Standard Speaker -Former Hazleton Mayor Barletta Out to Save Government Money

News Article

By Kent Jackson

Lou Barletta, R-11, has been a congressman for four years, but he still economizes like he did as co-owner of a highway marking company and mayor in Hazleton.

"Hopefully, I can earn my pay and save the government some money," Barletta said.

Last year after becoming chairman of the House Transportation Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management, Barletta looked for savings.

A courthouse in Washington, D.C., was so big with 1,500 square feet for each employee that Barletta had trouble finding workers when he visited.

"I thought it was a federal holiday," he said.

To minimize wasted space, he executed a plan approved by the Obama administration to rent smaller buildings when leases expired. The savings in one year approximated $2.2 billion.

"My goal in life is not to wake up and make the other side look bad," Barletta said. "I was in business. You've got to work together to actually get things done."

He grew up in a family known for building roads, making asphalt and operating other businesses, and then he and his wife opened a firm, Interstate Road Marking, that became the largest of its kind in Pennsylvania.

That background makes him popular with transportation industries now that he is in Congress.

Railroads, transportation unions and air transit are three of Barletta's top five contributors, by industry, in the past two years when he raised nearly $1 million while preparing for the Nov. 4 election against Democrat Andy Ostrowski.

Barletta said American manufacturers rely on the transportation network.

In America, manufacturers pay higher wages and follow stricter environmental rules than their competitors in other nations, but transportation helps them compensate.

"We can move product faster than anybody else. If we lose that ability, we're going to lose manufacturing jobs," he said.

The workers who rebuild roads and bridges, meanwhile, cash their paychecks and take their families to dinner right where they live.

"Nothing's better for the local economy," he said.

Based on an experiment in California where the state hired private firms to build and manage a courthouse for 35 years before transferring ownership to the state, Barletta thinks private firms can be partners with the federal government for constructing and maintaining roads, buildings and other facilities at a long-term savings.

He looks for economic opportunities in other forms of transportation, too. The widening of the Panama Canal, for example, gives Pennsylvania entrepreneurs opportunities, if the Philadelphia port is enlarged to accommodate the larger ships that will sail through the canal, he said.

While transportation companies have given to his campaign, as have retailers who rely on transportation to move goods to their stores, Barletta said he has withstood pressure from their lobbyists. For example, he opposed letting heavier trucks and triple tractor-trailers drive on roadways.

Interstate highways built on 12 inches of concrete could withstand the heavier loads, Barletta said, but what happens when the trucks cross bridges or turn onto local roads?

Some 5,000 bridges are structurally suspect in Pennsylvania, the most in any state, Barletta added.

From his decade as mayor, he knows that cities struggle to maintain roads, and heavier trucks would add to the challenge. So he joined colleagues from both parties to stall the triple tractor-trailer bill while Congress studies the safety effects.

When he was mayor, Barletta gained notice nationally for advocating an immigration law that would penalize employers for hiring and landlords for renting to undocumented residents in Hazleton. Federal courts struck down the law, which never took effect.

In Congress, Barletta has pushed for policies that discourage illegal immigration, starting with a call to seal the nation's borders.

"Nobody has given me a good reason why we shouldn't," he said.

Barletta mentions border control while discussing the threats posed by the Islamic State, Ebola and drug traffickers.

Drug cartels, he said, profit by escorting many of the approximately 60,000 children who crossed the southern border this year. Barletta advocates withholding aid until Mexico intercepts children from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala before they reach the United States. He favors returning children to the homes that they left rather than allowing them to live in the United States with adults who might falsely claim to be relatives or have criminal records.

On a trip to McAllen, Texas, Barletta saw one of 62 tunnels unearthed by border agents that the cartels used to convey drugs from Mexico. In 2011, after a Justice Department report described how gangs are moving drugs to Hazleton and other places along the corridors of Interstates 80 and 81, Barletta and state Sen. John Yudichak, D-14, formed an anti-gang task force that organized seminars to teach communities ways to respond to gangs that distribute drugs.

Sneaking across the border isn't the only way that people take up residence in the United States without permission.

Barletta wants to fingerprint people as they enter and leave the country and toughen penalties on people who over stay their visas.

"This is the preferred method of terrorists coming into the United States," said Barletta, adding that 15 of 19 terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks had visa violations. Agents of the Islamic State might hide in America after their visas expire, too, he said.

He supports President Barack Obama in the decision to bomb Islamic State forces and to train moderate Syrians to fight them, but said the United States was late to recognize and respond against the threat.

Also, Barletta favors taking temperatures of travelers arriving in the United States from West African nations where the Ebola virus erupted. After meeting with editors, Barletta called for a ban on travelers from nations affected by the illness.

The United States cannot be the doctor to the world but can take a lead in sharing medical expertise to treat Ebola or future epidemics, he said.

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