Bill,
Well at the moment from what I've been hearing, things are moving rather slowly in Congress. There is currently some doubt as to whether they will actually pass the new budget before the end of this month. This includes not only Amtrak's money, but also all federal monies.
Should Congress fail to pass a budget, then what will happen is they will pass a "continuing resolution" (CR). Basically what that means is that they take whatever Amtrak got last year and pro-rate it for however many more months or weeks they expect it will take them to come up with a budget. So as an example, if Congress figures that they need another month to finalize the budget, Amtrak would receive 1/12th of last year's 550 Million or around 45.8M.
If they don't get around to finalizing the budget by the end of October, then things get more interesting. Congress can always try to pass another CR. There has been several times where Congress has passed two or more CR. However sometimes if the President feels that Congress is dragging its feet he will refuse to sign the resolution. In addition a member of Congress can also hold up the resolution. Should either of the last two scenarios happen, things could get real dicey for Amtrak.
No matter what happens, if there is no agreement on a budget by the end of this month along with the Presidents signature, Amtrak will not receive 550M. The only way that Amtrak can get that amount of money or more is for Congress and the President to agree on a budget, or for Congress to make a special appropriation like they did last July. The later is something that would also be vigorously opposed by the President and some members of Congress.
Now as to where things stand, as you may already know, the Senate Appropriations Committee has already passed the 1.2 Billon number for Amtrak. The House has yet to pass anything and there is some speculation that they might go with the President’s number of 550M or a higher number than that, but not the 1.2B that Amtrak has said they need. If they do indeed go with a lower number than the 1.2B that the Senate approved, then what usually happens when the House and Senate committees get together to iron out the differences, is they spilt the difference. This of course would be a disaster for Amtrak and may well force David Gunn to shut down operations.
If you like you can read a little more about the current goings on in Congress
here in the NARP Newsletter.