Mitt Romney vows to Eliminate Amtrak

[Lunican]

You've promised to cap government spending at 20% of GDP. Specifically where will you cut?

There are three major areas I have focused on for reduction in spending. These are in many cases reductions which become larger and larger over time. So first there are programs I would eliminate. Obamacare being one of them but also various subsidy programs -- the Amtrak subsidy, the PBS subsidy, the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities. Some of these things, like those endowment efforts and PBS I very much appreciate and like what they do in many cases, but I just think they have to strand on their own rather than receiving money borrowed from other countries, as our government does on their behalf.

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/15/mitt-romney-interview/

[finehoe]

the Amtrak subsidy, the PBS subsidy, the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities.

And these things add up to what, about .01% of the budget?  How BOLD!

[JeffreyS]

I hope this is a big loss and is the end of Romney in politics.

[fsquid]

well there a few more paragraphs that weren't copied and pasted from the interview.  But, you are right, those things aren't too much.

[jcjohnpaint]

... and that is why I would never vote for Mittens and Eddie Munster

[Ocklawaha]

Killing Amtrak has been a centerpiece of conservative politics almost from the beginning back in 1971. Reagan made it a battle cry and various others have too. Oddly, Amtrak took it's worst ever cuts under president Jimmy Carter, a liberal Democrat, and grew during the Reagan years!

Carter cut:

Washington to Catlettsburg Ky - 'Hill Topper'
Chicago to Miami - 'Floridian'
New York to Kansas City via Pittsburgh - 'National Limited'
New York to Miami - 'Champion'
Chicago to Seattle - 'North Coast Hiawatha'
Chicago to Houston via Kansas City and Dallas - 'Lone Star'

Hey, but he did approve reconstruction of a 12 mile gap in the old Boston and Albany Railroad route between the namesake cities, allowing the Chicago-Albany-New York 'Lake Shore Limited' to have a section that could split off at Albany for Boston.

Under Democrat Bill Clinton, Amtrak faced total elimination as a 'means to save the American budget'. The Desert Wind operated  three times a week between Chicago and Los Angeles through Denver, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. The Boston-to-Albany, N.Y. section of the Lake Shore Limited ran between Chicago and Boston; the St. Louis to San Antonio section of the Texas Eagle, which originated in Chicago; and the Pioneer, which ran between Chicago and Seattle via Denver were all scheduled to be wiped out. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the REPUBLICAN Texas Senator saved the Texas Eagle.

With Bush as president, Hurricane Katrina 'eliminated' the New Orleans - Jacksonville - Orlando end of the Sunset Limited route from Los Angeles. The Sunset has been a target of the Republican route cut dreams since the 1970's. Understand Amtrak inherited the route from a railroad notoriously hostile to passengers, the Southern Pacific LA-New Orleans was constantly attacked for lack of facilities, dirty trains, bad AND slow track, horrible schedule keeping etc. Union Pacific bought the Southern Pacific and bungled the 'merger' so bad that dozens of trains were left sitting on mainlines throughout chemical empire mostly in Louisiana and Texas. Billions in private investment by UP finally solved the great meltdown and today the western end of the Sunset route is abuzz with activity. Amtrak recently asked to allow a daily Sunset train, (better utilization of facilities equal cost savings) and was rebuffed by UP with a multi-billion dollar price tag! No one from the administration lifted a finger to push Union Pacific into allowing such an improvement. The eastern end of the route, (a route without history - a pure 'Amtrak' idea) had been a dog from inception. Could the panhandle and the Gulf Coast support DAILY Amtrak service? ABSOLUTELY! Should it be the 'Sunset Limited?' ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Going around George Bush, Congress passed the bipartisan Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act (PRIIA) in October 2008, BEFORE Obama's victory. The bill, cosponsored by Senator Obama, requires more 'accountability'.

The Obama administration earmarked money for Amtrak in his economic stimulus package and in his budgets for 2010, 2011 and 2012. Obama also issued a statement in favor of the MAP-21 Act, a surface transportation bill that includes some funding for urban rail. 

Obama didn't specify how he would reform Amtrak, but has referenced his sponsorship of a bill that became the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008, (passed under Bush)  the last major law to deal with Amtrak reform, Obama also mentioned that he would work "to improve accountability.” (history has shown 'accountability' equals more route cuts.

California's incremental High Speed Rail? The route requires reestablishment of the gap in the Amtrak map between Bakersfield and Los Angeles. Guess who owns that mountain pass? UNION PACIFIC...  Good luck with that one.

In the Obama administration budget for 2012, he introduced the following idea:

Congress would no longer make specific appropriations to cover Amtrak’s operating losses, capital spending, and debt service. Instead, the Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration would make these decisions, as part of a wholesale overhaul of transportation spending.

In the short term, at least, the sought-after change augurs well for Amtrak. Its financial support would be shielded from the political wars being fought on Capitol Hill. For instance, a vocal cadre of conservative Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives wants to delete Amtrak subsidies altogether. And legislation introduced last weekend to fund the government for the last seven months of fiscal 2011, while leaving Amtrak’s operating grant untouched from the 2010 amount, would give Amtrak $150 million less for capital spending and debt service than it received last year.

But over time, taking Amtrak’s funding out of the direct control of Congress could affect the passenger train corporation in a not-so-nice way. After all, Obama is the first president in Amtrak’s 40-year lifetime to unabashedly support its mission. During previous presidencies, Democratic and Republican, Congress played the role of friendly protector of Amtrak against Executive Branch efforts to reduce the company’s subsidies or snuff them out entirely. The proposed changes in transportation funding, in other words, would leave Amtrak’s fate in the hands of future sitting presidents. Moreover, the change could further erode Amtrak’s independence from the Executive Branch and turn it almost into an arm of DOT.

SOURCE: TRAINS MAGAZINE

Honestly, Amtrak has no friends in the White House, not then, not now. President Obama has had 4 years in which the national passenger corporation has not established a single new route, or added a single new train. Yet the alternative appears to be more of the same old shit... Think I'm going to write in Alfred E. Newman on my ballot, they're all clowns.

[tufsu1]

Sorry Ock, but Jimmy Carter was far from being a liberal Democrat.

As for Mitt's proposal, I have no problem with reducing spending to 20% of GDP....but I'm still waiting for someone to explain how cutting taxes will get revenues to 20%...never mind paying down the $15 trillion debt

[Midway ®]

Why would a person who travels on his Gulfstream IV have any interest in Amtrak? Let them eat cake!

[I-10east]

A war with Iran; Getting turned down at the hospital in some cases if you have a pre-existing medical condition; The loss of Amtrak, and God only knows what else. This is what the Republicans are voting for....

[JeffreyS]

No I-10 the Republican voter was once told the Obama is a Marxist and even with no evidence they still believed it with all their soul and they knew only serfdom to multinational corporations could save them.

[Ocklawaha]

Sorry Ock, but Jimmy Carter was far from being a liberal Democrat.

As a member of 'The Peanut Brigade' I'd stick with my assumption on his being quite liberal. Granted he came from a strict Southron background, Baptist Sunday School teacher, etc. His mending the fence between the mid eastern nations was pretty amazing, but allowing himself to be out maneuvered by the Republican's who roped him into butchering Amtrak was unforgivable. You will recall perhaps the battle cry of that electron 'Carter v Reagan = an actor against a clown.' Held up to the Reagan standard, your right, he wasn't liberal, Carter looked like a marxist!'

[BackinJax05]

I dunno. It seems to me EVERY politician has been trying to get rid of Amtrak since before 1971.  Gotta hand it to Amtrak, somehow they survive.

As for Carter, he was a p!$$ poor excuse for a president and a disgrace to the white house. Amtrak aside, under Carter we enjoyed stagflation, a second energy crisis, and a little dip sh!t 3rd world country (at the time) pushing us around.

How did ol' Jimmy respond? Enacted a grain embargo against the Soviet Union, and boycotted the 1980 Olympics. Im sure that made our 52 hostages, held by those sand fleas for 444 days, feel really good.

[mtraininjax]

It seems to me EVERY politician has been trying to get rid of Amtrak since before 1971.  Gotta hand it to Amtrak, somehow they survive.

Survival is what large governmental institutions do best. Amtrak would do well to focus on the routes that make money and abandon, or give back to the states those that do not. After all, the best thing going for Amtrak is the fact that the USPS is more screwed up than Amtrak.

But liking trains or not, the country cannot afford to keep pouring money down a losing black hole. I'd rather save the PBS and Arts funding over the billions given to subsidize Amtrak. The PBS funding and Arts have more to do with directly helping and educating people, which is something we need in our country, more than we need a railroad.

[dougskiles]

What about the other infrastructure subsidies (namely highway system and airports)?  Is he going to end them too?  If we are entering an era where infrastructure is expected to "pay for itself" then we need to make sure the playing field is level.  He should be proposing massive gas tax increases and airline fee hikes.

[Adam W]

I dunno. It seems to me EVERY politician has been trying to get rid of Amtrak since before 1971.  Gotta hand it to Amtrak, somehow they survive.

As for Carter, he was a p!$$ poor excuse for a president and a disgrace to the white house. Amtrak aside, under Carter we enjoyed stagflation, a second energy crisis, and a little dip sh!t 3rd world country (at the time) pushing us around.

How did ol' Jimmy respond? Enacted a grain embargo against the Soviet Union, and boycotted the 1980 Olympics. Im sure that made our 52 hostages, held by those sand fleas for 444 days, feel really good.

I hate to defend Jimmy Carter, but his grain embargo and Olympic boycott were in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. His response to the Iraq hostage crisis was initially to launch a rescue attempt, which failed. That wasn't his fault (I'd assume it was a fault of the military guys who planned it poorly).

As far as stagflation and the energy crisis - I doubt he was to blame for that.

I think he does share the blame, somewhat, for Osama bin Laden and the current situation in Afghanistan. Perhaps.