SAFE, ACCOUNTABLE, FLEXIBLE, EFFICIENT TRANSPORTATION EQUITY ACT: A LEGACY FOR USERS

(Redirected from 2005 Highway Bill)
The 'Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users' ('SAFETEA-LU'), which governs United States federal surface transportation spending through 2010, was signed into law by President George W. Bush in Montgomery, Illinois, on August 10 2005.
The $286.4 billion measure contains a host of provisions designed to improve and maintain the transportation infrastructure in the United States, especially the highway and interstate road system. It also contained funding for over six thousand earmarks for home-district projects:

★ $1.7 million for improvements to Guy Lombardo Avenue in Freeport New York.

★ $3.5 million for horse trails in Virginia.

★ $231 million for a bridge near Anchorage, Alaska, to be named Don Young's Way after the local congressman. The project would connect the city to undeveloped area nearby.
The law garnered a large amount of bipartisan support, though support was not unanimous. President Bush had promised to veto any highway bill costing more than $256 billion, and this bill totaled $284 billion. Last-minute negotiations ensured the president did not use his veto pen for the first time.
Critics charged that the law became heavily laden with pork spending as it made its way through the House of Representatives and Senate, such as a $223 million apportionment for the construction of a so-called "bridge to nowhere" that would cross to a small island in Alaska, spending that critics saw as targeted less at the improvement of the national transportation system than at garnering votes for congressmen in their home districts.
An amendment to divert some of this discretionary spending to relief from Hurricane Katrina (the Coburn Amendment) failed.

Contents

External links

External links

★ Bush signs highway bill into law

★ Full text of SAFETEA-LU

★ Impact of SAFETEA-LU on California's Transportation Program