WASHINGTON — According to a wire service, with the Bush administration offering no plan to rescue Amtrak, America’s passenger railroad system, from a threatened shutdown, the U.S. Senate will take matters into its own hands on Tuesday.
Senate lawmakers, led by Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, will propose emergency legislation to give the cash-strapped passenger railroad the $200 million it says it desperately needs to keep trains running.
Amtrak’s president, David Gunn, has said he might have to begin shutting down the rail service by the middle of this week — possibly Wednesday — without the money in hand.
The railroad has not been able to borrow money from its banks because of its poor finances and an incomplete audit of its 2001 accounts.
Gunn has requested a loan guarantee from the Bush administration, but a four-hour meeting between Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and Amtrak board members on Monday failed to produce an agreement on any financing option.
While Mineta said he was confident a shutdown could be averted, Gunn and Amtrak Chairman John Robert Smith were less sure. They said Mineta’s involvement could push back the shutdown deadline but his commitment alone “does not stop it from occurring.”
Mineta said any solution to Amtrak’s fiscal woes must include steps to reform its business practices. What immediate steps Amtrak would have to take to satisfy this demand in the short-term was unclear.
A Transportation Department spokesman said Mineta will talk again with the board, but a timetable for resuming discussions was not disclosed.
EMERGENCY SPENDING PROPOSAL
“The federal government will continue to explore the best option for a financial solution,” Mineta said in a brief statement to reporters on the talks.
With no plan advanced by the Transportation Department, Senate Democrats have decided to take action on their own.
After a meeting late on Monday with other Senate lawmakers, Daschle said a proposal would be made in that chamber on Tuesday for emergency spending legislation to get Amtrak the money it says it needs.
The Senate also intended to fold the emergency aid into a homeland security funding bill that has yet to be finalized by House-Senate negotiators.
Amtrak, formed in 1971 as a for-profit corporation, has never made money and lost $1.1 billion last year. Its debt is closing in on $4 billion and it has leveraged most of its assets.
A full shutdown would not only disrupt the 60,000 passengers who ride Amtrak on 260 trains each day, but would halt or seriously interfere with commuter service in the Northeast, around Chicago and in California.