DM&E: Are Thune and Schieffer a Couple of Crybabies?

Minnesota, South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming newspapers are rife today with more mentions of the DM&E railroad and its subsidiaries. Commanding the most attention is an Associated Press article going under the general headline “Senator blames competitors for loan rejection” or “Thune says competitors derailed loan” or “Sen. Thune: Competitors helped kill DM&E loan.”

How this all started is when Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., managed to sneak a provision into the 2005 Transportation Act on behalf of his former client, the DM&E railroad. The problem is that the provision benefiting certain railroads caused a federal loan program to swell from $3.5 billion to $35 billion, there was no discussion of it in either chamber of Congress, and almost no one knew about it except perhaps a few members of the House-Senate conference committee.

more insideThis little bit of behind-the-scenes chicanery was soon discovered and a chorus of objections ensued, led in part by the Mankato, Minn., Free Press. But by then, most of the world felt that the $2.3 billion proposal, which would be an uncollateralized loan at generous rates, was a done deal. The congressional authorization was written in stone in the transportation bill, and everybody knows that you can’t fight both the railroad and Congress