(Wow! The Bozeman Chronicle pretty much nails my thoughts on Rehberg's manufactured rage over the public highway signs...and, by the way, if the jobless rate keeps rising, it's likely we will be using those signs again... - promoted by Jay Stevens)
Rehberg misses mark on stimulus sign debate
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle
Editorial
Published 10/1/2009
Montana Congressman Denny Rehberg's disapproval of expensive highway signs identifying projects paid for with economic stimulus money is understandable. After all, the signs could be viewed as just so much chest-beating on the part of partisan government officials.
But it looks like Rehberg may have taken aim at the wrong target.
The distinctive-looking, multicolored signs are posted along highways where federal economic stimulus money is being used to complete highway work. The text is simple: "Recovery Reinvestment," an abbreviation of the full name of the bill that authorized a more than $700-billiondollar economic stimulus package passed by Congress earlier this year.
Rehberg's took his ire over the signs so far as to complain in writing to no less than Vice President Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. But a spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration said that, while the agency approved the design of the sign, states make the decision on where or even if to use them and that the states are not required to use the signs at all.
Jim Lynch, the director of the Montana Department of Transportation and apparently the person Rehberg should have been scolding, said the Recovery Reinvestment signs are no different than the orange signs that routinely mark taxpayer-funded highway projects and are just a form of transparency that allows citizens to see where their tax dollars are going.
A Rehberg spokesman countered that Recovery Reinvestment signs are a one-shot deal, while the orange signs can be recycled with new dollar figures on them. And Rehberg argued on the floor of the House last week that, "[t]hese signs provide no jobs or long-term investment in our economy." Tell that to company that makes the Reinvestment Recovery signs - and its employees.
There's plenty of room for debate over the wisdom of some of Congress' and the administration's efforts to get the economy back on its feet by spending big federal bucks. But the sign brouhaha seems like little more than a distraction from the issues that Congress should be debating. |
