On Wednesday (June 23), Senator Pat Toomey told KDKA-2 (Pittsburgh) reporter, John Delanao that, “In addition to the $13 billion the Federal Government routinely sends to to the transit agencies, we sent another $70 billion, not seventeen, seven-zero, seventy, for a total of $83 billion in about a one year period. They haven’t even figured out how they’re going to spend the absolutely unprecedented, staggering amount of money they’re still sitting on. So my position is, how about if we go back to normal funding.”
Toomey is the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.
“If we were to pass this bill that President Biden has requested and we do the ordinary funding extension that’s being contemplated here at this hearing and we combined that with the $82 billion we provided over the last year, why, all of that money is enough that, according to 2019 Census data, we could buy every transit commuter in America a $30,000 car,” he said.
“I was taken aback by the hostility,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America, who testified during that hearing. “I’ve never seen that out of him.”
She said while Toomey has called for accountability and expressed some skepticism for the federal investment in transit in the past, “this is a totally different thing from someone from a state like Pennsylvania that has one of the bigger transit systems in the country.” Her group’s mission includes advocating for transit.