March 2, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 41 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session

[Page H1435]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1915
              CALIFORNIA HIGH-COST RAIL IS A TERRIBLE IDEA

  (Mr. LaMALFA asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, authorizing more money for California's 
high-speed rail--I call it high-cost rail--is a terrible idea.
  It seems that my House colleagues have quickly forgotten how much of 
a disaster this project has been.
  This was sold to the voters in 2008 as a $33-billion project. When we 
finally got the truth out of them--this is a couple of years later--it 
tripled to $100 billion. Then, they went back and revised and said: 
Well, we will just downsize it a bit and make it about $65 billion.
  It has since ballooned back to $100 billion and more. It will 
probably be maybe almost double that by the time it actually gets done 
30 years from now.
  It has been a boondoggle since day one.
  The Trump administration, thankfully, canceled just under a $1 
billion grant that could have left Congress and D.C. to go toward that 
project. Instead, let's put it toward something people can actually 
use, like our highways and our bridges, where we already have a lot of 
traffic that we have to deal with.
  Regular people can access that. They will never be able to afford a 
high-speed rail ticket at $300 a head to go from San Francisco to L.A., 
if it actually is ever completed from San Francisco to L.A. Right now, 
it is just going within the central part of the State, staying between 
walnut orchards and hayfields.
  It is really a crazy project. We shouldn't send another dollar from 
D.C. toward that but claw back the dollars that have already been 
wasted because they haven't upheld the contract to the voters who voted 
in this thing several years ago.

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