(The following article by Don Phillips was posted on the Washington Post website on October 3.)
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration’s plan to restructure Amtrak ran into nearly universal bipartisan opposition yesterday from a Senate committee, and Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he fears Congress will continue to subsidize the passenger railroad’s losses while demanding no basic changes in how it operates.
Federal Railroad Administrator Allan Rutter defended the administration bill before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Rutter said he was incredulous that anyone could think it was intended to dismantle Amtrak and dump financial responsibility for passenger train service on the states, as several senators then charged.
Over a six-year period, the bill would gradually end federal operating subsidies for passenger rail, with the federal government picking up 50 percent of the capital costs. It would open up some Amtrak routes to private operators and turn the Washington-Boston Northeast Corridor over to a compact of states under a no-cost 99-year lease. The only two people who had anything positive to say about the administration bill were McCain and Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth M. Mead. But both said parts of it were inadequate or unworkable.
“There are obvious omissions in it, notably how much restructuring will cost, and some aspects of the plan may not be entirely workable,” McCain said. “Nevertheless, the plan is commendable for addressing head-on the difficult issues of restructuring.”
But after listening to committee members from both parties dismiss the plan as a way to force states to pay for passenger trains, McCain said it was becoming obvious that Congress will not deal with Amtrak’s structure but will simply “give them enough money to let them limp along.”
At issue is a six-year Amtrak reauthorization bill. Amtrak will be funded in the current fiscal year by an appropriations bill now working its way through Congress. The House has approved a fiscal 2004 budget of $900 million, the same amount President Bush requested, and the Senate $1.36 billion. Amtrak President David L. Gunn has asked for $1.8 billion.
Mead said Amtrak will need at least $1.5 billion just to “get by” for the year. Even that “merely postpones the day of reckoning,” he said, “and that day is surely coming. Amtrak cannot continue to operate the current system without, eventually and soon, addressing the backlog of investment needed to bring that system to a state of good repair.”
McCain was not the only member to complain that the bill contained no estimate of how much restructuring Amtrak would cost. Administration and congressional sources said the White House would not allow the Transportation Department to include any financial numbers. That has led to suspicions by the states that the federal government would walk away from passenger rail, which in turn has stoked strong congressional opposition.
“That is not what we are proposing,” Rutter said.
But Mead said the lack of financial information “has weakened support for the governance reforms in the proposal, particularly given the current fiscal climate in the states.”
Mead discouraged the idea of breaking the Northeast Corridor into separate operating and infrastructure companies because “each company will be responding to different incentives that may not be reconciled. The result could be disruption of service and a decline in on-time performance.”
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), chairman of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over Amtrak, led the chorus of senators dismissing the administration plan.
“I fear this approach will be the end of Amtrak as a national system,” she said.
Sens. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) said the administration plan would probably kill the Chicago-Seattle Empire Builder, which provides the only public transportation to vast stretches of rural North Dakota and Montana.