It’s debatable that President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency is firing too many people at agencies such as the Department of the Interior or the Food and Drug Administration. But no government entity has earned the scrutiny of DOGE more than the government of California and its white elephant high-speed rail project.
First approved by California voters over 15 years ago, the California High-Speed Rail Authority was given $10 billion in state bond money to build 380 miles of track between San Francisco and Los Angeles for a total cost of $33 billion. CHSA was to obtain the $23 billion balance needed for the project from the federal government and private investors.
Fast forward 17 years, and CHSA has spent more than $15 billion without building a single mile of track. The route has now been shrunk to just 171 miles between Bakersfield and Merced. The new smaller project is set to cost more than the entire original project ($35 billion) and won’t be completed until 2033 at the earliest. The most optimistic costs for the completion of the original project now exceed $100 billion, and no one is willing to estimate a completion date.
“We can’t just say we’re going to give money and then not hold states accountable to how they spend that money,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a press conference in Los Angeles Union Station last week. “If California wants to continue to invest, that’s fine, but we in the Trump administration are going to take a look at whether this project is worthy of a continual investment.”
“I am directing my staff to review and determine whether the CHSRA has followed through on the commitments it made to receive billions of dollars in federal funding,” Duffy continued. “If not, I will have to consider whether that money could be given to deserving infrastructure projects elsewhere in the United States.”
Former President Barack Obama gave California $4 billion in federal taxpayer money for the project, a billion dollars of which Trump clawed back during his first term in office. The Biden administration reversed Trump’s decision and threw another $3 billion into California’s money pit. Trump and Duffy now want to take that money back, too.
The Federal Railroad Administration, which is part of Duffy’s Transportation Department, sent a letter to CHSRA last week announcing that it would conduct inspections and review financial records of the project. The letter warned that the state would be held liable for any federal money spent not in strict compliance with the grant’s legal requirements. Even if the FRA’s investigation of CHSRA spending does not turn up outright corruption, the project is in desperate need of an outside assessment of why it is so terribly behind schedule and over budget. Taxpayers deserve answers.
TRUMP IS MAKING THE SEPARATION OF POWERS GREAT AGAIN
More than 30 activists showed up to protest Duffy’s announcement, chanting “Build the rail” while holding up signs that said, “Don’t delay our train.” But Duffy isn’t the one who has delayed California’s train. The Democratic Party that controls California has had more than a decade and a half to build the project and has failed. If California Democrats want someone to blame, they should look in the mirror and rethink the myriad of state laws that make it next to impossible to build anything in the state.
California is set to spend about a billion dollars on its high-speed rail project this year, with a burn rate of about $3 million a day. One protester’s sign at Duffy’s press conference said, “California has no king.” That is true, but it needs someone to rein in what is out of control. Maybe, at the bare minimum, it needs to be cut off from federal taxpayer dollars until it learns to govern efficiently.