proposed amtrak cuts

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How close are Our Elected Representatives to establishing a long term dedicated funding source for rail ?
 
Sam Damon said:
Seems like we see this every year, for as long as I can remember.
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Yeah you're right Sam. A lady at Riverside reservations put her job in true perspective; "I take this job one year at a time. So far I've been able to accumulate 30 years." Same old, same old. At least the Senators are going to bat and not laying down on this one.
 
Nothing but a load of Republican grandstanding - remember, they are the one who have run up $4.2 Trillion in debt, and now - somehow - want to balance that budget with a few hundered million dollar cut to AMTRAK.

BAH
 
I don't understand the way people think. I mean, on one side Amtrak benefits 24 million people annually, and provides crucial links between major US cities that takes congestion off the road and out of the air. On another side, it is responsible for an infrastructure that puts 800,000 people off the roads in the northeast every day. That doesn't count the Metro-North New-Haven line since Metro-North owns and runs practically all of it. So in reality, Amtrak benefits more like 294,000,000 people every year. This is, naturally, a perfect source for cutting funding.

On the other hand, we have a war. This war has removed a not-very-nice man from power. Which seems great until you count the number of not very nice men in power. Including one at a certain 2000 Pennsylvania Avenue. And I'm not just talking people from middle-eastern asia and India and China. Chad, Darfur, dozens of other African countries, countries in South America, and so on. Quite a few of which probably harbor people who would enjoy poking the US in the eye. (I.E. terrorists) So out of all these dangerous, evil men in the world, we decided to attack one who was a cornerstone of stability in the middle east (not necessarily in nice ways, I'll admit).

In addition to this, we spend resources trying to help remove certain generally decent people from power (Primarily Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez). Now, I know they are power-happy dictators and communists who use questionable methods to stay in power at times. But that nature pretty much fits anyone who runs a country whose government isn't as solid and stable as the US's. But they aren't evil, and historically seem to care for the general welfare of their people. There are much better places to spend time and money for change in the general direction of improving the world.

Now, I know they say they are fighting terrorists, but I think its creating more terrorists (which we can loosely define as people that are insanely pissed off at the United States) than it is fighting. The pursuit of these incompetent, inept, and ineffective campaigns (a lot more people are brutally dyeing in Iraq today than before Saddam was given the hook) justifies the expenditure of some $4.5 Trillion over the past 5 years or so. But the expenditure of less than $6 billion dollars over about the same time period, which goes towards benefiting 805,000 AMERICAN CITIZENS every day is a waste of money. I mean, we shouldn't spend anywhere near that in benefit of that number of us. Its a waste. Its inefficient. We can cut spending. Really.

Make sense of this. Please.
 
Green Maned Lion said:
On the other hand, we have a war. This war has removed a not-very-nice man from power. Which seems great until you count the number of not very nice men in power. Including one at a certain 2000 Pennsylvania Avenue.
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OK, I know what you mean here, but I burst out laughing when I read this, because 2000 Pennsylvania Avenue is actually The Shops at 2000 Penn -- a shopping plaza -- which is, I kid you not, also called "Red Lion Row"! :p

One of the few things I can say in defense of the war is actually in defense of the defense budget (which happens to be devoted heavily to supporting the war effort): it does employ a lot of Americans. Not just combat personnel, but also engineers and laborers working for Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing, etc. Do I think that justifies the spending? No. But it's one philosophy of how best to apportion tax dollars for the benefit of the country (whether during wartime or peacetime).

Another philosophy is the one many of us share: that we should apportion more tax dollars on programs benefiting infrastructure, or the environment, both of which Amtrak fits. That would, theoretically even, have a similar employment effect (engineers and laborers creating railroad cars, laying new rails, as well as skilled workers serving as train crew, service crew, working in maintenance, dispatching, etc). One difference is that many (most?) railroad cars are not built or designed by Americans, while defense contracting is restricted much more tightly in that regard.

Obviously, there are many, many other arguments on both sides here (and many more places besides these to which tax dollars could be apportioned, such as education, medical entitlements, welfare, public television, or congressional salaries, all of which are favored by someone). But you asked for someone to make sense of the currently proposed budget, and this is what little I can offer. No, I don't buy into it either. But depending on which way the wind is blowing, anywhere from 35-65% of the country does.
 
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Green Maned Lion said:
Now, I know they say they are fighting terrorists, but I think its creating more terrorists (which we can loosely define as people that are insanely pissed off at the United States) than it is fighting. The pursuit of these incompetent, inept, and ineffective campaigns (a lot more people are brutally dyeing in Iraq today than before Saddam was given the hook) justifies the expenditure of some $4.5 Trillion over the past 5 years or so. But the expenditure of less than $6 billion dollars over about the same time period, which goes towards benefiting 805,000 AMERICAN CITIZENS every day is a waste of money. I mean, we shouldn't spend anywhere near that in benefit of that number of us. Its a waste. Its inefficient. We can cut spending. Really.
Make sense of this. Please.
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Well said that man.

Maybe one day you might be lucky enough to get a government that thinks working out new and even more exciting ways of killing people is less of a priority than making its own citizens lives easier...... We might even get one as well! :blink:
 
Eh, I don't even blink anymore, when Bush's proposal comes out with the number for Amtrak. I could have told you that was going to be his number months ago. Then everyone goes aahhhhh, call your reps and tell them to establish full funding or Amtrak will shutdown. Kind of gets same ole, same ole these days.
 
saxman66 said:
Eh, I don't even blink anymore, when Bush's proposal comes out with the number for Amtrak. I could have told you that was going to be his number months ago. Then everyone goes aahhhhh, call your reps and tell them to establish full funding or Amtrak will shutdown. Kind of gets same ole, same ole these days.
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Yep... same ole same ole. President Regan never budgeted a dime for Amtrak. Somehow Amtrak managed to operate from 1981 to 1989.

Rick
 
I'd take him more seriously, though. I don't think Mexico ever believed they'd lose their network, either.
 
I gather that the passenger car building capability was lost at a time when there wasn't much demand for passenger service in the US. If there were consistent large enough demand for passenger cars, that problem might go away; look at how foreign-branded automobiles are often assembled in the US, even with the current cost of US labor. But with the current political climate, I'm not sure it's sane for an American businessperson to go build a huge factory that might become underutilized in a few years if there's some major political swing away from railroad investment.

Increasing the number of parallel tracks along an existing right of way is probably a highly effective way to create American jobs for the sake of creating American jobs while making the world a better place, though.

Remember that Congress was more favorable to Bush in some of his previous years than it is now. If he's merely proposing what a Republican Congress rejected, there's probably little chance of a Democratic congress agreeing to it.

(Tangenially, I've also read somewhere that Greyhound cut a bunch of routes sometime in the last decade. Does that mean that there are a significant number of communities that used to have at least one of bus, rail, or airline service that no longer have any of those?)
 
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