Amtrak's Taxpayer Express has completely derailed
President Obama doesn’t want the government to own car companies. No, no, no. Anyone who thinks that is sorely mistaken. He insists this current “ownership” thing is just temporary.
Why, three years from now, both companies will be so financially robust that they somehow will no longer need billions of dollars in government subsidies.
Hey, wait a minute. That’s what the same thing they said back in 1971 when Congress legislated Amtrak into existence. Here’s Wikipedia’s description of how that’s worked out:
“Amtrak commenced operations in 1971 with $40 million in direct Federal aid, $100 million in Federally insured loans, and a somewhat larger private contribution. Officials expected that Amtrak would break even by 1974, but those expectations proved unrealistic and annual direct Federal aid reached a 17-year high in 1981 of $1.25 billion. During the Reagan administration, appropriations were halved. By 1986, Federal support fell to a decade low of $601 million, almost none of which were capital appropriations….by 1995 Amtrak was on the brink of a cash crisis and was unable to continue to service its debts.”
So Congress dug a little deeper into your pocket and upped the subsidy. Every year. Here’s what you’ve kindly contributed to Amtrak in the last five years.
2005 $1.2 billion
2006 $1.8 billion
2007 $1.9 billion
2008 $2.2 billion
2009 $2.6 billion
To summarize: In 1971, Congress said Amtrak would be self-sufficient in three years. 38 years later, the subsidies are bigger than ever and the service is worse than ever.
It doesn’t take Nostradamus to predict the future for GM and Chrysler. If you can read history, you can see the future.
Just add a couple more zeroes to the subsidies.
Source: Wikipedia, Heritage Foundation
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Look up Conrail. Look at the successful re-privatization and emergence from bankruptcy of Chrysler. I think your lack of faith in the government is misplaced, and your opinions on Amtrak are completely skewed. Amtrak was created by the Nixon Administration to protect a useful and efficient private industry that government subsidies into highways and airlines had almost destroyed. As it turns out, rail and transit are cleaner, faster, and more cost-effective investments than the automobile, highway, and airline industries. As a conservative, wouldn’t you want your government to do the more cost-effective and efficient thing and stop paying out the 100s of billions of dollars towards the wasteful and fraudulent highway and airline systems?