A stupid question

It never seems to be the right time.

If you’re a middle class taxpayer &#8212 it means you have a job. And if you have a job, you’re a commuter. And if you’re a commuter you know the sorry state of the roads and transit systems in much of this country.

You are the engine of the economy, and yet you have to run a gauntlet of traffic jams and equipment breakdowns and delays, just to get to work every day.

And that is, in part, because Congress has been unable to pass a long-term transportation budget since 2005.

It never seems to be the right time. They just can’t find the money.

There is so little money that a House committee went ahead with a vote to cut Amtrak’s budget the day after that Pennsylvania crash.

And when a reporter brought it up at House Speaker John Boehner’s regular Thursday news conference &#8212 he would hear none of it.

“Are you really gonna ask that? That is a stupid question,” Boehner said. “Listen, they started this yesterday, ‘It’s all about funding, it’s all about funding.’ Well, obviously it’s not about funding; the train was going twice the speed limit.”

His point was, you don’t make policy because of one accident that was caused by an engineer who messed up. Fair enough. But if now isn’t the time, just when will that time be?

Everybody who commutes and sees that commute getting slower and slower has to be asking themselves &#8212 since it’s commuters like me who pay for this operation that we call the United States of America, why should I have to fight my way to work every day?

Or is that a stupid question?