Amtrak
Basics
Republican Response to USDOT’s High-Speed Rail Grantees
In my last story about the allocation of high-speed rail funds, I said House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica (R-FL) must be pleased to finally see the Northeast Corridor get its due. In a statement hot off the GOP's presses, Mica didn't sound exactly pleased.
May 9, 2011
Government Shutdown Would Be a Punch in the Gut to Transit Agencies
A powwow between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, President Obama, and House Speaker John Boehner last night failed to yield a compromise that would put a budget in place before the government shuts down at midnight tonight. The failure of yet another attempt to negotiate makes a government shutdown all but inevitable.
April 8, 2011
House to Vote on Deep Cuts to Essential Transportation Programs
The House is still voting on amendment after amendment to the continuing resolution that will fund the federal government for the rest of FY2011. Just a quick recap as we go into the weekend. The “base bill” of HR 1 – not the amendments – would do the following:
February 18, 2011
Bike Trail Funding Survives 583 Amendments
Bet you weren’t expecting to hear any good news from the floor of the House today, were you? Turns out not everyone in Congress is as axe-happy as some high-profile Republicans. For example, Amtrak survived one attempt to cut all its funding and another to cut $447 million. (Amtrak funding does stand to lose $224 million in cuts already included in HR 1, the budget bill for the rest of FY2011.)
February 18, 2011
GOP Moves Ahead With Deep Cuts to Transportation, Housing
The House Appropriations Committee voted last night to move ahead with deep spending cuts, totaling $32 billion, to the remainder of the FY2011 budget. It’s still not the $100 billion the GOP wanted to cut, and some committee Republicans voted no, saying the cuts were still too small.
February 9, 2011
House Democrats Begin to Push Back on Draconian GOP Spending Cuts
Hasn’t it felt lately like Capitol Hill is in some kind of bizarre vortex?
February 9, 2011
“Amtrak Joe” Biden, in Philly, Announces a New Plan for High-Speed Rail
The Obama administration is taking its infrastructure push on the road. First stop: Philadelphia, to announce a $53 billion plan to invest in high-speed rail.
February 8, 2011
What Will Become of Amtrak If It’s Left Out of Plans to Expand HSR?
When President Obama and Secretary LaHood talk about their bold new vision for high-speed rail, you don’t hear them mention the country’s very own train company, which just celebrated ten years of providing the closest thing this country has to high-speed rail service, in the Northeast Corridor.
February 2, 2011
Republicans Propose Spending Cuts Targeting Amtrak, Transit Funding
A new Republican proposal would eliminate federal subsidies to Amtrak; kill New Starts, the primary federal transit funding program; and make painful cuts to dozens of other federal programs. It’s a plan by the Republican Study Committee, which is trying to keep alive House Speaker John Boehner’s campaign pledge to reduce the budget by $100 billion. Boehner himself has been backing off from the pledge, given the popularity of many of the programs the Study Committee is now proposing to axe.
January 21, 2011
Dem and GOP Senators Seek More Long-Term Rail Vision From Obama Aides
The senior Democratic and Republican senators in charge of setting annual transportation spending levels today urged the leader of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to develop a more comprehensive plan for using the White House's high-speed rail program to spur the development of viable U.S. train networks.
April 29, 2010