Everyone wants to get one last favor from Joe Biden before he leaves office.
Democrats are putting all of their cards on the table.
And California Democrats had one final demand from Joe Biden over this terrible bailout.
California Democrats want a federal bailout for highspeed rail boondoggle
President Joe Biden is trying to shovel as much money out the door as possible to his political allies before he leaves office.
California Democrats want Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to fork over $536 million for a high-speed rail project.
The state’s attempt to build a high-speed rail system connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco has become one of the biggest government boondoggles in history.
California voters approved a ballot measure in 2008 that authorized $10 billion in bonds to build the high-speed rail line connecting the two cities.
The project was supposed to cost $33 billion and be completed in 2020.
Now, the high-speed rail line is expected to cost more than $130 billion and won’t be finished until the middle of the 2030s.
The project hasn’t transported a single rider after massive cost overruns and falling more than a decade behind schedule.
A French railroad company, SNCF, that was working on the project gave up in 2022 and turned to another project in North Africa instead.
“There were so many things that went wrong,” SNCF Project Manager Dan McNamara told The New York Times. “SNCF was very angry. They told the state they were leaving for North Africa, which was less politically dysfunctional. They went to Morocco and helped them build a rail system.”
California Democrats have been looking for taxpayers to help bail out the project with a handout from the federal government.
The state doesn’t want to pour any more money into it when they think they can get the rest of the country to pick up the tab.
Adam Schiff wants taxpayers to pay for California’s mistake
California has abandoned plans to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco any time soon with the high-speed rail project.
The state is looking to connect Bakersfield to Palmdale in Los Angeles County and two sparsely populated cities in Northern California, Gilroy and Chowchilla.
U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) led a group of Democrats from California’s Congressional delegation asking Buttigieg to sign off on $536 million for the “essential” high-speed rail project.
“These investments will continue to support living wage jobs, provide small business opportunities, and equitably enhance the mobility of communities in need — including disadvantaged agricultural communities — all while reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” the California Democrats wrote.
The money would go toward designing tunnels for the train to travel through mountains.
Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved California Governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
California Democrats think they can get one final favor before the change in Presidential administrations.
President-elect Donald Trump withheld $1 billion in federal funding for the high-speed rail project in his first term.
California’s high-speed rail project has become one of the biggest disasters in the state’s history.