California Democrats Urge Feds to Approve High-Speed ​​Rail Funding Before DOGE Boondoggle

Several prominent California Democrats are calling on the U.S. Department of Transportation to approve a grant request for $536 million in federal funds to move forward with the state’s long-awaited high-speed rail network.

The money would come from funds already generally allocated to “federal-state partnerships for intercity passenger rail grants” through the “Bipartisan Infrastructure Act” of 2021 and available through the 2024 Consolidated Appropriations Act.

Democrats urged Secretary Pete Buttigieg to approve the funds, saying progress on the “California Phase I Corridor” is “essential to improving our nation’s and California’s strategic transportation network investments.”

“The Phase 1 Corridor aims to address climate concerns, promote health, improve access and connectivity, and increase economic vitality, while addressing current road and rail capacity constraints,” it said a letter to the outgoing cabinet member.

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Written by Senator-elect Adam SchiffSen. Alex Padilla and California Democratic Reps. Jim Costa, Zoe Lofgren and Pete Aguilar, the letter calls for the funds to go toward two projects in particular: tunneling through the Tehachapi Mountains in Southern California and through the Pass by Pacheco del Diablo. Mountains in Northern California.

“These investments will continue to support living wage jobs, provide small business opportunities, and equitably improve mobility for communities in need, including disadvantaged agricultural communities, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” , Schiff and the other lawmakers wrote.

“Please consider the tremendous value and significant impact that FSP-National grant funding will provide in advancing CAHSR beyond the Central Valley,” they told Buttigieg.

The holes are needed, lawmakers said, to connect with other intercity passenger rail systems, including the Brightline WestCalTrain, Metrolink and Altamont Commuter Express.

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The overall high-speed rail project is nearly $100 billion over budget and decades behind schedule, according to California Republicans.

Trump’s DOGE duo of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy aren’t keen on the idea of ​​continuing to fund what many Republicans see as a costly and fruitless endeavor.

Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., said so earlier this month in remarks on the House floor.

“I am very pleased to report that the newly created Department of Government Efficiency has perfected perhaps the greatest example of government waste in American history, and that is the California High Speed ​​Rail boondoggle,” Kiley said.

DOGE X’s official account also detailed California’s high-speed rail costs and asked for funding in a November tweet.

Earlier this month, Ramaswamy also called the plans a “wasteful vanity project” that burned through “billions of taxpayers’ cash with little prospect of completion in the next decade.”

He said Trump “correctly” rescinded $1 billion in federal funding for the project in 2019 and regretted President Biden’s reversal of that movement.

“It’s time to end the waste,” Ramaswamy said.

California’s top Senate Republican echoed DOGE leaders’ concerns.

“California’s ‘train to nowhere’ has already wasted billions of taxpayer dollars; now Biden wants all Americans to fund this boondoggle,” state Sen. Brian W. Jones of San Diego told Fox News Digital.

“When President Trump returns to office in a few weeks, he will have to defund high-speed rail. This experiment in government waste must end once and for all,” he added.

If approved, the federal funds will be bolstered by $134 million in state money from California’s cap & trade program, according to the Sacramento Bee.

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At a 2013 conference, Musk floated the idea of ​​a “hyperloop,” which was also presented in a white paper. Although it hasn’t come to fruition yet, Musk said at the time that he had thought about whether there was a better way to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco than what California has proposed.

“The proposed high-speed rail would actually be the slowest bullet train in the world and the most expensive per mile,” he said. “Isn’t there something better we can come up with?”

The world’s richest man described Hyperloop at the time as a combination of a Concorde, a rail gun and an air hockey table.