[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 14, 2014)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E69]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              IN OPPOSITION TO CALIFORNIA HIGH-SPEED RAIL

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                            HON. DEVIN NUNES

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, January 14, 2014

  Mr. NUNES. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to record a few observations 
about the California high-speed rail project.
  It's no surprise that high-speed rail has become a boondoggle even 
before any track has been installed. This was a political project from 
the beginning, backed by local politicians who thought it would raise 
their political fortunes. For example, as noted by Sacramento Bee 
columnist Dan Walters, a planned route between Merced and Bakersfield 
was the direct result of President Obama's effort to help an endangered 
Democrat lawmaker, whose district received $700 million of stimulus 
funding just before the 2010 elections.
  Californians were deceived about the most fundamental aspects of this 
project, whose price tag has already doubled to $68 billion. With 
independent estimates routinely exceeding $100 billion, it's hard to 
believe the initial estimates were put forward in good faith, or that 
voters would have approved the project if they had known its true cost. 
Recently, Governor Brown has even proposed raiding the state's cap-and-
trade program to help finance the ballooning costs.
  Make no mistake, this railway will never operate without massive 
taxpayer subsidies. To make it appear financially sustainable, planners 
estimated that the line from San Francisco to Los Angeles will carry 
more than twice as many riders and cost half the price compared to a 
trip from Washington to New York on the existing high-speed rail line 
there. This is a preposterous estimate for a region which, compared to 
the Northeast Corridor, has a smaller population base, lower population 
density, and less extensive mass transit system to connect everyone.
  Furthermore, nonpartisan reports as well as research by the State 
Auditor and Legislative Analyst have cast doubt on the project's basic 
assumptions, and these misgivings were reinforced recently when a state 
judge found that the state had no valid financial plan for the project.
  In light of this stunning level of waste and deception, California 
high-speed rail has already proved itself to be a monumental failure. 
Californians are being forcibly evicted from their homes and businesses 
to make way for an extravagant train to nowhere. The only reasonable 
course of action is to spare our communities further misfortune by 
ending this project once and for all.

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