Photograph by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx, right, speaks after being introduced by President Barack Obama as the nominee for Secretary of Transportation at the White House, next to outgoing Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, left, on April 29, 2013 in Washington, DC.

Anthony Foxx, whose nomination as Transportation Secretary has slid under the radar as picks for the labor and commerce departments get more scrutiny, will get his moment in Washington at a confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee.

Foxx, 42, is scheduled for his hearing tomorrow, the day before the panel headed by Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, considers the nomination of Penny Pritzker to be commerce secretary.

Foxx is the part-time mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, and has little experience with transportation policy outside his state. Obama nominated him to replace Ray LaHood, a former Republican U.S. House member from Illinois, who is stepping down.

After criticism that too many of his second-term cabinet nominees were white men, President Barack Obama increased the diversity of his nominations for those posts. Foxx would be Obama’s second black cabinet officer, after Attorney General Eric Holder.

Rockefeller has said he doesn’t expect Foxx to have trouble getting confirmed and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, has called Foxx’s confirmation a priority.

As mayor, Foxx led Charlotte as it hosted the Democratic National Convention last year when Obama was nominated for a second term. When his nomination was announced, Foxx drew support from lawmakers and transportation groups.

The Senate is working its way through Obama’s nominees to second-term posts. Last week, a Senate panel approved the nomination of Thomas Perez to be labor secretary. Last month, the Senate confirmed Sally Jewell, an outdoor-equipment company executive, to become interior secretary.

Original post is Low-Key Mr. Foxx Goes to Washington by Political Capital.

Photograph by Gary M. Baranec/Altoona Mirror/AP Photo

Retired Rep. Bud Shuster, right, congratulates his son, Bill, after Bill clinched the Republican nomination to fill Shuster’s 9th District congressional seat in this file photo.

It was a back-to-the-future moment.

Rep. Bill Shuster, the Pennsylvania Republican taking over the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, received the gavel in a packed room that featured his 81-year-old father, Bud, who presided over the panel for six years in the late 1990s.

And it wasn’t just any gavel:

Outgoing chairman John Mica, the Florida Republican, presented Shuster one made out of wood from a barn on the Shuster family farm. The son commented that he hoped the barn was still standing, seeing as the father had engineered the removal of the beam that provided the wood.

The committee gave Bud Shuster a standing ovation. There was a nostalgia for the old days, when the committee really was bipartisan. Rep. Nick Rahall, the panel’s senior Democrat, recalled how Bud Shuster used to attend his fundraisers.

“That’s the way we used to do things,” Rahall said, addressing the newly expanded committee’s 19 freshmen. “Let’s stand together, even against our party leaders if necessary. Let’s let politics stop at the committee’s doors.”

If the cultural makeover happens, it will be quite a change from Mica’s two years in charge. Democrats repeatedly complained of being cut out of negotiations during the all-important surface transportation bill talks. Mica pronounced the final highway law the most Republican ever written by Congress.

Original post is Transportation’s Gavel-Passing: Recalling Gentlemen’s Old Days by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Passengers walk beneath an Amtrak sign at Union Station in Washington.

Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman had hoped for an easier ride in 2013 after Florida Republican John Mica had to relinquish the chairmanship of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Mica, who was term-limited out of the post, took great pleasure in poking fun at Amtrak’s losses from its food service and its federal subsidy.

With Pennsylvania Republican Bill Shuster in the new T&I post, Boardman had hoped for smoother track through that committee, which is due to reauthorize Amtrak this year. He was in for a rude awakening yesterday, when Shuster named California Republican Jeff Denham as the Railroad Subcommittee’s chairman.

Denham last month lit into California’s high-speed rail project at the final hearing Mica held to grill Boardman about Amtrak. Denham said he supported the project as a state senator before the cost ballooned and the state’s credit rating was downgraded.

“Let’s put it back on the ballot so that we can end the project once and for all,” Denham said then.

Denham earned his stripes chairing another T&I subcommittee that last year probed excessive spending at conferences by the General Services Administration.

Boardman today said he doesn’t know Denham too well, only having “experienced him” in the Dec. 6 hearing.

“He’s got a steep learning curve,” Boardman said in an interview following a press conference to announce a plan to buy trains for California’s rail project. “He had a history in California of what in-state issues are, but his view now has to be larger. It’s not just California parochially.”

Original post is Amtrak’s Rough Ride Renewed by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

A Transportation Security Administration officer demonstrates how to walk through the ProVision Millimeter Wave advanced imaging technology machine at the TSA Systems Integration Facility in Arlington, Virginia.

True to its word, the Transportation Security Administration followed through on its pledge to boycott today’s House transportation hearing about the agency’s impact on commercial air travel, evoking strong words if not subpoena threats from committee leaders.

Committee Chairman John Mica called TSA Administrator John Pistole’s absence “very sad.” TSA airport screeners now pose more risk than protection to airline passengers, and the agency seems most interested in preserving its bureaucracy, Mica said.

“We need to be closing down TSA as we know it and instituting a safer, more efficient, less bureaucratic system,” the Florida Republican said.

Screeners are “shaking down grandmothers, veterans, people with disabilities” and stealing from passengers’ bags, he said.

Rep. Tom Petri, the Wisconsin Republican who leads the aviation subcommittee, said the agency is on a “path of non-transparency and arrogance.”

“Their actions today show why the public is so frustrated with the TSA,” he said.

Pistole said Nov. 27 that neither he nor anyone else from the agency would appear at the hearing, saying the transportation committee doesn’t have jurisdiction over his agency. Mica, Petri and Bill Shuster, the Pennsylvania Republican who will become committee chairman in January, say they have a right to monitor the agency because it’s part of the aviation system they oversee.

Pistole, in his statement, said his agency would continue working with committees of jurisdiction, noting it’s appeared 38 times at hearings in the past two years and given hundreds of private briefings.

Written with Bernard Kohn 

Original post is TSA’s Hearing Boycott `Sad:’ Mica by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Union Station in Washington.

Rep. John Mica may not be able to yank the Transportation Security Administration’s chain during his final month as chairman of the House transportation committee.

But he’s still got Amtrak.

Mica, the Florida Republican who ceded his bid to remain chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee past his term limits, hauled Amtrak Chief Executive Officer Joe Boardman before the panel today for the fourth time this year. And he announced two more hearings on what he refers to as  the “Soviet-style” Amtrak for December.

“Everybody’s focused on the fiscal cliff,” Mica said. “Sometimes people give me a hard time for focusing on Amtrak. But we have put $1.4 billion into Amtrak in the past year. We do have a responsibility for taxpayer dollars.”

Today’s hearing was benign by Mica’s standards, as he praised Amtrak for its work recovering from the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in New York. Yet he noted he didn’t purchase any food on his train trip to the Big Apple yesterday because taxpayers would have lost money on anything he bought.

At an August hearing, Mica brought hamburgers along to illustrate his criticism of Amtrak’s losses on food and beverage service. He followed that up with a press conference outside a McDonald’s, during which he pointed out the cost difference between the fare there and on Amtrak and, according to Politico, yelled at a passing train, “Please don’t buy the hamburgers!”

Today’s latest Amtrak hammering comes a day after TSA Administrator John Pistole sent word to Mica that neither he nor his agency will show up for a hearing critical of the security body tomorrow. Pistole said Mica’s panel, even though it helped create the TSA after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, doesn’t have jurisdiction over the agency.

Who has jurisdiction over Amtrak isn’t in question. So look for Boardman to return to Capitol Hill on Dec. 6 and 13 when Mica holds hearings on high-speed rail and Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.

Original post is Amtrak CEO Running on Lame-Duck House Chairman’s Borrowed Time by Political Capital.

Photograph by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

TSA employees demonstrate an advanced image technology (AIT) millimeter wave scanner using new Automated Target Recognition software at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada.

House Republicans haven’t tired of working over one of their favorite punching bags, the Transportation Security Administration, holding more than two dozen hearings in 2011 and 2012. Agency Administrator John Pistole now is drawing the line.

Pistole not only sent word today that he won’t testify as invited at a hearing Thursday at the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on how TSA is affecting the “free flow of aviation commerce,” he also said no one else from the agency will attend. The committee “has no jurisdiction over the Transportation Security Administration,” he said in a statement.

He took his stand one day after the committee’s term-limited chairman, Florida Republican John Mica, ended his long-shot campaign to retain the helm in the next Congress and threw his support to Representative Bill Shuster, a Pennsylvania Republican.

Mica’s lack of official jurisdiction over TSA under House rules didn’t stop him from spotlighting what he called its mission creep, bloated management and history of ordering costly scanning machines that didn’t work. He inserted language into the Federal Aviation Administration authorization bill this year that overruled Pistole and forced TSA to let more airports turn screening over to private security companies.

If Shuster’s reaction is any indication, Pistole’s declaration hardly settles things.

“I don’t think we have direct jurisdiction but when they impede commerce, when they impede the traveling public, they need to answer to the committee,” Shuster said in an interview.

Shuster said he “absolutely” expects TSA officials to appear at transportation committee hearings. Asked what will happen if they refuse to testify, Shuster said: “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

TSA officials previously testified before three joint hearings of the Transportation and Oversight and Government Reform committees. Pistole answered Mica’s questions in public once before, when Mica sat in on a hearing of a homeland security subcommittee led by Alabama Republican Mike Rogers.

TSA “will continue to work with its committees of jurisdiction to pursue effective and efficient security solutions,” Pistole said. He pointed out the agency has provided 425 background briefings for members of Congress in addition to testifying at 38 hearings.

Chris Stromm contributed to this post

Original post is TSA to Mica: You Have No Jurisdiction by Political Capital.

Photograph by Hendrik Holler/Getty Images

Traffic jam at rush hour in Los Angeles.

Sitting in traffic is expensive.

An estimated $100 billion a year goes down the U.S. economy’s drain as a result of congestion, says the Texas Transportation Institute. Trucking companies pay about a quarter of that, and now Congress is toying with ways to get them out of first gear.

Fancy that. The masters of political gridlock are considering an answer for highway gridlock.

BGOV transportation analyst Matthew Hummer takes a closer look at the Senate’s proposed highway bill, which would include $2.5 billion a year to ease freight movement. His Bloomberg Government Study suggests that the bill has several shortcomings. It proposes to spend the money in the same states as the last bill did, whether the state has a freight movement problem or not. And because truckers share the roads with cars, spending money on roads may encourage more use by cars, adding to the congestion.

The stakes aren’t small. Hummer calculates that every 7.5-mile-per-hour slowdown amounts to $12.42 an hour in lost revenue for five of the biggest trucking companies.

Transportation policy is famously slow moving. The Senate’s plan may be an opening gambit in a long-term shift in spending federal highway money. Or it may be dead by the end of the summer.

Original post is A Faster Lane for Trucks? by Political Capital.