Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary, the District of Columbia, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006

TRANSPORTATION, TREASURY, HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, THE JUDICIARY, THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, AND INDEPENDENT AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - June 29, 2005)

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Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I want to compliment the chairman for a great bill and especially this provision of the bill.

Mr. Chairman, the numbers simply do not lie. The current model for Amtrak is simply unsustainable. This issue has perennially haunted this subcommittee. Amtrak refuses to take a good hard look at the facts, instead relying on an annual congressional bail out. They would rather lobby Congress than reform the system.

When I chaired this subcommittee, we included a series of reporting requirements and business practice modifications for Amtrak so the Congress and the American taxpayers would know the financial stakes involved.

These reporting requirements included developing a quarterly grant process, giving the Secretary of Transportation direct oversight into Amtrak decisions, separating out operating and capital expenses, and also requiring monthly financial reports and zero-based budgeting. And we insisted that Amtrak employ generally accepted accounting principles in order to control spending and eliminate waste.

These modifications have been carried forth and expanded in the last four appropriations bills, including this one. And what did we discover with those procedures? Amtrak's financial records reveal that for every $1 Amtrak earns in food and beverage revenue, it spends about $2, resulting in a $245 million loss between the years 2002 and 2004.

Amtrak's on-time performance fell 74 percent in 2003, 71 percent in 2004. Service is not getting better. It is getting worse.

Amtrak's current 2005 revenue projection will be $95 million short of its original estimate.

For the last 6 years, the average annual cash losses have exceeded $600 million.

Most notably, they are carrying an estimated $5 billion in what they need to repair and improve safety on the railroad.

The amendment that is before us does not address any of these problems; $900 million, or 75 percent of these moneys, in this amendment would restore operating expenses and debt service on $4.6 billion in accrued debt. No reform, no tough cost-cutting decisions, no recognition of the facts. This amendment simply kicks tough decisions down the track.

For too long, Amtrak has deferred critical maintenance on a system it simply cannot maintain. With this amendment, we simply increase the cost and increase the likelihood of a serious system failure.

The plan put forth by the chairman is a fair and equitable plan to limit the Federal contribution to routes that are simply imprudent. By capping the per-passenger subsidy at $30, Amtrak is given clear prioritization on its spending and forced to address supply-and-demand realities.

We simply cannot keep going on sending empty trains clear across the country with no riders. I would point out that on one of the crosscountry trains we are subsidizing every passenger by $420 per person. I can buy you a first class, round-trip ticket to California for less on an airline. How can we sustain such a thing?

Cut out these wasteful, expensive, riderless trains and save Amtrak for the places where people want to ride the trains, the northeast, the Midwest, the West Coast. It makes no sense to run these empty trains across the country with nobody on them. Save that money. Put it into the northeast corridor. Put it into the Chicago area. Put it into the California trains and the West Coast trains, and let us reform Amtrak.

I urge the defeat of this amendment.

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