Rell has good reason to be worried that earmarks designated under the “Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act” might be stalled. When the 109th Congress had the opportunity to pass its appropriations bills, the waning weeks were spent punting the fiscal responsibility to the next congress. The Courant reports:

The governor, fearing up to a $53 million loss in anticipated federal transportation funding, Wednesday called on Connecticut’s congressional delegation to fight for the money.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell voiced concern in a letter that the largest transportation initiative in Connecticut history will be delayed if Congress approves freezing transportation funding to fiscal year 2006 levels.

Rell stated that $3.6 billion has been earmarked for transportation enhancements in Connecticut over the past two fiscal years, including $667 million to replace the state’s commuter rail fleet and $300 million for new rail maintenance facilities.

Other critical projects, she stated, include a new $52 million commuter busway between New Britain and Hartford, and a new $146 million rail service from New Haven to Hartford and Springfield.

Now the appropriations process is the battlefield of the blame game, Democrats charging Republicans with fiscal irresponsibility and Republicans charging Democrats with obstruction, or oversight or something. Anything but the working together to fund the essentials apparently. Republican Congressman Chris Shays said, “It seems to me the new majority should reconsider its decision to flat-fund many federal agencies and use this legislation, which passed by a strong bipartisan vote (402-22), as a starting point for providing adequate funding.” Democrat John Larson said in response to the funding worries, “is a direct consequence of Republicans in Congress abdicating their responsibility to complete the appropriation process.”

So who’s right about this?

In September, Right before the elections, Congress shifted $5.3 billion from domestic programs to the defense and homeland security appropriations bills. As a result, the Senate Appropriations Committee can’t allocate those funds. So who came up with this brilliant idea?

The amounts the Committee included in those bills, combined with the amounts that the Senate had provided for the defense and homeland security bills before the $5.3 billion was shifted to them, exactly equaled the overall amount that the President’s budget requested for the appropriations bills in fiscal year 2007.

At the President’s insistence, earlier this year Republican leaders in Congress passed a requirement that overall appropriations for 2007 not exceed the President’s request. To meet this requirement, the $5.3 billion just added to the defense and homeland security bills will have to be cut from the other appropriations bills, which largely fund domestic programs. If this happens, Republican moderates who had sought to mitigate the domestic cuts proposed by the President will come away from the lame-duck session largely empty-handed. Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

So why Rell is writing letters to the Connecticut delegation, it seems that she should really be hoping on the Acella and heading down to the Whitehouse.