WASHINGTON — The authors of competing U.S. Senate proposals to reform Amtrak called on the Bush administration Thursday for guidance on the future of the cash-strapped national passenger rail system, reports a wire service.
“The worst of all worlds for us is to go through the whole legislative process and (have) a bill that the president threatens to veto,” Sen. John McCain said at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the railroad.
“Why haven’t you all sent up something we can act on?” asked committee chairman Sen. Ernest Hollings.
Deputy Transportation Secretary Michael Jackson testified that Amtrak’s financial situation was “grave” but it would be rash to commit to a specific dollar amount at this point.
President Bush would review the situation and would recommend a transitional structure, he said.
Amtrak, set up by the government as a private corporation in 1970, has never turned a profit.
The debt-strapped company with huge capital needs lost $1.1 billion last year and has conceded it will not be operationally self-sufficient by 2003 as directed by Congress.
Hollings, a South Carolina Democrat, has proposed $4.6 billion in federal funding annually to help Amtrak meet capital costs and operating expenses.
McCain, from Arizona and the ranking Republican on the Commerce Committee, has offered a competing proposal that would split Amtrak into three companies before privatizing it within four years.
McCain, whose proposal largely follows recent recommendations of the Amtrak Reform Council, a financial review board, told Jackson to “carry a message” back to Bush.
“Look, it’s time that you come forward with a proposal from the administration so we have something to work on,” he said. “This is a very important issue.”
Amtrak President George Warrington, who said last week he is leaving Amtrak for a job with New Jersey Transit, said Congress and the Bush administration needed to agree on what sort of rail system Amtrak should be. “I think it is fundamentally a federal policy question.”