Amtrak And DOGE

Consider that 86% of the federal budget is for just 2 categories - entitlements and defense. The remaining 14% is for everything else, including Amtrak which is a drop in the bucket even within that 14%. It seems to me that DOGE will be mainly concerned with the 86%.

I predict very little will happen in FY25 or FY26 with Amtrak other than maybe fights over Amtrak's top line funding amounts and I think most of that will happen at the committee level. The House FY25 THUD proposed a topline cut that would be problematic but probably not lead to service cuts. Most likely it would result in capital funding reductions and some of the station ADA projects would probably take a hit. The Senate will probably propose an increase to Amtrak and the end result will be something in between. It's important to remember that while Trump had a pretty decent win electoral college and popular vote wise during his "single party rule" two years he is not going to have huge margins of control in the House and Senate - in fact the House majority, is going to be even slimmer than it was this Congress (and the House is most likely where you'd see an appetite for Amtrak cuts.) The GOP made gains in the Senate but there is much more bipartisan support for Amtrak in the Senate. Right now you can basically only predict the first two years. It's impossible to predict right now what happens in the midterms (and as a result the end part of his term.)

Given all of the stated priorities of the incoming administration I'd expect the most likely time a battle over Amtrak's future would occur if it does occur would be when the IIJA (and Amtrak's authorization) expires. That would be the time to battle it out since they have to write the new language. It actually could have happened during Trump's first term and Congress ended up punting the surface transportation reauthorization with temporary extensions and the five year reauthorization ended up in Biden's term. I don't see gutting Amtrak as a hill Trump is going to die on in a spending battle - it's just not that significant a thing - and actually if you look at votes over the last several years has quite a lot of Congressional support. Trump/DOGE will get a lot more done if they focus on areas where he's going to largely have the support of his Senate and House majorities.

David Benton wrote: ↑Fri Dec 13, 2024 5:42 am Pretty sure I read a Fred Frailey article where he mentioned doing 90 mph on the southwest chief.

Yes, it's fun for a minute but the track isn't good enough. The ride get rough. It's time to knock that down to 79. I rode that train quite a lot years ago.

WashingtonPark wrote: ↑Thu Dec 12, 2024 4:32 pm

eolesen wrote: ↑Wed Dec 11, 2024 12:02 pm

WashingtonPark wrote:Capitol improvement money they shouldn't be spending on other company's railroads if you want Amtrak to start paying what others pay in trackage rights fees. How many billions does JBH pay to NS for track improvements to add a train?

I'd be OK with that if trackage fees were at a market rate. And despite the "prove it" crowd, it's clear from Amtrak's financial reports they're not paying a commercial rate close to what the JBH's and Amazon are paying to move containers owned by those shippers.

Sent from my SM-S911U using Tapatalk

Thank you. That was the whole point of the post. Everybody's griping Amtrak doesn't pay what others do in trackage rights fees. They SHOULD be paying market rates to move their trains. But when they do that they shouldn't be paying NS for capitol improvements to enhance the freight movement for NS or whoever, which is always hundreds of millions and sometimes in the billion dollar range. Why should it cost the taxpayers over 200 million dollars paid to NS to run one additional train between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh before a single wheel turns? No private business that wants a train would be required to do that.

I think a lot of us agree taht this is a fair trade. Basically pay me now or pay me later.

I keep going back to this thing that the steel rails don't know what is in the cars above them, they just see wheels and flanges. If it makes sense financially to run those wheels and flanges, do it.

Have to wonder how much damaged lading claims the RRs have to pay. CSX here replaced rail on a siding and surfaced it to main line standards. The siding was not that bad to begin with.

jonnhrr wrote: ↑Fri Dec 13, 2024 11:40 am It seems to me that DOGE will be mainly concerned with the 86%.

I like that you think that DOGE will be concerned with anything other than political grandstanding.

I mean, you really think they are going to cut back medicare and social security?

Defense and aerospace in general is probably the biggest opportunity to find true waste given how often projects are designed to be jobs programs for various districts to satisfy Reps and Senators rather than the most cost effective way to deliver the system. It is also where someone like Elon’s knowledge is probably the most applicable. While I didn’t vote for Trump I try not to overtly dismiss things on partisan grounds or hope for failure. I think defense and aerospace is an area where DOGE probably could do some good. This is also an area where they could probably draw some Democratic votes.

Strictly limiting the review to non defense discretionary spending as we have traditionally have recently simply by math does not involve enough money to make the huge differences in the deficit desired and there are a lot of popular programs in this area that have their own interest groups that will fight to the teeth to defend them and it always leads to minor cuts and agreements that do little to actually address the deficit. This is also the area where cuts are most likely to simply be reversed in changes in Congress.

You can’t seriously address the deficit without looking at defense and aerospace and probably also looking at health care and social safety net spending simply because of how much money is involved there - and because the growth of spending on the entitlement side is not sustainable and will likely shortly wipe out any cuts you make on the discretionary side. I’m one that thinks revenue and taxes also needs to be part of it - but if those aren’t an option then it is simply impossible to reduce the debt without looking at defense or entitlements/health care spending.

I mean it was the DOGE account that posted about CAHSR. Even if the feds funded the entire project (which they aren’t and haven’t), even with its higher 140B cost, all in one year (which they never would), it would represent only 2% of the entire budget. Yet here they are calling it out.

At the end of the day, DOGE is nothing more than free marketing for Elon and an opportunity to push through his personal agenda before the parties involved get tired of each other (I give it no more than 12 months and more like 6). Elon is not an idiot, he can run circles around trump and will get out as soon as he gets what he wants. Trump, on the other hand, will get tired of being unable to control him.

As far as what the agenda is? Elon has the following businesses:

- electric cars
- battery storage
- solar panels and roofs
- space exploration and satellites
- autonomous driving and robotics
- significant China manufacturing presence

Expect to see the following
- dismantling of FAA oversight over SpaceX
- dismantling of NHTSA oversight over autonomous driving
- dismantling of transit as it threatens the autonomous driving business
- dismantling of NASA oversight, awarding of contracts to SpaceX
- regulatory steering to have more DoD contracts going to Starlink with more power granted to Starlink to determine operation (think Ukraine)
- carve outs for made in China cars built by American companies but not Chinese ones
- dismantling of union protections, making it harder for employees to organize at his factories

You can think of more changes along these lines. I don’t want them to fail, I’m just being realistic about what they will probably propose and implement.

>Elon is not an idiot

Claims facts not in evidence....I.e.....$44B for Twitter, now valued less than $1B.

>Elon has the following businesses:

You forgot :Killing Tesla Drivers.

Ultimately making Twitter into a right wing safe space is certainly going to have a captive audience of anyone who is somewhat conservative sympathetic - which gives them guaranteed income. I think he is taking a bigger long term risk with Tesla in polarizing his brand and completely aligning his empire with MAGA. Well off liberal sympathetic people who he has basically told to screw off are probably among the key customer demographics for EVs. He has basically made Tesla into Chik fil A of cars - a brand conservatives will salivate over but liberals will boycott - when your product is EVs I’m not sure that’s the best move long term. Will be interesting to see how Tesla sales do over the next few years. He does have a huge overseas customer base so perhaps he is banking on China and other markets.

I wonder how much killing the CR will save on the Federal budget?

Jeez I love watching Elon melt you guys around here. "Right wing safe space". Gimme a break.