On the recordMarch 12, 2014
At this time I would like to yield to my dear friend, Mr. LaMalfa. Mr. LaMALFA. I appreciate my good friend from Texas. Thank you for yielding time tonight. I wanted to speak a little bit about some issues affecting California and the wise use of U.S. taxpayer dollars. California's high-speed rail, on its surface, may have sounded promising to voters when they acted on it in the 2008 election--until you take a closer look at it. Once the planning on the project began, the public found it would take billions of dollars to build and operate beyond what they were promised when it was on the ballot. What had been a $33 billion ballot pricetag was exposed at a November 2011 public hearing as a nearly $100 billion project. After some scrambling to make plan changes, which likely render it illegal from the enabling legislation voters passed as Prop 1A, we now see the current $69 billion plan, which uses low-speed modes in the urban areas of San Francisco and LA, again, found illegal under Proposition 1A. The tripled, then discounted, doubled pricetag is far from what 52 percent of California voters said ``yes'' to. High-speed rail's ballot measure was delayed by the State legislature two election cycles before finally placing the High Speed Rail Initiative on the 2008 ballot, where Californians approved what they thought would be a reasonably managed project to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles with a 220-mile per hour train.…
