I agree that it is highly unlikely the Trump budget will pass. However, that does not mean that the budget created by Congress will not decrease Amtrak's subsidy. Although it is unlikely that the LD trains will dissapear, it is certainly not an impossibility at this point.
This is true. This is why I would like people to keep calling and writing their Congresspeople. If the DOA Trump budget inspires people to do this, it makes it more likely that Congress will keep Amtrak's funding stable.
Given the way the financials actually work, I am quite sure the LD trains will not all disappear; about 2/3 of them are actually profitable. As Wick Moorman said to Congress, if they cut all the LD trains, Congress would actually have to *increase* the subsidy to Amtrak. They are made to appear unprofitable by the silly and meaningless scheme of "allocating" part of Amtrak's fixed overhead (which is very large) to them.
The only way to get rid of the fixed overhead is to shut Amtrak down completely. Unlike under George W. Bush, that has *not* been proposed (which I consider to be great progress -- even the Heritage Foundation has given up on shutting down the NEC and the state corridors, which they tried to do for decades). Given that the overhead will be paid for one way or another, Amtrak is going to keep running every train which is profitable-before-overhead.
That shouldn't stop you from writing your Congressmen to demand that the Silver Meteor and Lake Shore Limited be preserved. Just because they are pretty unlikely to be cancelled... it still helps a lot to let Congress know that you care! If Congress is specifically supportive of them they might actually get *improved* instead of just limping along like they do now.
If the train you care about is the Sunset Limited, well, it really is at risk, as it does take in less revenue than its avoidable costs, and has the largest deficit of any federally-funded train in the system. And it probably still would if it were daily.
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FWIW, Amtrak doesn't release these numbers for some reason, but at the moment I estimate that the following LD trains are definitely profitable before overhead:
Silver Star, Silver Meteor, Palmetto, Auto Train, Crescent, Lake Shore Limited
The following are pretty close (closer than the margin of error in my calculations):
Empire Builder, Coast Starlight, City of New Orleans
The Capitol Limited probably generates more connecting revenue than its net loss before overhead.
There are really only 5 LD trains which can fairly be called "money losing trains": in order from least expensive to most expensive:
The Cardinal (which would be profitable if daily)
The Texas Eagle
The Southwest Chief
The California Zephyr
The Sunset Limited.
You saw what happened when there were threats to merely reroute the Southwest Chief *to a more profitable route*. The California Zephyr has even stronger backing, given the major cities on the route and their pro-train leanings.