A Stitch in Haste

Thanks to Rick Sincere for pointing out that among the more than 150 programs targeted by President Bush for budget cuts is the $900 million annual subsidy for Amtrak.

Wishful thinking, of course, what with all those big-government, tax-and-spend Texas Republicans:

Each year Bush has pushed to cut the subsidy and each year Congress pushes back to keep the trains rolling. One of the biggest Amtrak fans is Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas.

Amtrak is least pathetic most successful in New York and California. Expect a very "Red + Blue = Bipartisan Purple" opposition from politicians of all stripes to any cuts in the subsidy.

That's unfortunate. Amtrak is a failure and waste by any metric one can imagine. How many more billions of dollars are we going to pee away on this embarrassing boondoggle?

Rick has an old article on Amtrak reproduced at his blog -- give it a read.

UPDATE: Great timing as usual -- the Wall Street Journal follows up with an editorial (subscription site -- sorry):

If going from more than a billion dollars to zero seems unfair, consider that Amtrak has had 34 years to get its caboose in order.
...
Amtrak weighed in with an average subsidy of $186.35 per thousand passenger miles -- a sum that could take you across the country and back on JetBlue. That compares with average subsidies of $118.26 for urban transit and $6 for airlines. Highway users actually ended up paying Washington $1.91 per thousand passenger miles.
...
We're under no illusions that Members of Congress from the Northeast won't continue their political log-rolling over Amtrak. But if Republicans who claim to believe in spending restraint can't cut off funding for a money-losing federal monopoly in passenger rail, they can't kill anything.

Indeed. Perhaps Team Red should worry a little less about those "uppity gays" and a little more about not looking like tax-and-spend liberals (which, for all intents and purposes, they now are).

Related Post:
Slouching Towards "Air Amtrak"

The Amtrak Archive:
"Give In, Give Out, Give Up, It's Over..."
Runaway Train
Republican Train Conductor Gets Railroaded
Amtrak Update
Two Quick Amtrak Updates