House Panel Slashes Amtrak Funds, Boosts Roads

(The auto company lapdogs in the House are giving their corporate masters their money's worth, cutting rail and bicycle alternatives...)


House Panel Slashes Amtrak Funds, Boosts Roads


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Friday slashed funding for the Amtrak passenger railroad and transportation alternatives like bicycle routes to boost highway construction spending.

The House Appropriations subcommittee approved on a voice vote a roughly $90 billion bill funding transportation programs, the U.S. Treasury and several other federal agencies next year.

It would provide $580 million for Amtrak in fiscal year 2004 which starts Oct. 1, 2003, $320 million below the funding level requested by President Bush and less than a third of the $1.8 billion the struggling railroad says it will need to survive.

Amtrak is a for-profit federal corporation that has never made money in its 30-year history. It has $4 billion in debt, and the Bush administration has proposed dismantling it over the next several years instead of continuing to subsidize it.


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http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=3076827

Now they finally have a chance to let it "wither on the vine", to quote Gingrich... much as they're doing with Medicare.

:evilgrin:

Roads don't.Per the Repugs.

Sick.

...of all time. We "need" them -- i.e., they masquerade as a public convenience -- because in building them so the auto mfgs. could sell their products, we became internal combustion smack addicts in the transportation game.

The budgetary proportions should be reversed: Majority of transportation funds for rail (& bike paths & other alternatives), small amount for the roads we do need (for some long haul driving, transporting of goods, emergency/civic vehicles, etc...)

APPROPRIATIONS, NOT T/I...READ! :spank: