Oh, HELL no...

Much of the rail line along the Gulf Coast would remain in hurricane danger, and the proposed rerouting would affect only a small part.

The real impetus appears to be economic. For more than half a dozen years, Mississippi officials, development planners and tourism authorities have dreamed of the complex restructuring of Mississippi's coastal transportation system that Lott and Cochran now want to set in motion. Under the plan, the CSX line -- which runs a few blocks off the coast line -- would be scrapped. CSX would move its freight traffic to existing tracks to the north owned by rival Norfolk Southern.

Then U.S. 90, a wide federal highway that hugs Mississippi's beaches, would be rebuilt along the CSX rail bed. The route of the federal thoroughfare would be turned into a smaller, manicured "beach boulevard" through cities such as Biloxi, where visitors could "spend more time strolling among the casinos and taking in the views," as the Governor's Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal put it.

"There's nothing wrong with this if Mississippi wants to do it. Mississippi wanted to do it before the hurricane," Coburn said. "But why is it a federal responsibility? Why should our grandchildren pay for it?"

Mississippi Senators' Rail Plan Challenged
War Bill Includes Millions to Move Just-Rebuilt Line
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 18, 2006; A01

Mississippi's two U.S. senators included $700 million in an emergency war spending bill to relocate a Gulf Coast rail line that has already been rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina at a cost of at least $250 million.

Republican Sens. Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, who have the backing of their state's economic development agencies and tourism industry, say the CSX freight line must be moved to save it from the next hurricane and to protect Mississippi's growing coastal population from rail accidents. But critics of the measure call it a gift to coastal developers and the casino industry that would be paid for with money carved out of tight Katrina relief funds and piggybacked onto funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It is ludicrous for the Senate to spend $700 million to destroy and relocate a rail line that is in perfect working order, particularly when it recently underwent a $250 million repair," said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who is planning to challenge the funding when the $106.5 billion war spending bill reaches the Senate floor. "American taxpayers are generous and are happy to restore damaged property, but it is wrong for senators to turn this tragedy into a giveaway for economic developers."

Securing money for pet home-state projects is nothing new for Lott, a famous benefactor of the Mississippi coastline, or for Cochran, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. But the fight over the rail funding will come at a sensitive time, when both houses of Congress have promised to rein in such "earmarks" as part of a larger effort to overhaul ethics rules, and when a stubborn budget deficit has made spending of all kinds a sensitive political issue.