This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, November 11, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Transportation will be a big issue in 2011 in Congress,

as a GOP controlled house takes up the issue what's on the table what's

off the table will Congress shrink or devolve any federal transportation

spending. Cato Institute Senior Fellow Randall O'Toole, author of the Cato book Gridlock, discusses some of what we can expect next year.

A newly invigorated majority is coming into the house.

It's a GOP majority. They have hammered away on spending. How does this affect transportation funding?

Well, it just so happens that in 2011 Congress is going to take up transportation spending for the next six years.

They passed a bill for every six years to authorize spending, and the bills for the past in the last four times have all had huge increases in spending.

They've had huge increases in subsidies to transit and particularly rail transit. And so the question is, is this

Congress going to follow that course and squeeze funding for highways and it's highway user fees that are paying for all this

and spending more on transit or is this Congress going to switch course and dedicate user fees

to the forms of transportation that are collecting those uses,

which means transit fairs should pay for transit and highway user fees would pay for highways.

So the amazing thing is, although Republicans are taking over the House, the Chairman of the House

Transportation Committee has a history of supporting diverting highway user fees for rail transit.

Commuter rail, light rail in Tampa, light rail in Orlando.

This is Representative John Micah from Florida.

He also has been a big supporter of high-speed rail in Florida. But he seems

to be backtracking. He's now saying he's against earmarking. He's now saying he's against airmarking. He's now saying he's against he's not certain that

high-speed rail it really makes sense in Florida anymore and maybe we ought to stay

...