Ed Morrissey
HotAir.com
12/17/2011
The projected cost of the California high-speed rail project has tripled from the $33 billion estimate the state used to get voter approval for the necessary bonds — borrowing, in other words — in 2008, just three short years ago. The state hasn’t even broken ground on the project, and even its former supporters are questioning the wisdom of putting a state that’s already sinking in red ink on the hook for a boondoggle that will require them to borrow almost all of the $99 billion cost and not have any service to show for it for more than a decade.
Don’t expect the Obama administration to show that kind of critical thinking, however:
The Obama administration vowed Thursday at a House committee meeting in Washington that it would not back down from its support of California’s bullet train project despite attacks from critics who alleged it is tainted by political corruption.
“We are not going to flinch on that support,” said Joseph Szabo, chief of the Federal Railroad Administration.
Szabo said that his agency had committed itself to provide $3.3 billion for a construction start next year in the Central Valley and that federal law prohibits any change of mind about where to begin building the first segment of the state’s high-speed rail system.
“The worst thing we could do is make obligations to folks and start to renege on our word,” Szabo told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Er, no. The worst thing they could do is to waste taxpayer money on a boondoggle that, at least at this point, actually has no realistic final price…
The article continues at HotAir.com
