Please see the following urgent Advocacy Alert from the American Association of Museums. My comments follow:

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BREAKING NEWS (Sept. 14, 2009)—Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is planning to introduce an amendment EARLY THIS WEEK to the FY10 Transportation Appropriations bill (H.R. 3288) to prohibit the use of funds for transportation museums within the Transportation Enhancements Program.

Since 1992, the Transportation Enhancement Program has provided at least $110.6 million to support programs in transportation-related museums.

“This latest Coburn amendment drives home the importance of stepping up our museum advocacy efforts,” said AAM President Ford W. Bell. “The fact that some in Congress still don’t understand all the ways museums enrich our communities—as educators, as stewards of history and culture, and as economic engines—is cause for concern. I urge everyone in the museum field to call their two U.S. Senators today to try to stop this misguided amendment.”

The Senate is considering the Transportation Appropriations bill RIGHT NOW and is planning to vote on the legislation by Wednesday (Sept. 16), which means Sen. Coburn’s amendment could be introduced at ANY time.

* Call your Senators TODAY and urge them to “VOTE NO on the Coburn amendment to block funds for Transportation Museums.”

To reach your Senators, call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask for your Senators’ offices.

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Personal comments: my friends, this is as close as we will ever get to a single-issue gut check for our community. There is no one in this movement who has not directly benefited from the hundreds of projects funded by this program. This Coburn amendment directly targets RAILWAY MUSEUMS--not museums in general, RAILWAY MUSEUMS--singling us out as as the latest example of useless pork-barrel spending. And the window to act is tiny--essentially, today or never.

Please, I implore you, take the time to call your two Senators today and ask them politely to vote down any amendment offered by Senator Coburn to end funding for museums in the Transportation Enhancements program. If you have the time, tell a story about the educational and economic impact these grants have had in your community. If not, its fine to just make the general request. But now is the time to stand up. No one else will do it for us.

Contacted the offices of:

Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
Senator Al Franken, D-Minn.

Received a warm, and supportive acknowledgement from both offices.

Thanks! I have contacted Barbara Mikulski (D) and Ben Cardin (D) of Maryland.

So far, I've emailed Mark Warner (D) of Virginia. I'll try to contact Senator Webb also.

I tried calling John Kerry of Massachusetts, wasn't able to get through so I e-mailed him as well. If a vote is planned for tomorrow, it seems like phone is definitely the preferable method of contact though. The automatic response I got when I sent my e-mail says I should expect a response "in the next few weeks".

The Coburn Amendment is likely to come to a vote this afternoon after the Senate reconvenes at 2pm.

This is getting broadcast as many ways as possible:

American Association of Museums has sent out the information.
Association of Railway Museums has sent out an email with this information and a request for action.
TRIANS Magazine (thanks Jim Wrinn) has posted the information on its "Train Mail" website asking for action:
http://www.trains.com/trn/default.aspx?c=a&id=5570

Please contact your Senators!

I'm.................

..............um.............




.................... okay, maybe....................



...............er.................... um..........................




What if, you know......................... just.................. I mean..................




................. what if I just might agree with Sen. Coburn that transportation museums don't exactly fall under the purvey of "transportation enhancements"?


Look, if I'm going to call out Sen. Murtha and his cronies for their egregious examples of ridiculously fat-marbled pork, or decry the current "stimulus"/TARP spending as horrendous political opportunism at its worst, I can't exactly be a hypocrite here.

Besides which, I would like to be presented with a list of ISTEA, TEA-21, and SAFETEA-LU "preservation" projects/beneficiaries, and have an opportunity to debate whether or not the allocations really reflect relative project worth, the skill or lack thereof in proposal/grant-application authorship, or the skill or lack thereof in political schmoozing.

[Donning bulletproof and flameproof outfits and crawling into the underground bunker along with the Strategic Steam Reserve......]

Why not? After all, "our Pork" is lean, nutritious, and educational. It's "their Pork" that's fat-marbled, causes cancer in laboratory rats, and is harmful to the tax-payer's health and future........................ Hypocrisy is one of the basic operating principles of almost all forms of government. It's called special interests.

About noon I saw this and made the calls and sent emails to my representatives and then forwarded it out to many of our members and directors. Since then I've received carbon copies of the announcement several times over from several friends in preservation and even a phone call, hopefully meaning that the overall call to action has saturated its way to many.

The young ladies on the end of my representatives' lines were very interested and said that I may be phoned for a follow up from several from the Senator's office regarding the matter.

What's our kind of recourse of this amendment is passed?

KL

You can get exactly the data you request and slice it as you please at the National Transportation Enhancements Clearinghouse Web site.

http://www.enhancements.org/projectlist.asp

Obviously if you agree with Sen. Coburn, don't make a call to oppose his amendment.

Meanwhile, just for me, I prefer to try to SAVE the single most important source of grant funding presently available to railway preservation.

De gustibus non es disputandem.

The Senate has recessed today without voting on the Coburn amendments, they will likely come up for a vote tomorrow. Calls and emails can still make a difference.

Thanks, Eric, for the link to the Tea grants. It is extremly informative.

Later!
Mr. Ed

Though I'm inclined to agree with Sandy, I dutifully made my phone calls to my Senators. I got through to Sen. Specter's office, but had no luck with Sen. Casey. My call was transfered to a voice mail system, which announced that the mailbox was full. I wonder how many of those overflow calls were in opposition to the Coburn amendment? I'll try him again in the morning.

Thanks, Wayne. And I should say I see your and Sandy's point, and on a broad philosopical level think there's lots to talk about and be critical of in relation to Federal spending. But I can't sign on to unilateral disarmament, this week, starting with railway museums of all entities.