Biden Threatens To Veto GOP Spending Bill That Would ‘Cut’ Amtrak Funding to Double Pre-Pandemic Levels
“Amtrak Joe” Biden is doing what he can to earn his nickname by threatening to veto Republicans’ plans to “cut” funding to Amtrak to near-historic highs.
Working its way through the GOP-controlled House of Representatives right now is H.R. 4820, a housing and transportation appropriations bill that would provide Amtrak with $867 million in grants for the coming fiscal year.
That’s hardly chump change. Yet the White House has condemned the subsidy as woefully insufficient.
On Monday, the White House’s Office of Budget and Management (OMB) released a statement criticizing the various cuts proposed by House Republicans to housing and transportation programs.
OMB specifically attacked Republicans for their proposed 64 percent “cut” to Amtrak from last year’s $2.4 billion subsidy. The reduction “would reduce or potentially eliminate certain Long Distance and State Supported services and risk operations and critical capital expenses on the Northeast Corridor,” reads the OMB letter, which threatens a veto of the Republican spending bill as written.
The Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO went even further in decrying Republicans’ “draconian” cut that “would devastate existing operations and jeopardize more than 10,000 jobs.”
It’s true that the House’s bill proposes a steep year-over-year cut from Congress’ last annual appropriation. Republicans’ proposed $867 million is also below the roughly $2 billion in subsidies that Amtrak was historically receiving before the pandemic. It’s less than the Senate’s competing funding bill that passed yesterday with wide bipartisan support, and which gives the company $2.5 billion for the upcoming fiscal year.
Missing from the White House’s dire warnin
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