(The following article appeared on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram website on November 13.)
FORT WORTH, Texas — Amtrak’s Texas Eagle and other financially strapped trains have been spared for another year after congressional leaders agreed Wednesday to give the nation’s passenger rail service $1.22 billion.
The money is part of a compromise $88.9 billion measure financing the Transportation and Treasury departments and several smaller agencies for the federal fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
Even so, it may be necessary to postpone crucial maintenance on the Texas Eagle, which serves Fort Worth daily, and other long-distance routes that many critics have been pushing to shut down.
The $1.22 billion is less than the amount requested by Amtrak Chief Executive David Gunn, who had warned that the nation’s only passenger rail service would shut down in early to mid-2004 if it didn’t receive at least $1.35 billion.
But the negotiated amount should be enough to get Amtrak through most of next year without substantial reductions in service, said Ross Capon, executive director of the National Association of Rail Passengers.
Amtrak, however, will not be able to make major improvements until Congress agrees on a long-term vision for nationwide passenger rail, he said.
“It’s like in any business. You can skimp on capital investment and the world doesn’t end tomorrow, but the world doesn’t get much better,” Capon said.
The agreement buys enough time for more debate about Amtrak’s future, Capon said.
Amtrak declined to comment on the House-Senate conference committee negotiations until an official announcement was made, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said.
“I’m told we’re not going to have any comment until the conference committee report is produced,” Magliari said.
The final compromise between the two Republican-run chambers underlined the clout wielded by Amtrak supporters. Though its busiest line runs between Boston and Washington, D.C., Amtrak serves 500 communities in 46 states.
The Texas Eagle offers daily service from Chicago to San Antonio with stops in Fort Worth and a dozen other Texas cities. Another Amtrak train, the Heartland Flyer, offers daily service from Fort Worth to Oklahoma City.
Texans can also catch the Sunset Limited, which connects Jacksonville, Fla., to Los Angeles with service to Houston, San Antonio and El Paso.
Officials at Amtrak, the taxpayer-subsidized passenger carrier, had initially said they needed $1.8 billion to retain existing service. President Bush proposed $900 million, an amount the House approved.
After the Senate voted to provide $1.35 billion, Gunn wrote lawmakers that anything less would “seriously jeopardize the availability of service and continued operation of the national system.”
The compromise spending bill also upholds the four-decade-old ban on most travel to Cuba.
Passage of the overall bill would open the door for a 2.2 percent pay raise for members of Congress in January, bringing their salaries to more than $158,000 a year.
Lawmakers get an automatic pay raise each year unless they vote to block it. Although the Treasury bill does not mention a salary increase, the measure is traditionally the battleground on that issue. The House and Senate have rejected efforts to kill the raise.
The bill also:
— Includes $500 million to help states modernize their voting systems. Lawmakers said they will try to include more money in a huge spending bill Congress plans to approve before it adjourns, perhaps this month.
— Would block for the next year federal efforts to let companies use cash balance pension funds, which can help younger workers likely to change jobs during their careers but could cut benefits for older employees.
— Would limit the Bush administration’s ability to shift federal jobs to the private sector.
— Would let the National Archives begin talks with the private Richard Nixon library in Yorba Linda, Calif., to set up a formal Nixon presidential library there. Until now, Nixon’s presidential papers and tapes have been kept by the National Archives in College Park, Md.
(Staff Writer Gordon Dickson contributed to this report, which includes material from the Associated Press.)