The Great Train Robbery: Taxpayer Subsidies for Amtrak Should Be Derailed; Biden Unveils $16.4 Billion Rail Grants at Amtrak in ‘blue-state’ Northeast Corridor

 As the holiday season approaches, families across America are carefully planning how to spend their hard-earned money on travel and purchases.

If only our elected officials in Washington were as frugal.

Many of them, it seems, are trying to spend as much of your tax money as possible on wasteful handouts and vanity projects. And waste is only part of the problem. Their profligacy poses an increasingly real threat to the country’s economic health.

A telling example took place as the House was debating this year’s transportation spending bill, which includes a cut to Amtrak. When a handful of moderate Republicans objected, House leadership decided to postpone a planned vote on the bill.

The potential reduction to Amtrak’s subsidy isn’t random. House Republicans have been pushing for spending cuts to reduce the unsustainably high federal budget deficit, which rose to $1.7 trillion for the latest fiscal year.

Outrageous deficit spending during the COVID-19 pandemic helped to spur the brutal spike of inflation, which remains far above pre-pandemic levels. A typical family has lost thousands of dollars in purchasing power since January 2021.

In turn, interest rate increases meant to dampen inflation are pushing mortgage payments to historic highs. With this economic environment, it should be common sense to reduce spending on low-priority parts of the federal budget.

Amtrak received a hefty $2.5 billion in the most recent omnibus spending package. If Americans used the passenger rail service heavily, that cost might be justified. Amtrak, however, accounts for less than 0.1% of passenger miles traveled, meaning its share of transportation funding is grossly exaggerated. —>READ MORE HERE

Biden unveils $16.4 billion rail grants at Amtrak in ‘blue-state’ Northeast Corridor:

President Joe Biden on Monday unveiled more than $16 billion in new grants for passenger rail projects that will benefit an Amtrak route well-traveled by the commander in chief.

The president, speaking at the Amtrak Bear Maintenance Shops, outlined how the grants will “overhaul” trains and infrastructure across 25 rail projects along the Northeast Corridor.

Dating back to his years in the Senate, Biden has logged more miles riding Amtrak than any other lawmaker, well over 1 million miles.

The funding itself, $16.4 billion appropriated through Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law, “will upgrade aging infrastructure on the nation’s most heavily traveled rail corridor to increase train speeds, reduce passenger delays, and create good-paying union jobs,” according to the White House.

White House officials were also quick to criticize recent Republican appropriations efforts, claiming that the House GOP spending packages would “slash support for infrastructure in communities across the country, while at the same time adding billions to the deficit with give-aways to wealthy tax cheats.”

Officials say that Republicans’ infrastructure funding bill would shrink Amtrak funding by $1 billion, cut aviation research funding by more than 20%, and “make 85% cuts to requested funding for major transit construction projects” aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The president’s critics, on the other hand, heartily attacked the administration’s decision to solely focus grants on the Northeast.

“The Biden administration continues to unfairly divert taxpayer dollars away from the majority of the country to bloated, over-budget, blue-state projects,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the ranking member on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, said in a statement. “Congress wrote the law for these grant programs to be competitively bid in all states, not to backfill the Gateway Program.” —>READ MORE HERE