Amazing... Let me add that high speed rail fund was in the stimulus bill from the get-go the one that the Party of No voted no on.
Thinkprogress:
The AP reported earlier this month that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R-LA) administration is planning to request $300 million dollars from the federal government to develop a high-speed rail between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The trains, which would run at about 79mph, would be part of a larger Gulf Coast rail plan with top speeds of 110mph. Much of the money, however, comes from the Recovery Act, a stimulus measure Jindal not only opposed, but recently called a failure.
In opposing the Recovery Act, Jindal offered the Republican party’s official response to President Obama’s nationwide address last February. Jindal specifically smeared high-speed rail projects as “wasteful spending”:
JINDAL: While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a “magnetic levitation” line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called “volcano monitoring.”
Despite Jindal’s political grandstanding, officials in his own administration have praised the idea of high-speed rail. “Long term, we see it as a very valuable economic incubator for the entire corridor, ” said Tom Atkinson, an official in the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development.
Jindal is trying to have it both ways on the Recovery Act. Though he slams it as a “stimulus that has not stimulated,” Jindal recently went on a 64-parish tour handing out jumbo-sized ceremonial checks filled largely with Recovery Act funds (view a compilation of Jindal’s check giveaways here). Rather than acknowledging the source of the money, Jindal printed his own name on the checks.
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