppose the FAST Act, the program that might finally get the Brent Spence Bridge project off the schneid, was none other than the Whiz Kid, Thomas Massie, representing the 4th Congressional District of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the very same district that serves as home to the Brent Spence Bridge and the thousands of people desperately trying to get it replaced.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Massie has, in the past, expressed some support for the bridge project but consistently and pathetically maintained that there simply would be no federal funds available to offset the costs. There was, he said, “no magic pot of money.’’ So what’s a fella to do?

“So people shouldn’t expect that Washington, DC in the next two years is going to come in with a check for $3 billion to fund it,’’ he told reporters in a February conference call. “I just don’t see it happening. That’s why I take the position to say it’s not really my place because I don’t have the check to bring back from Washington, DC.”

Well, less than two years after publicly washing his hands of the project, a “magic pot of money’’ has made itself available and there may be a check for him to bring back from the nation’s capital.

And his reaction?

No thanks.

It should be noted that Massie, in the now famous phrasing of 2004 Democratic presidential candidate now Secretary of State John Kerry, was for it before he was against it.

The congressman voted in support of the transportation bill that initially emerged from the House but was one of the 65 who opposed the measure resulting from a House/Senate Conference Committee that passed both chambers and was signed by President Obama.

Massie said he changed his mind because the final bill included reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, a relatively small and generally anonymous New Deal program that finances and insures foreign purchases of goods produced in the U.S. for customers unable or unwilling to accept credit risk. He characterized the workings of the institution as “crony capitalism,’’ whatever that means.

“Proponents of the Ex-Im bank neglect to mention that American taxpayers are on the hook for loan guarantees if the foreign entities default,’’ Massie said in a statement last year.

That’s true, but the bank has proved very successful marketing domestic products overseas for more than 80 years and draws substantial support from the business community, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Regardless, it requires real work rationalizing a vote to kill potential federal funding for a project of supreme importance to your congressional district because it authorized a highly fruitful economic development program favored by commercial interests.

Chabot, by the way, also was on record opposing the Export-Import Bank. It didn’t stop him from voting for the highway bill of crucial importance to his district.

Apparently Massie could care less.

It should be obvious that Thomas Massie has no business representing the interests of Northern Kentucky in Congress. One survey cited him as one of the least successful members of the lower chamber in getting legislation passed despite serving as a member of the majority throughout his tenure. He is forever on the outside, rejecting every presented opportunity to vote for a successful Speaker of the House candidate, alienating those in charge in the process.

This is the fault of the Republican and Democratic parties in Kenton, Campbell and Boone counties. Community leaders before them toiled hard for years and years to get a congressional district centered on Northern Kentucky. Having succeeded, the region thrived like no other and having the likes of Jim Bunning, Ken Lucas et al looking after the area’s interests certainly had something to do with it.

For some unknown reason, the political elites have ceded authority to the Loser from Lewis County who, it can now definitively be shown, is much more interested in championing his extreme right wing agenda than tending to the local interests of his district.

What an embarrassment.

* * *

Remembering Carol Palmore

May I have your attention for one more moment to express my sorrow over the death this week of former long-time state official Carol Palmore at age 66.

I knew Carol for more than 30 years and she served the commonwealth well. What’s more, while folks frequently offer lip service praising the character of those recently passed, it can be genuinely said that Carol was a wonderful person, as nice as anyone you might possibly wish to meet.

Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. He currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.