House Republicans Vote to Cut NHTSA Budget Increases
Through an amendment by U.S. Representative Michael C. Burgess (R-TX) to the transportation funding bill, the House voted in favor of dialing back planned budget increases for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday, Automotive News reported.
Those planned increases of $46.3 million for 2016 and $76.7 million by 2021 have been cut by $15 million per year.
Burgess is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade and is responsible for a 62-page draft bill that would have credited vehicles with three advanced safety devices an additional 3 grams of CO2 per mile, up to 6 grams of CO2 per mile for a car that communicates with the road.
The cuts to the NHTSA’s increased budget come as the agency levied a record $70 million fine against Takata this week.
The NHTSA has come under scrutiny in recent years for being too cozy with and lenient on automakers and parts suppliers. The agency has taken a harder line against safety offenders under administrator Mark Rosekind, said Automotive News.
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Oh well, the company car will have to stay in the company lot.
Modest budget reductions for The Regulators are a good thing. That said, I'd like to see Congress Critters address the NHTSA's role in the continued decline of visibility / glass area.
I was going to dive into the discussion, but Mark Stevenson made my main point that reducing a proposed increase in spending is not a cut, and there's no room for my humorous take on the topic when "politics" is being "discussed". Maybe you should all go for a long drive?
If anything, the mild reduction in the rate of increase in the NHTSA budget is less than the constituents of Michael Burgess would want. He represents TX-26 in Denton county that previously sent Richard Armey to Washington DC for 18 years. People here wonder why congress can't do actual budget cuts where a budget item gets smaller instead of fake cuts that only reduce a planned increase.