Potential Big Cuts To Amtrak Are Bad For Everyone, Including Drivers

Ryan Felton
Today 4:50pm

This may not surprise anyone, but with the incoming administration looking to implement “dramatic” cuts to federal spending, one budget blueprint calls for for federal subsidies for Amtrak to be slashed. Here’s why that’s a bad idea.

The Hill reports a coming budget proposal budget proposal hews “closely to a blueprint” from the Heritage Foundation, the influential conservative think tank. At first, it’s not exactly clear which Heritage blueprint The Hill is referencing—one published last February called for eliminating Amtrak’s operating subsidies, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts altogether; another, Blueprint for a New Administration, was published just days before the November presidential election.

But if The Hills’s report is accurate, the earlier blueprint mirrors what’s in the piece and is probably what President Donald Trump’s budget proposal is based off of. (Two members of Trump’s transition team are reportedly orchestrating the austere budget, and both worked for the Heritage Foundation.)

Here is what that document recommends for Amtrak:
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