Republican president candidate Mitt Romney said this week that he would cut federal spending on Amtrak and other programs like the public television and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Making a rare campaign appearance in Iowa, where Romney has been treading lightly after finishing second in the 2008 caucuses there, the former Massachusetts governor and front-running candidate for the 2012 GOP nomination said Amtrak funding would get the axe in a potential Romney administration.

“I’ll say as a test for each program, ‘Is this program so important that it’s worth borrowing money from China to pay for it?," the Des Moines Register reported Romney said after specifically naming Amtrak, the NEA and public television Monday in Davenport, Iowa.

The Democratic ad repeatedly plays a 2008 clip of the presidential hopeful saying "Let Detroit go bankrupt."

A bipartisan group of senators has introduced a 600-page bill to fund federal transportation programs for the next two years, which will be marked up in the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee on Wednesday.

"I am proud to be Chairman of a committee that has joined together across party lines to write a strong, job-creating transportation bill," EPW Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said. "I believe that our bill will not only protect the 1.8 million existing transportation jobs, but we will also create up to an additional million jobs thanks to the way our bill leverages federal funds."

President Obama’s high-speed rail initiative should have focused on short-distance routes, the Republican who took the president’s old Senate seat said Tuesday.

Speaking at a forum in Washington about infrastructure investment organized by the Chamber of Commerce, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) said he is “one of the few Republicans who really supports high-speed rail.”

But Kirk said that a lot of the plans that compose the president’s vision for a nationwide network of trains do not make sense.

“The technology is appropriate for 300 miles or less,” he said, referencing a proposal for a railway between Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit. 

Congress will be more open to approving an infrastructure bill in an election year, Republican Sen. Mark Kirk said Tuesday.

The two U.S. senators from Connecticut on Monday introduced a bill that would end the ability of any state to tax income earned by telecommuters who are not physically located in that state.

Sens. Joe Lieberman (I) and Richard Blumenthal (D) said the Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act, S. 1811, would help encourage telecommuting, which could create jobs, relieve traffic congestion and reduce the demand for gasoline.

Your morning transportation speed-read:

A Connecticut airport where flights were stranded recently is worried about its image.

New York's John F. Kennedy Airport's "Jack the cat" has been euthanized.

An old military flare was found in the mail at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

Officials in Los Angeles are increasing evening rail service.

Bus service in Detroit was back to normal Monday after a brief strike last week by drivers in the city over concerns about their safety following a rash of assaults by passengers.

A Washington transit union with a local affiliate in Detroit that represents the bus drivers who went on strike, the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), said last week that the strike could foreshadow a national trend because attacks on public transportation are increasing. But Detroit Mayor David Bing (D) said after the strike was resolved by negotiations that the city would do more to protect buses and their drivers.

"[Detroit Department of Transprotation] buses are now back in service," Bing said on his Twitter page after the Friday strike, which was over before the evening rush hour that afternoon. "Moving forward, there will be zero tolerance for unacceptable behavior toward bus drivers."

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) will address infrastructure Tuesday at a forum in Washington hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Kirk, who was elected in 2010 to the Senate seat once held by President Obama, will be among the speakers at the Chamber's "Infrastructure Investment Forum." Organizers said he would speak about options for increasing private investment in transportation projects.

"The forum will be keynoted by Senator Mark Kirk who will address his efforts to advance legislation that could mobilize $100 billion in private investment to build new roads, airports, and railroads using public-private partnerships without new federal borrowing," the Chamber said in an announcement of Tuesday's event. "The event will also spotlight efforts in Virginia and nationwide to use alternative contracting and financing mechanisms to deliver solutions to transportation needs."