Biden Threatens To Veto GOP Spending Bill That Would 'Cut' Amtrak Funding to Double Pre-Pandemic Levels

Amtrak has historically received $2 billion in federal subsidies each year. Under Republicans' "draconian" cuts, they'd receive over $5 billion next year.

"Amtrak Joe" Biden is doing what he can to earn his nickname by threatening to veto Republicans' plans to "cut" funding to Amtrak to near-historic highs.

Working its way through the GOP-controlled House of Representatives right now is H.R. 4820, a housing and transportation appropriations bill that would provide Amtrak with $867 million in grants for the coming fiscal year.

That's hardly chump change. Yet the White House has condemned the subsidy as woefully insufficient.

On Monday, the White House's Office of Budget and Management (OMB) released a statement criticizing the various cuts proposed by House Republicans to housing and transportation programs.

OMB specifically attacked Republicans for their proposed 64 percent "cut" to Amtrak from last year's $2.4 billion subsidy. The reduction "would reduce or potentially eliminate certain Long Distance and State Supported services and risk operations and critical capital expenses on the Northeast Corridor," reads the OMB letter, which threatens a veto of the Republican spending bill as written.

The Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO went even further in decrying Republicans' "draconian" cut that "would devastate existing operations and jeopardize more than 10,000 jobs."

It's true that the House's bill proposes a steep year-over-year cut from Congress' last annual appropriation. Republicans' proposed $867 million is also below the roughly $2 billion in subsidies that Amtrak was historically receiving before the pandemic. It's less than the Senate's competing funding bill that passed yesterday with wide bipartisan support, and which gives the company $2.5 billion for the upcoming fiscal year.

Missing from the White House's dire warnings about cuts is the fact that Amtrak's annual appropriations are now supplemented by generous yearly grants of $4.4 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) that passed in November 2021.

When the IIJA money is considered, Amtrak received not $2.4 billion in subsidies in FY 2023 but $6.8 billion. Even if Congress completely zeroed out Amtrak's annual appropriations, the company would still receive that $4.4 billion in IIJA funding.

"Republicans and Democrats are saying this is a historic cut. No, it's not. The funding for Amtrak is double what it was pre-pandemic, regardless of what appropriators do," says Marc Scribner, a transportation policy analyst at the Reason Foundation (which publishes this site).

And the Amtrak services threatened by Republicans' "cuts" would be planned long-distance routes that are projected to lose money in perpetuity, says Scribner.

As it stands now under Republicans' allegedly austere proposal, Amtrak would receive a little over $5 billion in funding this coming fiscal year. The Democratic Senate's FY 2024 appropriation for Amtrak would give the company closer to $2.4 billion—or $6.8 billion once IIJA funds are included.

Despite receiving historically high funding over the past several years, Amtrak's ridership remains below historic levels. Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner told a House subcommittee back in June that as of April 2023, ridership was 84 percent of 2019 levels and ticket revenue was 95 percent of 2019 levels.

"I don't think it's in the public interest to support Amtrak. We generally expect the other modes that Amtrak competes against to operate self-sufficiently, and I think Amtrak should as well," says Scribner.

Comments

[Minadin]

'Cut' has never meant the same thing in DC as it does in the rest of reality. But this is a particularly nonsensical use of the word, even for Deep State Swamp Monsters like Biden.

On the other hand, he does have a 50-year elected government official track record of blatantly lying about all sorts of things, so it kinda follows.

[Wizard4169]

Yep, only in DC-speak can a smaller than requested increase be described as a "cut". Heh, I've often wished my pay could be "slashed" that way.

[Carey Allison]

Republican House: here's your bill Mr.President. It gives $867Mil for Amtrack this year, plus funds coming from other sources.

President Biden: that's ridiculous! It's totally insufficient. If $867Mil is all you're going to pass in this bill, I'll just veto it!

Republican House: Your choice Mr. President. It's the $867Mil offered here, or your other option post-veto is nothing. Your choice.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

This is more proof that Republicans are even worse than the democrats at controlling spending.

[Minadin]

"grants of $4.4 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) that passed in November 2021."

Is it?

[MoreFreedom]

You say this shows Republicans are worse than Democrats on spending. While I wouldn't have disagreed with you 9 years ago, the simple fact that Democrats want to spend more than the Republicans of today shows the fallacy of your statement. Further, while it is "funding to double pre-pandemic levels" it is a real 64% cut from last year. And Biden is threatening to veto it.

I look forward to Biden vetoing the bill, which will reduce government funding of Amtrack to what it should be: zero. Further, I look forward to Biden vetoing other spending bills for the same reason and shutting down the government. But frankly, like Rand Paul, I don't believe Biden will veto the bills. Biden's answer for all government created problems and issues is to waste more taxpayer money on them.

The House controls the purse, but our representatives in the House (in the last 50 years) have abdicated their responsibility to pass budgets, and limit government to its necessary functions only, because bigger budgets make the political class richer at everyone else's expense.

[One-Punch_Man]

I'm going with sarcasm here

[Sevo]

Yeah; (Paul).

[Wizard4169]

One of the very few useful things Biden has done is to get the GOP to at least pretend to be serious about fiscal responsibility. Of course, their habit of engaging in slap fights over fairly petty spending while loudly promising to ignore the real elephants in the room proves that they're only pretending.

[Minadin]

Maybe if they actually zero'ed out Amtrack's funding, they would have to figure out how to compete for passengers. As it is, currently it's easily the worst rail service I've ever ridden in any country. And the problems are on a lot of different fronts. There doesn't appear to be any sort of motivation to address any of them. Maybe removing their funding would light a fire under their asses.

[ElvisIsReal]

Last time I booked on Amtrak, we just took a bus.....

[Minadin]

Last time I booked on Amtrak, we ended up having to. We got to the train station in Chicago a mere 40 minutes before our train was scheduled to leave, and apparently at that station and that station only, it's their policy that boarding ends 45 minutes before scheduled departure. So, even though we could see our train sitting there, we were not allowed to get on.

A few months before that, I had tried to book a trip from St. Louis to the DC area, and looked into riding a train instead of flying. It was obviously a bad choice on a number of fronts.

Flying:
Cost - $200, Round-Trip
Travel Time - 2 hours, each way

Amtrak:
Cost - $300, Each Way
Travel Time - 23 hours, 59 minutes, each way*
*includes stops in Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore . . .

[Dillinger]

>>So, even though we could see our train sitting there, we were not allowed to get on.

american airlines pulls shit like this @DFW as though it were in the employee manual

[Minadin]

1. Flew out of there last week.
2. It probably is, based on my experience.

[Ride 'Em]

A few years back I had to go to Seattle for a visit. I looked at taking the train, but it would take several days, cost $2000+ for the sleeper car and I would have to travel 3 hours to get to an Amtrak station. It doesn't stop in Nashville.

I've often thought about taking "the train they call The City of New Orleans". Love the Johnny Cash version of the song.

[One-Punch_Man]

Doesn't change your answer, which I agree with.

But for flying you have to count the 2 annoying hours of showing up to the airport.

I would say flying was 6 (2 flight+2 security+2security) hours. Still cheaper and shorter.

[Don't look at me!]

Funny how you don’t see politicians riding on trains.

[Longtobefree]

Actually, they ride first class Acela quite often.
But always with aides to deal with the Amtrak employees and the icky public travelers.
That's why all the money goes into "the northeast corridor".

[Bill Dalasio]

No, the money goes into the Northeast Corridor because that's the only leg of Amtrak that is able to generate a profit. And it sort of makes sense. You have a line of heavily populated cities right in a row. The dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about is that the government made the Penn Central a failure at the outset of the merger and used its eventual bankruptcy as an excuse to nationalize the industry.

[Craig Johnston]

The government subsidizes them because they are able to generate a profit? They aren’t generating a profit if they are using our money to maintain the system. Longtobefree is right: they put the money into the Northeast Corridor because it benefits the politicians the most.

[Smith1]

Ummm... they subsidize ALL of Amtrak, not the Northeast corridor specifically. If Amtrak cut all other routes, my understanding is that it could make money on the Northeast corridor.

[Eeyore]

Nobody who runs a publicly funded transportation system actually uses a publicly funded transportation system.

[Longtobefree]

So veto it already.
That way Amtrak gets zero.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Allegedly austere.

[mad.casual]

White House’s Office of Budget and Management (OMB)

Is this one of those “created by a duly enacted congressional law” sort of Offices or is it one of those sort of Offices that Trump was supposed to be both utterly dishonest *and* utterly inept for not staffing in full?

[Rise of the Impedance]

Hmm, I want to do some quick math.

Amtrak's FY22-Year-End-Revenue-and-Ridership.pdf report states total ridership for FY2023 was 22,930,499. Assuming one round trip, that's 3.5% of the US population taking one trip last year.

$4.4E9 / 22,930,499 = $192 per rider. This doesn't include ticket or other income.

But we have trains!

[Iwanna Newname]

But.....but.....10,000 jobs! $4.4 bil/10,000 is only $440,000 per. A sound investment.

[Religion and Politics, my life]

Biden's stupidity is eclipsed by his seeming evil.

" Take urban transit. Biden has proposed a policy that, by some estimates, would allocate $165 billion for public transit (including urban rail — subways, light rail, and commuter rail) against only $115 billion to fix and modernize roads and bridges. Transit, which accounts for about 1 percent of overall urban and rural ground transportation, would receive nearly 60 percent of the money."

[Dillinger]

>>Biden is ... threatening to veto

go for it bro. I'd finally agree with one thing you did.

[Iwanna Newname]

I last took a real train ride in 1973. So tell me, what am I getting for my tax dollars again?

[Longtobefree]

Fascism.

[NOYB2]

Biden Threatens To Veto GOP Spending Bill That Would 'Cut' Amtrak Funding to Double Pre-Pandemic Levels

Well, that's the return to normality that Reason journalists wanted.

[Vernon Depner]

Here's an idea: Raise fares enough to break even on all lines. If not enough riders will pay what it costs, shut down the lines.

[CE]

Lay off all the workers and sell the trains to the highest bidder. The good ones will probably get job offers from the buyers. If there are more trains and tracks than viable routes, there's always scrap metal markets.

[TJJ2000]

Exactly what should happen to this UN-Constitutional Nazi funding. Course if you think Hitler is fussing now just wait till his treasonous graft gets sent to the scrap yard.

[TJJ2000]

It's amazing how leftards can keep pretending the Republicans are the spenders when situations like this arise all the freak-en time. At least this one was reported on.

Democrats have and will always be BIG government with BIG spending. As-if those two were some how dissociative off in retarded left land.

[Me, Myself and I]

"We generally expect the other modes Amtrak competes against to operate self-sufficiently"
No we don't. Roads are subsidised by the government, plus vehicle-owners are permitted to release dangerous exhaust fumes onto other people's property without permission or compensation. Plane owners are permitted to fly over other people's property and release dangerous exhaust fumes onto other people's property without permission or compensation, plus many airports are government-subsidised.

[Henry Porter]

Highways are subsidize about 10% from general fund and the rest from highway use taxes and they serve practically every single American. So all Americans are subsidizing all Americans.

Amtrak subsidies are 100% general funds and it serves less than 0.1% of Americans. All Americans are subsidizing a handful of Americans.

[lordsigma]

Your point? Amtrak collects fares from its users which are the equivalent of the highway use taxes you’re referring to. All Americans subsidize all other Americans in one way or another. The bottom line is you don’t use it so you don’t care.

[Henry Porter]

In no way are Amtrak fares equivalent to Highway use taxes. Equally nonsensical is to say, as justification for rail subsidies, that “all” Americans subsidize ”all” Americans.

There are at least 325 million Americans who use Amtrak zero times per year. They are all being fleeced to pay for Amtrak, for the benefit of a scant handful of Americans—11 million AT MOST—who use Amtrak more than twice a year.

[NOYB2]

Roads are subsidised by the government, plus vehicle-owners are permitted to release dangerous exhaust fumes onto other people’s property without permission or compensation.

Roads are not net subsidized; drivers more than pay for them through various taxes. Exhaust gases from automobiles are not dangerous or cause harm when they reach anybody’s property.

This is in contrast to passenger rail: it is highly subsidized by people who can’t use it, and the exhaust gases from either diesel or coal (=power plant) are quite harmful. Passenger rail is also not substantially more energy efficient that automobiles.

[TJJ2000]

Why is it every F'En time subsidies/spending finally has a chance to be gotten rid of some F'En dipsh*t leftard shows up with "Roads!", "Roads!", "Roads!"????

As-if "Roads" were suppose to be a perfect excuse to turn the entire nation completely socialist? Let me clue you on your pathetic ONE-EXAMPLE BS excuse to destroy this nation. "Roads" were never meant to be [Na]tionally subsidized and the for most part even today are locally funded.

Take you socialist BS and MOVE your *ss to a socialist nation treasonous traitor.

[Ride 'Em]

Train companies don't pay taxes for the property they use. They just ignore the tax bills local governments send them as local governments can't seize the tracks and passage ways. And they spew exhaust fumes.

[charliehall]

Most Amtrak trains are electric not diesel.

[TJJ2000]

From the magical outlet?

[[e-mail]]

Terribly bad idea to even give the $5 million the Republicans are offering. I say put it on the open market and sell it for what they can get out of it. If it could work only capitalism
can make it work.
That would save $7 billion, and just think of all of the boondoggles there are out there. 2 quick ones, scrap the Jones Act and quit subsidizing sugar.

[brettmetzger]

Hello everyone, I just want to remind everyone that public transportation is not supposed to make money. It is an investment in the people and we have seen other European countries make intercity travel fast and affordable. Rail is the missing middle of transportation in America and is the perfect mode of transportation for trips > 200 miles. For reference, we allocated over 100 billion for highway spending in 2024. Amtrak receives only a fraction of the money America spends on road infrastructure. It would be more reasonable to be concerned about runaway spending on the interstates which are destroyed rapidly by Amazon Prime, UPS, and Fed-Ex semi trucks. These trucks do not pay a dime in road upkeep, and they continue to degrade the highways you drive on at 400x that of a normal car based on their increased weight. Please bear all this in mind.

[charliehall]

Congress won't abolish Amtrak. If they did that, all flights out of Reagan National Airport except to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston would cease. Amtrak is that important.

Oh and that airport was built and rebuilt by the federal government. So was Washington Dulles. Baltimore Washington International was built by the City of Baltimore and rebuilt by the State of Maryland. So they should all be closed.

The CSX freight railroad into Washington from the northeast was built by the City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland along with some private investment. It is the only north south freight railroad on the east coast. It clearly should be closed too.

Government has always funded roads, railroads, and airports in the US. The author and commenters here want the US to have fourth world infrastructure.

[TJJ2000]

Yeah; Nothing ever gets done if it wasn't for criminals using gov-guns to STEAL constantly..... /s F'En dumb*ss.

[NOYB2]

The US already has the largest and most efficient rail system in the world, larger than all of Europe combined. The rail system is almost entirely privately owned. Rail transport is highly efficient for cargo.

Rail is slow, expensive, and inefficient for passenger transportation. This is true in the US, just as it is in Europe and Asia. That's why passenger rail requires such massive government subsidies. Even in Europe, only about 10% of passenger miles are carried by rail; the rest is air, bus, and car.

Rail is, in fact, the infrastructure of impoverished, developing nations who can't afford better transportation infrastructure; rail provides subsidized luxury travel for elites and inefficiency for everybody else.

Airports should not be subsidized or built by the US government either.

[Henry Porter]

Wow…so much incorrect in this, IDK where to begin.

So, I’ll focus on this: “(Rail) is the perfect mode of transportation for trips > 200 miles.”

If rail was the “perfect” mode for such trips, all trains supplying service for trips over 200 miles would be full of people who have chosen it over all the other less-than-perfect modes of transportation.

Your contention suggests that almost everybody is stupid.

Pssst, Amazon, UPS and FedEx trucks all pay road user taxes, like the rest of us. You are confusing them with USPS trucks and all publicly owned buses, which escape road taxes.

[NOYB2]

Hello everyone, I just want to remind everyone that public transportation is not supposed to make money. It is an investment

If you don't expect it to make money, it's not an investment.

in the people and we have seen other European countries make intercity travel fast and affordable

Passenger rail in European countries is neither fast nor affordable; other modes of transportation (buses, car, planes) are usually faster and cheaper.

Rail is the missing middle of transportation in America and is the perfect mode of transportation for trips > 200 miles.

Yes, rail is the perfect mode of transportation for trip > 200 miles if you are a cargo crate. That's why the US has the largest and most efficient rail network in the world, nearly 100% used for cargo. The US rail system is bigger than all of Europe combined.

What rail is lousy at is passenger transportation because it's slow, inefficient, and unreliable.

[charliehall]

"We generally expect the other modes that Amtrak competes against to operate self-sufficiently"

No we don't. Highways and airports are given massive tax subsidies. The reconstruction of the terminals at La Guardia Airport alone are costing $8 billion. And it is a small airport.

[TJJ2000]

Wow... You're correct. Today's government has turned the USA into a So[zi]alist nightmare and more so all the time. Enter Venezuela #2. Maybe that treasonous path today's government is on is were the stink is coming from. If people want to be under a Venezuelan regime what are they doing here? Invading and conquering what USA patriots love about the USA?

[alexsaunders790]

I traveling on an Amtrak train and I must say, it was an incredible experience. From the moment I stepped on board, I was greeted by friendly and attentive staff who made me feel right at home, also find customer service contacts at https://amtrak.pissedconsumer.com/customer-service.html . The train itself was immaculate, with comfortable seating and ample legroom, allowing me to relax and enjoy the journey. The panoramic windows offered breathtaking views of the passing landscapes, making the trip even more enjoyable. The onboard amenities, such as the Wi-Fi and power outlets, ensured that I could stay connected and productive throughout the ride. Overall, my experience with Amtrak trains was nothing short of exceptional, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a convenient and enjoyable mode of transportation.

[Religion and Politics, my life]

He is the stupidest godddam moron to ever hold high office

“All during the debate over the 2021 infrastructure bill, President Biden kept talking about how much the country would benefit from high-speed rail even though there was no high-speed rail in his own version of the bill. ” https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=21383