The U.S. House of Representatives recently showed the tendencies of a drunken sailor – again – and forked over more than $1.1 billion to a program that doesn’t work, and hasn’t since its beginning.
That program? Amtrak, the government-owned passenger rail service that was formed in 1970 as a response to the failure of one-fourth of the nation’s private passenger rail lines.
The Bush White House wanted to cut the subsidies to Amtrak by more than $800 million. It would have meant closure of 18 Amtrak routes.This made fiscal sense, as these routes – including the City of New Orleans between Chicago and New Orleans – lost at least $30 on every passenger it served. The Sunset Limited, connecting Florida and Los Angeles, costs taxpayers more than $400 a passenger.
Of course, a few of the routes, particularly in the northeast between Washington DC and New York City, are heavily used, especially by members of Congress. They, along with nostalgia buffs and rail employee unions, started huffing and puffing about how trains had built America and the end of routes would leave people stranded.
That argument is off track. Lawmakers wanted to keep showering money on their constituents, and union members clearly wanted to save their jobs.
House members said they found the money to replace the Amtrak subsidies from elsewhere in the bill funding housing and transportation programs. But overall, that bill is 5.3 percent greater than last year’s spending bill, with most of the increase coming in transportation programs – another fine way to shower constituents with money.
President Bush should stand firm against these big spenders – and no, they’re not Democrats; remember the GOP controls both the House and Senate – and veto any bloated, giveaway bills.
After all, even Arlo Guthrie’s ‘70s hit recognized that “this train's got the disappearin' railroad blues.”