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(Reuters circulated the following article on February 8.)

WASHINGTON — A White House proposal to end subsidies for Amtrak and possibly push it into bankruptcy could backfire and disrupt train travel for millions of commuters, congressional and labor officials said on Tuesday.

While few expect Congress to fully embrace the administration’s zero aid proposal for the nation’s only city-to-city railroad, Amtrak supporters in the House of Representatives said insolvency would not guarantee continuity in commuter services and could create pension and other headaches for the government.

“It’s far from clear that the outcome of bankruptcy would be a more efficient Amtrak,” said Rep. James Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat and ranking member of the House Transportation Committee.

Absent the sweeping passenger rail reforms the White House has been pushing for two years, the Bush administration budget released on Monday views bankruptcy as one way to transform the way passenger rail services are delivered.

The administration’s plan includes the elimination of unprofitable routes, greater funding by states and opening up passenger routes to competitive bidding. Amtrak, a for-profit corporation that depends on substantial federal help each year, could run some of those trains as a greatly scaled-back entity.

But Oberstar and other Democratic Amtrak supporters in the House said bankruptcy could severely handicap the administration’s plan and inconvenience commuters in the Northeast, the Washington, D.C., suburbs and other cities.

They said plans to set aside $360 million for a tiny quasi-government agency — the Surface Transportation Board — to find a way to assume oversight of sprawling commuter networks fully or partly run by Amtrak was untested.

“It’s not clear how the board’s power would interact with the obligation of the bankruptcy court to preserve assets for creditors. The bankruptcy court may be unwilling to have Amtrak’s assets continue to be used for commuter operations,” Oberstar said.

The Surface Transportation Board is primarily responsible for resolving railroad rate and service disputes and reviewing proposed railroad mergers. The Transportation Department says the board would not run commuter rail services but find operators to do it.

Edward Wytkind, president of the transportation trades unit of the AFL-CIO labor federation, said dismantling Amtrak would have a “devastating impact” on railroad retirement programs.

He said more than 100,000 freight and commuter rail workers would see their payroll taxes go up significantly with 20,000 people no longer paying into the retirement system as Amtrak employees.

Oberstar said without Amtrak workers paying into benefit programs, the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Account would be exhausted by 2006, and nearly $297 million would have to be borrowed to make up the loss.

Brian Turmail, a Transportation Department spokesman, said the criticism was unwarranted and bankruptcy could only occur if Congress or Amtrak did nothing to reform what administration officials call a broken system based on a failed business model.

“It shows they are not interested in making desperately needed reforms,” Turmail said about the railroad.

Congress can defy the White House and decide to fully fund Amtrak for another year beginning next October. Amtrak received $1.2 billion in subsidies this year.