As most FCRP members certainly must have heard in the media by now, House Budget Committee Chair and GOP Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin recently introduced his Fiscal Year 2012 Budget for consideration by the House of Representatives.

The contrast with the Democrat Obama Administration's proposed budget is, of course, significant.

What would be the GOP plan's impact on passenger rail if adopted?

For starters, it zeroes out high speed rail funds. Worse still, it sets up a precedent of cost-benefit analyses for new and existing services which demonstrates Ryan's hostility towards passenger and commuter rail.

The double standard being proposed for passenger rail is highlighted by the uses of the word "subsidization" an the phrase "self-supporting commercial services" in the following portion of the budget document:

"Since 2008, funding for the Department of Transportation has grown by 24 percent – and that doesn’t count the stimulus spike, which nearly doubled transportation spending in one year. The mechanisms of federal highway and transit spending have become distorted, leading to imprudent, irresponsible, and often downright wasteful spending.

Further, however worthy some highway projects might be, their capacity as job creators has been vastly oversold, as demonstrated by the extravagant but unfulfilled promises that accompanied the 2009 stimulus bill, particularly with regard to high-speed rail.

In the wake of these failures, and with the federal government’s fiscal challenges making long-term subsidization infeasible, high-speed rail and other new intercity rail projects should be pursued only if they can be established as self-supporting commercial services.

The threat of large, endless subsidies is precisely the reason governors across the country are rejecting federally-funded high-speed rail projects. This budget eliminates these projects, which have failed numerous and clear cost-benefit analyses."

The full budget proposal is available here: http://budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/PathToProsperityFY2012.pdf

Since highways and aviation are also subsidized with tax dollars (including tax monies from the general fund) and are not self supporting, FCRP and NARP disagree with Congressman Ryan's double standard for passenger rail.

Read about what you can do to take action to change this wrongheaded double standard at NARP's website here: http://www.narprail.org/cms/index.php/main/act/

--Jackson McQuigg