On Friday, some ostensibly conservative senators may vote to give record amounts of money to Amtrak through subsidies and another loan bailout.
They would not if they would only read “What Is Government Waste?” from the Taxpayers for Common Sense, which provides the following benchmarks for the merit of a government program:
1. If it doesn’t work, don’t fund it.
Amtrak is a financial wreck that comes nowhere near the promises Congress made when it created the quasi-public corporation in 1970. According to the Americans for Tax Reform, Amtrak oozes “profligate expenditures, mismanagement, and general incompetence.” Its deficiencies have been outlined more academically in 30 reports, from the GAO, the DOT inspector general and the Amtrak Reform Council, since a reform law was passed in 1997.
2. Eliminate redundant expenditures.
Amtrak provides redundant and unnecessary train services to areas where other methods of transportation are readily available, and in about a dozen states fewer than 100 people board Amtrak in an entire day. These long-distance trains are an expensive throwback to the olden days.
3. Stop helping those who don’t need help.
Amtrak’s sleeping cars, used mostly by wealthy travelers, increase annual operating costs by $267 million. Such passengers aboard the “Sunset Limited” were subsidized by $627 each, a form of fat-cat welfare.
4. Get a fair price for taxpayer assets or government services.
Unfortunately, we can not know what a fair price would be for Amtrak’s assets because Joe Biden was cowed by the railroad unions into blocking a liquidation study. His action prevented taxpayers from knowing how their money is spent.
5. Don’t encourage irresponsibility.
One need not look much beyond Clinton’s Amtrak board appointees who launched a train in Wisconsin at a loss of $1,000 per passenger while failing to correct safety shortcomings in New York’s train tunnels.
6. Don’t burden future generations with unfair or hidden debts.
In the 1980s, Congress saddled the taxpayers with $1.2 billion in Amtrak debt in the hopes that the rail service would reduce its costs. That has not happened, and now Amtrak is asking for another bailout. We owe our children better.
7. Level the playing field and use the power of the market.
Amtrak’s subsidies allow it to pervert the market by offering “desperation fares” to fill empty seats. For example, Amtrak offered a St. Louis to San Antonio one-way fare of $81.60, while Greyhound was charging $136. Taxpayers funded the “success” of this “Texas Eagle,” at a cost of $183 per passenger.
8. Eliminate unnecessary federal involvement.
Federal involvement in Amtrak is a bipartisan disease. Trent Lott and Hillary Clinton are pushing a proposal that the Heritage Foundation derides in its new report “Will the Senate Raid the Treasury for Amtrak?” Bob Menendez has rejected every proposed Amtrak reform, while Kay Bailey Hutchinson has been giving Amtrak “one last chance” for ten years. Meanwhile, the king of pork, Robert Byrd, has prohibited Congress from ever discontinuing a certain West Virginia train.
9. Everyone should pay their fair share.
While most Americans hope to be refunded a share of the money they pay in taxes throughout the year, Amtrak got a $2.1 billion “income tax refund” from the IRS in 1997 even though Amtrak has never paid income taxes.
10. Fund projects based on their merits and only after open review.
Instead of focusing its efforts on high-return areas, Amtrak focuses capital on projects with low rates of return or no return at all.
The Taxpayers for Common Sense principles certainly indict Amtrak, but I’d like to add one more:
11. Don’t confuse “essential” with “expendable.”
Beyond the Northeast Corridor (Boston-Washington) and a few other areas, Amtrak is useless. Its long-distance trains are irrelevant, and the discontinuation of small-town routes, like a train that ran through Paradise, Montana, have deprived communities of little more than picturesque views of Amtrak trains.
The Citizens Against Government Waste has demanded that Amtrak quit blaming Congress for its woes. The National Taxpayers Union has said Amtrak’s “rail fraud” must end. Why would our elected fiscal conservatives vote any differently?
– Joseph Vranich is the author of End of the Line: The Failure of Amtrak Reform and the Future of America’s Passenger Trains (AEI Press). He has served as a public-affairs spokesman for Amtrak, president of the High Speed Rail Association, and member of the Amtrak Reform Council.