[ April 22, 2024 ]
Fiscal responsibility – unheard of in the land of Democrat legal plundering of our hard earned monies.
California now wants to scale back their already failed “fast train” project by substantially shortening the distance so that it no longer goes from L.A. to San Francisco. A different deal and record cost overruns. Send the Federal Government back the Billions of Dollars WASTED!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 20, 2019
Trump Cancels Nearly $1 BILLION Payment to California; Exploring Clawback of Add’l. $2.5 BILLION!
Donald Trump has made very clear he’s a different kind of President.
Story continues below advertisementHe runs things like a business.
And he expects performance.
There are checks and balances.
So when California is given, or set to be given, a reported $3.5 billion in total compensation from the federal government to build a now-failed high speed rail system, President Trump does what any good CEO would do: he cuts off the funding and seeks to claw back anything he can.
Well done, Mr. President!
I have dreamed of the day the federal government would start having fiscal responsibility and you are doing it!
And here’s more on the clawbacks, from Breitbart:
The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it was canceling a federal grant to California worth nearly $1 billion after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the cancelation of the state’s high-speed rail project last week.
Newsom used his “State of the State” address Feb. 12 to cancel the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles project, saying it “would cost too much and, respectfully, would take too long” to complete.
However, he told legislators he wanted to complete the portion of the bullet train under construction in the rural Central Valley, lest the state lose federal dollars granted to California by President Barack Obama as part of the 2009 stimulus: “I am not interested in sending $3.5 billion in federal funding that was allocated to this project back to Donald Trump,” Newsom said.
The president had other ideas, and took to Twitter to demand that California return the money. Newsom rejected that demand, insisting: “This is CA’s money, allocated by Congress for this project. We’re not giving it back.”
But on Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) sent a letter to the California High-Speed Rail Authority, informing it that it was terminating its agreement with the state and therefore would refuse to provide the state with $928,620,000 allocated to the high-speed rail project.
The FRA listed several factors informing its decision, including the likelihood that the high-speed rail would not be completed by 2022, as contemplated by the original agreement. The state’s high-speed rail authority had also failed, according to the FRA, to provide “timely and satisfactory financial reports” to the federal government.
The Los Angeles Times reported additionally that the Department of Transportation said it was “actively exploring every legal option” to recover the other $2.5 billion granted by the federal government to California for the project.
And confirmed by CNN:
The US Department of Transportation announced Tuesday it is canceling $929 million in grant funds for California’s high-speed rail system, escalating the Trump administration’s efforts to regain all the federal money for the canceled rail project.
If built, the high-speed rail system would have run from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The department added in a statement that it “is actively exploring every legal option to seek the return from California of $2.5 billion in Federal funds (Federal Railroad Administration) previously granted for this now-defunct project.”
The statement from the Department of Transportation heightens the Trump administration’s quest to recoup federal money spent on the project that was originally granted in 2009. California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom announced last week that he was scrapping the project because it was too costly and would take too long.
That decision led President Donald Trump to demand all the money appropriated for the project by the federal government be returned.
Trump tweeted that California owed the federal government about $3.5 billion for the canceled project. “We want that money back now,” he wrote. “Whole project is a ‘green’ disaster!”
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided a federal grant of $2.553 billion for the high-speed rail project and the Consolidated Appropriations Act for the fiscal year 2010 gave a grant of $929 million for the project. Trump derived the $3.5 billion figure from these two grant amounts.
Newsom replied to the President in a tweet: “We’re building high-speed rail,” adding, “This is CA’s money, allocated by Congress for this project. We’re not giving it back.”
Despite the legal threats from the administration, California is not under any obligation to return the money.
The grants are based on agreements that require the California High-Speed Rail Authority to complete a 120-mile high-speed train track for the “initial central valley section” by the end of December 2022.
The agreement does not require the California High-Speed Rail Authority to build trains for the track. This means the state could build out this segment of the high-speed rail track, and, based on the agreements, California would not owe any money to the federal government — even if no trains were built for the track.
The FRA writes in the letter that the state “has materially failed to comply with the terms of the Agreement and has failed to make reasonable progress on the Project,” which they said was supposed to be on track to be finished by 2022. The agency writes the state failed to “submit required critical grant deliverables,” and “failed to take the appropriate corrective actions to ensure delivery of the Project.”
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51 Comments
5 years ago
“Good Trump,” as Ben Shapiro would say.
5 years ago
Just deduct the money owed from any future payments to the California state….Simple.
5 years ago
Reply to
Dalit
Lots and lots of law suits are headed that way be commifornia. The cost will get bigger and bigger cause they will want ‘us’ to pay the lawyer fees.
5 years ago
Socialists love to spend our money on boondoggles. Blow your own money
5 years ago
California wanted to leave the Union? Cretins, California has a moral obligation to return the money used for a cancelled project
5 years ago
Reply to
felix1999
Correct, democrats/liberals are bereft of a moral standard. Words like Honor, Honesty, and Integrity are a foreign language to leftists.
5 years ago
Reply to
felix1999
Moral obligation ha they don’t need no stinking Moral obligation in libtardfornia .
5 years ago
Reply to
Don Vito
Aron Burr was tried for Treason for planning separating Texas from the Union!!! The only politician so far tried for treason!
5 years ago
pamela, $1 billion is good, but trump is presiding over a swamp whose confiscation of our money has accelerated to unheard of levels since he became president, and the spending is accelerating ever faster such that the deficit continues to swell. this CA thing is a good story if true, but it truly is a drop in the bucket. trump needs to cut federal spending and federal headcount by 10% per year for the next 4 years, and for a president that’s easy to do and to sell. just get on TV and show the pension plan for the worthless federal clerks relative to that of the guy who’s been working construction for 40 years. the anger among taxpayers would be unfathomable if this gouging of us is explained in clear simple pictures.
5 years ago
Reply to
Rocinante44
Growth is kicking in that will cover that. Don’t sweat it. Trump knows what he is doing.
Notice how our trade imbalance has been dramatically shrinking. We will prosper under USMCA and eventually with a trade deal with China. Putting up the wall will save us billions and save lives.
The tragedy is, is that it is very difficult to get rid of federal employees. Many are unionized. Trump has not been replacing those that left. Forget getting legislation to address that in Congress…. Obama passed legislation to make it difficult to unload federal employees. He went on a hiring binge.
5 years ago
Reply to
felix1999
You might be right about the growth part but I’m skeptical. I believe our debt is so enormous that something serious will have to be done to shrink it. Since congress only knows how to spend money we are in serious trouble. Hopefully I’ll be gone/dead before the really bad stuff begins to bear down on the American people. I also believe the reckoning is not that far off. One thing to watch will be China whose debt is about 30 trillion with a similar economy size. Them we may know what we will face for sure.
5 years ago
Reply to
felix1999
He may have made it harder to unload the employees, but all they need to do is start cutting their hours along with wages, and a lot of them would soon leave. I’ve heard there are a large number of them that do nothing anyhow.
5 years ago
Reply to
Rocinante44
But, so many voters don’t pay income tax, so the anger is very muted.
5 years ago
Reply to
Don Vito
yes, and those voters vote democrat, so they of course love voting for people to take our money and give it to them.
5 years ago
Scumbag Newsom decides to continue building the most worthless section of the whole fiasco — admittedly, self-avowedly, naively confessionally for the sole reason so that he doesn’t have to pay Donald Trump!
Unbelievable how deranged California politicians are.
The California AG Xavier Becerra has sued Trump nearly FIFTY TIMES!
IN TWO YEARS!
Scumbags!!!
California is an enemy territory.
5 years ago
Reply to
Chris Wolf
Most worthless and easiest. The right idea was to start with the tunnel thru the San Gabriel Mountains, which is how they did start. But they hadn’t figured out that that was hard — somehow even though it was obvious. Then a few years ago they decided to do the easy part first. And now they aren’t even getting far on that. Pathetic.
5 years ago
Reply to
Chris Wolf
Yes, and don’t forget”Medicare for all”. Maybe the next bullet train fiasco.
5 years ago
I wonder who knows more about contract law, Trump or the democrap governor of californicaters?
5 years ago
Incompetent California Democrats screwed this up fair and square. That makes it their money waste however they like. Who does Trump think he is, canceling a payout and asking for the wasted money back? He must be insane, so we should invoke the 25th Amendment and remove him from office.
5 years ago
I can hardly wait to get out of this sh!tehole state.
5 years ago
California receives tens of billions annually in federal transfer payments from highway fuel taxes, disaster relief, and countless other sources. Trump needs to offset these funds by the $2.5 billion owed. He ought to also send California a bill for the billions that are being wasted as a result of California’s sanctuary city laws and activities.The state is nearly bankrupt anay this will tip them over into the hands of a federal receiver appointed by Trump.Newsome and the Commiecrats in Sacramento can then go pound sand.
5 years ago
The Demoncraps in Hawaii are doing the same thing with an ughlee rail system which NOBODY will use. Monolithic, giant piece of ughlee sculpture scarring the land in many areas.
Corruption is extremely rampant with some consultants getting paid something like a million a year. And there are a bunch of them. It seems many people have gotten paid off and split!
Some city officials are under investigation for corruption including the AG. The police chief and his former prosecuting attorney wife are about to get indicted for some serious crimes. Including drug trafficking.
Someone estimated it is costing the Hawaiian people $500 million a mile and they have twenty of it. Yet they have a homeless problem there. Do you know how much that money could of benefited the Hawaiian people over there?? Including the homeless and many poor Hawaiians who are the indigenous people?
BTW, it’s a Demoncrap State.
5 years ago
Reply to
Alleged-Comment
They (meaning the state) don’t give a whit about the indigenous people. Never have since they were invaded themselves.
5 years ago
AFAIK California is the richest and most prosperous state in the Union, why does it need to get money from the tax payers for their projects
It was also the first to create sanctuary cities for illegals
5 years ago
Priceless 🙁 A rail segment from nowhere to nowhere with no Trains. OMG that could have paid off all student loan debt, gotten the gov’t out of student loans, returned student loan payments back into the community with people buying things, and forced you to work your way through college getting a useful degree.
5 years ago
“The agreement does not require the California High-Speed Rail Authority to build trains for the track.” Maybe this means that the track could be used for hang gliding.
5 years ago
check and balance. great Mr. president
5 years ago
G-d bless Mr. Trump … a moment of sanity. I’m sure he’s being sued now – and will lose in the 9th Circus – cause we cannot have adults running the show – only Demokkkkratic-Nasties who hate everything that works are allowed to make decisions affecting all of us.
But if he succeeds at the SCOTUS, it could make for significant changes to the way we waste money in this country for the next six years.
5 years ago
This is great news. Former governor jerry brown crammed this down the California taxpayers throat.
(the fast-train to nowhere).
We didn’t want it! But he went ahead anyway. Now the new governor has to take the consequences
for this boondoggle and pay back the fraudulently gained federal taxpayers funds.
California must stop fleecing the American, hardworking taxpayers. We don’t want “sanctuaries”!
We want the Law to be Enforced!!!
5 years ago
Little wonder there are huge cost overruns and a scaling back of the LA to SF fast train. Have you attempted to build anything when you are high on weed? The haze hovering over La and SF is not produced by car exhaust or industry emissions. It is the result of the collective population of California exhaling 40,000 pounds of burnt marijuana daily. #/StopSmokingWeed: save the planet.
5 years ago
Virtue signalling is a very fine concept when funded from the pockets belonging to those that cry for such projects, but these left wing fruit loops never do that do they ?
I have yet to see a city well run, clean, free of graffiti, with low crime and drug dealing figures, class leading technical schools and low tax rates run by socialists or the worst of the worst, the Greens.
I would rather traverse that coast by M/C then at least I know I can stop when a quake strikes, but a high speed train in an earthquake area – no thanks.
5 years ago
Reply to
Poppey
“I have yet to see a city well run, clean, free of graffiti, with low crime and drug dealing figures, class leading technical schools and low tax rates run by socialists or the worst of the worst, the Greens.” Dhimmicrates would accuse any perp that did such a thing, of well you know….raycist (sic).
5 years ago
There was a recent editorial I read in the L.A. Slimes re: the use of DWP monies earmarked for improvement/maintenance of existing infrastructure (pipes, valves, pumping stations) to pay off PENSION obligations.
5 years ago
Newsome announced the High Speed Rail LIne, will now go between Merced and Bakersfield. Makes perfect sense. Because everyone knows that once harvests are done in Bakersfield, the field workers have to rush to Merced for a new harvest. This boondoggle will make it so much easier for them to commute quickly and safely between the two cities.
5 years ago
In Minnesota, we have the minlars goat rodeo from the demokkkrats. Minority groups are hired to write simple software for licensing cars. Too bad none of them can write software. $$Billions wasted. Unless its really a “cheaper than jail” deal. Whites don’t fit the demographics, and cannot be hired.. Of course the mainframe program worked perfectly, or Wisconsin has what they need. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Goat%20%20Rodeo
