Budget

After a very cursory perusing of the proposed budget, I believe there's a clear message: if you pollute, you get money. Some tidbits (alphabetical order):

Energy: Sci/Tech decreased after 2005, environmental management decreased significantly after 2005.

EPA: clean water fund reduced almost 50% in 2 years, water infrastructure will be all but gone by 2006, superfund remains stable (more or less).

Interior: BLM, Fish and Wildlife, National Parks all slightly reduced.

Transportation: AMTRAK will be a thing of the past in two years with almost all of that going to highways.

That last item brings up an interesting problem. The highway budget is approximately 10-fold what AMTRAK costs the taxpayer. AMTRAK in certain markets (NEC, Portland-Seattle, San Diego-LA-Vegas, and others) would probably save a bunch of highway funds if it were done right. As it happens, over the last few years AMTRAK has already been gutted, but what if it were the other way around? What if service outside of the Northeast corridor (like the Pacific Coaster) were more frequent, and service everywhere would be less expensive. As it stands now, going to NY or DC from Philadelphia costs about $60.- or so per person. If there's more than one person travelling, the cost of renting a car for a two-day trip is almost the same as the train, subway and taxi fares one racks up (there's free parking in NYC on the weekends if you know where to look). Now, if fares were just a little cheaper, how many more people would use AMTRAK instead of hammering the pavement of the slaughterbahn (I-95). How much would we save?

Update: no more mister nice blog has a nice sum-up of the EPA cuts.