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Health & Fitness with Bill Hauda 'Golden Fleece Award' for bike paths dishonors late health fanatic That rumbling emanating from Lake Forest, Illinois, the other day wasn't an earthquake. It was the sound of the late U.S. Sen. Bill Proxmire, D-Wis., turning over in his grave as U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., invoked Proxmire's memory to condemn bicycle paths as "cosmetic" and "boondoggles." If you haven't heard, Ryan is against government waste, especially those so-called earmarks that his cronies stick into budgets to build facilities in their districts so they can get votes, obviously. To be perfectly honest, I admire Ryan for taking a stand against stuff like building "bridges to nowhere" like that Alaskan highway bridge (probably without biking or running lanes) to an island with not many people living on it. He's even teamed up with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., to present – at least on the surface – a good bipartisan front in the battle by supporting a line-item veto power for presidents to slash earmarks. Wisconsin governors have had that authority for many years. But where was Ryan when Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, got an earmark to build an indoor rain forest in, of all places, Iowa. I guess you could say going to Iowa to experience a rain forest is cheaper than the many high school trips taken to Belize, where the teachers and students get to bathe in the sun and scuba dive in crystal clear waters under the guise of education. But why build a rain forest in Iowa with taxpayer money? There's a restaurant chain that's already doing it nationally at no public expense. In addition to bike paths, Ryan's criticism is directed at groups and institutions outside Congress (the Kennedy Center, National Symphony Orchestra, Washington Ballet, etc.) that get federal subsidies. Sure, those can be questioned. But, like bike path spending, they receive tiny amounts of federal money. I wonder where Ryan stands when it comes to big ticket earmarks. How does he feel about fellow Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., getting $192.5 million to rebuild and expand his hometown of Johnstown after flooding? Have a disaster and bounce back bigger and better. May this serve as a lesson to Hurricane Katrina victims: get representatives with more power. What does Ryan think a bout House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., raking in $146.8 million for her district – after pledging to eliminate earmarks altogether? These earmarks dwarf $500,000 in grants to the Kennedy Center. Do I detect some hypocrisy here? Reluctance to confront the actual problem? But I digress. Back to the point, which is Ryan comparing himself to Proxmire. Proxmire, who came to Wisconsin from Illinois, became famous for his Golden Fleece Awards that put the spotlight on spending for truly absurd things. Examples were $84,000 to study why people fall in love and $27,000 to find out why prisoners want to get out of jail. But that's not all Proxmire was about. At the same time he was raging against government waste, he was the ultimate person-to-person campaigner and an original exercise eccentric. One of Proxmire's political campaigns cost him something like $175. It was unheard of. He got re-elected by substantial margins by going back to his district at every opportunity and shaking as many hands as possible. (If you attended a Wisconsin State Fair, you probably shook his hand and talked to him). And he volunteered to do menial but important stuff like picking up garbage and serving food at homeless shelters. But there was a greater, more inspiring side to Proxmire, and this is why the epicenter of that rumbling was in Lake Forest, where Proxmire is buried. For someone to label the bike and running trails that Proxmire loved as boondoggles or merely cosmetic is indicative of a total misunderstanding of what Proxmire was all about. Long before any of us were running, biking or skiing, Proxmire was out there running 5 or more miles a day, followed by hundreds of pushups. He was a fitness fanatic. If someone had proposed building bike paths he could run on, he would have been all for it. Instead of giving it one of his Golden Fleece Awards, he would have given such projects gold medals. Joe Henderson, a noted U.S. runner and author of A Long Run Solution, once described Proxmire as America's best known running commuter. Henderson reported that the congressman "lives 4 to 5 miles from Capitol Hill and runs at least one way most days … . Proxmire said, 'I'm very lucky in that I have a locker room here in the Senate … (But) I used to do it just using a bathroom. I'd come in, sponge down and change into my regular clothes. That worked fairly well.'" Proxmire was persistent with his exercise routine as well as pushing legislation. From 1967 to 1986, he arose daily on the Senate floor to speak in favor of ratification of an international convention on genocide. After 3,211 speeches, the Senate got the point and the convention was finally ratified by the Senate. He probably still holds the record for the most consecutive roll call votes cast in the U.S. Senate: 10,252. Rep. Ryan, who has called Proxmire his mentor, has more specious priorities. In his criticism of bike path spending, Ryan mentioned the Interstate 35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Apparently bicyclists were responsible for that. In fact, if we eliminate all cosmetic bicycle transportation funding, the government could keep bridges in good shape and the lives of countless drivers would be spared. Using that argument, maybe those Minnesota motorists wouldn't have died if our lawmakers hadn't spent our money on that indoor rain forest in Iowa. Then again, if more people had been on bikes crossing the river there would have been a lot less weight on the bridge and it might not have fallen at all. The U.S. Secretary of Transportation got thousands of e-mails from irate bicyclists when she blamed the bridge failure on bicyclists and bike paths, just as Ryan has done. The blame-the-bicyclists argument was picked up by unwitting journalists like Katherine Skiba of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, in an article headlined "Ryan carries on Proxmire's tradition." Well, maybe part of Proxmire's tradition, but certainly not all of it. In the real world, bicycle funding is a trivial sliver of the government spending pie. If you eliminated all spending on biking, you might be able to resurface a bridge and pave a few miles in each state. Claiming bicyclists are responsible for a bridge collapse is a political ploy. These critics are simply interested in getting re-elected and holding on to the power they have. While we shouldn't have cosmetic bike paths, we should build indoor rain forests and various other boondoggles so one politician or another can appear to be bringing home something of value. Nevertheless, bike paths are an integral part of our transportation infrastructure. Providing such facilities that allow more people to exercise would go a long way toward holding down energy use, curbing global warming and reducing medical costs. No, bike paths are not the only answer to these problems, but they are undoubtedly a much better investment than an indoor rain forest in Iowa. I think one of the best proposals to come along was made recently by an official of the Word Health Organization. At a WHO meeting In Kuala Lumpur, Malasia, in July, Shigeru Omi, regional director for the Western Pacific, said, "We have to adopt lifestyles that are not only healthy but also environmentally friendly such as reducing the use of private vehicles, walking more or riding bicycles." I want to see Paul Ryan and the other critics of bike paths religiously running like Proxmire did, or pedaling a bike, exercising as they commute to and from Capitol Hill along Rock Creek Parkway and the other bike paths that wind through Washington, D.C. Now that would make Proxmire proud. Bill Hauda is a bicyclist, veteran marathoner; former competitive triathlete; founder and first president of the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin; currently a BFW board member; and former director of Wisconsin's two major cross-state bicycle tours, GRABAAWR and SAGBRAW.
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