'Amtrak: A limping iron horse lives year to year'

'Amtrak: A limping iron horse lives year to year'

(The following article, "Amtrak: A Limping Iron Horse Lives Year to Year," was written by Adriel Bettelheim and appeared in the Dec. 12, 2005, issue of Congressional Quarterly.)

When transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta traveled to New York City last month to speak with business leaders about the administration's vision for Amtrak, it was a tense time for the national passenger railroad. Amtrak's board had just fired its president, and the railroad was closing its books on a year in which it lost nearly half a billion dollars. There was some anxiety among business groups about how the administration would respond.

Mineta came that day bearing a message of tough love. The White House, he told the Association for a Better New York, intends to spend generously to improve intercity rail links - but only if Amtrak is simultaneously weaned off federal aid. After 35 years of losses and several financial crises that brought it to the brink of bankruptcy, Mineta said, the national passenger railroad must begin to stand on its own. As if to emphasize his point, he then flew back to Washington on a commercial airline.

Give the secretary credit for practicing what he preaches: If he and others in the Bush administration have their way, the government will stop subsidizing Amtrak's operations, gradually shifting responsibility for running the railroad to the states and creating a federal-state partnership for maintaining rails, tunnels and bridges. The White House also envisions contracting out Amtrak's operations to private companies and shedding the railroad's unprofitable long-distance routes.

It is serious medicine, aimed at reshaping an agency that fiscal conservatives have long portrayed as a model of government waste. Since its inception, Amtrak has received $29 billion in federal subsidies but has never turned a profit, most recently posting a net operating loss of $475.2 million in fiscal 2005. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says it lacks a long-term business plan and a reliable accounting system that would allow managers to pinpoint where to cut costs.

It has fallen to Mineta, 74, a former 11-term California congressman and the only Democrat in President Bush's Cabinet, to sell a solution. The low-key Mineta, who according to staff aides rarely has time to take the train, insists that free-market principles are the only way to rescue the railroad and keep it from further draining the treasury.

"If I wanted to kill Amtrak, I would do nothing," Mineta said in an interview, noting that the railroad over time will not be able to compete with other government programs for increasingly tight budgets.

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Another 100 billion for Iraq just requested yesterday and we cant afford domestic programs for our own people. what a joke.

There is certainly a need to improve efficiencies, but Amtrak is no more the cause of the lack of it than was David Coresh and his sheep, an old lady in New York, or the federal government’s competence to run an airport screening program. We have endured this spell of inter-city indecision for some time now and the large establishment of Left intellectuals who have been trying to out-Marx Marx since the 1930’s, most in control of the government, wants you to think it’s your fault – it’s your refrigerator, it’s your automobile, it’s your blood-pressure monitor kit, it’s your job. It’s a curious amalgam of Christian-Republican guilt and social rationalism. While the Left always wants the producers of wealth to feel guilty about the success of people who work and wants to replace them with a government that cures all problems through agents such as Janet Reno and federal screening agents, so that women and minorities will no longer be “hardest hit,” the neo-Right wants to get back at the left for all the sins: shut it down, farm it out, and make it profitable. No matter if it works or satisfies any particular need.

As to the need to spend still more $billions in Iraq, the contrast between the success of interest payments in the West and the ban on interest payments in the East are just beginning to wake the Moslems up to the centuries of disaster that has been wrought on the Moslems by their religion. Lest ordinary people discover this, the Moslems want everyone, inside and outside of Iraq, including the Americans, to think it’s not the fault of Islam, it’s the fault of the Americans. The federal government, the Left, and the Moslems want you to think that you have no right to all these things you have worked so hard for, including oil and reliable transportation, and that you ought to pay a lot more for them -$billions more, because they need to spend the money on mosques, bombs, Janet Reno, federal screening agents, and jihad.

Lets concentrate on the rail road issues. We all have our views on the wider political issues, and it is rare indeed that any one of us can claim the wisdom to see the whole truth of any situation...

Rail passenger trains anywhere in the world, as far as I am honestly aware, cannot "make a profit". It follows that it is up to the citizens, through their elected representatives, to decide whether they want a train service, and if so, what level of subsidy to pay for it. People are often unaware of existing "hidden" subsidy, but it is there in airport construction, road building, etc, which favour those users. I imagine that if I owned an oil field or several, I too would be keen for maximum oil sales through promotion of road and air transport. Once rail is gone it is hard to ever get it back, even if time proves it would have been a more fuel efficient solution. Then again I hear Americans don't believe in global warming anyway?

I believe it was “rmadisonwi” who recently pointed out that all those who propose changes in our national rail system, especially those who suggest various “partnerships” toward sundry inter-city systems, are simply lying; as they never accompany their suggestions with a plan. I am sure Norman Mineta understands that national transportation systems, air, rail or highway, can not make a profit and that they are always subsidized somewhere, somehow. It’s nonsense to suggest any of the systems is profitable. That he suggests our national passenger rail system do so is proof he is lying beyond merely omitting the faintest plan to realize his suggestion. Imagine what national air travel would be like if UPS and FedEx owned the air routes and operated the control systems. Norman Mineta and his minions are silent on the real issues of ownership, investments, control and purpose.

Beyond this, it is important for those of us who have to exercise our public muscle to understand the rules of the sand box. Rule 1: It’s their sand box, not yours. Rule 2: Believe nothing you read, and only half of what you see and hear; appearance, power, spin and lies are the currency of government these days. Rule 3: It’s still your fault; since it's your fault you have to pay for it. Beyond politics, we have to understand the role of war and oil in all the noise we hear from our leaders. It was James Madison who said, “War is the most powerful corrupter.”

Our leaders are oil patch politicians who see everything in terms of oil: its availability, its price, and who will sell it to us. Jihad guarantees that $billions will continue to go into Iraq leaving less for us in the U.S. You are more likely to see a modern and functional national rail system in Iraq than in the U.S. – the oil is in Iraq. Amtrak simply has to go, because it’s not compatible with the oil patch.

I never thought of Amtrak to be "draining" the treasury. Oh, now i get it!

Amtrak is the reason we have few billion dollar deficit....pssh