By Jason Welch
Branstad’s first test: support trains or lose aid
Not even in office yet, Governor-Elect Branstad has had a microcosmic, color revealing decision “Support Trains or Lose Aid” proposed to him. The federal government has dangled $81.4 million in front of the state to upgrade tracks and purchase locomotives for a twice-daily passenger train service between Iowa City and Chicago. However state legislators must first appropriate an additional $10 million on top of a previously committed $10 million for initial start-up costs. After that, further annual state subsidies are projected to cost $3 million. The trade-off an: an estimated, yearly increase in activity along the route of $25 million. The decision on the surface seems innocuous enough, but Gov. Branstad, now “in the process of compiling and studying…information,” has yet to commit.
I for one intend to use this decision as a measure of the man and his politics. I lived in Osceola for eight years. My house essentially was in the Amtrak parking lot, and I have done a bit of research into Amtrak.
Amtrak is a corporation entirely owned by the federal government, a state-owned and state-run socialistic entity. Amtrak has never operated in the black, has never seen a profit and is costing the U.S. taxpayer billions of dollars. Passenger fares are subsidized by as much as $500 per ticket. In the case of the proposed line, the subsidy is estimated for the first year to be $12 per ticket.
While passenger rail service is not an infant industry in need of incubation but instead one of Friedman’s “rather aged industries,” if a not a corpse, previously starved by the market, propped up with taxpayer money, I take no issue with it. My primary concern is the financial and organizational structure of Amtrak, as it is un-American. Solely on those grounds, Branstad should oppose it.
There are additional, albeit lesser and arguable, concerns with this project. I see this decision as a multi-faceted microcosm of some of the larger problems this nation faces. Branstad must choose between rural, western, agrarian, conservative Iowa and eastern, liberal, urban interests in the sense that all will equally share in paying the subsidies, a populist Oz scenario, if you will. It is a transfer of wealth. It is a special interest project. It is big corporations seeking from government what they cannot earn in the market. It is government picking winners and losers. It is corporate government collusion. It is the federal government asking the state to dance to its tune. It is government-sponsored inefficiency. It is an industry that has survived not on innovation but on handouts. It is not an additional entrance into the state but an exit out of. It is just one more government bad idea in the sense that it cannot generate a net income for Iowa unless more people take the train to Iowa City than from Iowa City to Chicago. It is one small coin added to the debt that is nickel and diming this nation to death.
I voted for Branstad in the hopes that he would stand in opposition to government expenditures such as this. Branstad’s dilemma is that no one will concern himself or herself with this issue except the railroad special interest. He is going to receive flack for nixing this project and virtually none for supporting it. So what I am wondering is if Branstad will, when no one is watching, socialize in this big government, special-interest dance?
Jason Welch was a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives 3rd District during the Nov. 2 general election.
