It’s Mitch McConnell’s Swamp. We Just Live in It.
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 12 June 2019
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you walk to the Ohio riverfront from Owensboro’s City Hall, past the Courthouse, and the Museum of Science and History, you’ll get to McConnell Plaza. Mitch McConnell Plaza. For years, this town has been courting the Senate majority leader and, recently, its paid off. What does the relationship between his office and his wife, Elaine Chao’s, office have to do with the grants this small city is receiving? Are ethics being violated?
Guest: Tanya Snyder, transportation reporter at POLITICO. Read her latest story on Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Tanya Snyder is a transportation reporter at Politico. |
| 0:08.3 | Yeah, I've been covering transportation for almost 10 years. Well, nine years. |
| 0:14.2 | That's almost 10. |
| 0:15.7 | Nine is almost 10. It's true. She works in Washington. She has been tracking these grants the Department of Transportation gives out. Who's applying? Who's getting paid? These programs are very, very popular. Everybody's trying to get a piece of this pie. And so there are many, many worthy projects that end up on the sidelines because there just isn't enough money to go around. |
| 0:38.4 | Recently, this one proposal caught her eye, a request for a few million dollars from the town of |
| 0:44.3 | Owensboro, Kentucky. |
| 0:46.2 | This request to improve some roads had been denied at first. |
| 0:50.3 | But then, right before Christmas, the money came through. |
| 0:53.9 | And so we're looking into, you know, what were the possible, But then, right before Christmas, the money came through. |
| 1:04.0 | And so we're looking into, you know, what were the possible political considerations for giving this grant to Kentucky that, you know, in previous rounds hadn't made the cut? |
| 1:12.6 | Yeah, I guess the question, the question is like if you have five almost identical highway projects, how do you choose the one that's going to get the millions of dollars? Exactly. |
| 1:17.2 | Tanya says these political considerations she's alluding to. Every administration's got |
| 1:23.3 | them. Back when Obama was in charge, the Department of Transportation was worried about climate change, |
| 1:29.3 | and they distributed money accordingly. |
| 1:32.2 | Everyone likes to say that there are no Republican roads and democratic roads and that infrastructure is bipartisan, |
| 1:38.4 | but actually there's a real ideological divide on how we build transportation infrastructure. |
| 1:48.4 | A rural road project that involves widening highways is something that the Obama administration was explicitly trying not to do. |
| 1:53.7 | They were much more interested in streetcars. They were much more interested in bike lanes. |
| 1:57.7 | And that is something that the Trump administration is much, much less interested in. |
| 2:03.3 | But this isn't a story about Donald Trump. That grant to Owensboro, Kentucky, was interesting to |
| 2:09.5 | Tanya because Owensboro's had friends in Washington since long before the current administration. |
| 2:18.0 | If you walk to the Ohio Riverfront from Owensboro City Hall, |
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