Trump Just Freed Taxpayers from a $128 Billion Boondoggle That Liberals Spent 17 Years Building
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that his administration is pulling federal funding from California’s expensive and behind schedule high-speed rail project, accusing Governor Gavin Newsom of gross mismanagement and failing on promises to taxpayers…
“To the law-abiding, tax-paying, hardworking citizens of the United States of America, I am thrilled to announce that I have officially freed you from funding California’s disastrously overpriced, ‘HIGH SPEED TRAIN TO NOWHERE.'”
Trump’s Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, backed up the president’s decision, saying bluntly: “Federal dollars are not a blank check – they come with a promise to deliver results.”
The high-speed rail project has been a poster child for government waste. California voters approved it way back in 2008 with the promise of a sleek bullet train connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours. The price tag? A hefty $33 billion.
Fast forward to 2025, and not a single mile of high-speed track has been laid. The cost has exploded to an estimated $128 billion – nearly four times the original budget. That’s enough money to build about 640,000 average American homes. And instead of a statewide system, the project has shrunk to a 119-mile segment connecting Bakersfield and Merced – two Central Valley cities that few Californians were clamoring to travel between quickly.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority has spent $15 billion so far with shockingly little to show for it. The current timeline doesn’t call for even the scaled-back Central Valley segment to be operational until 2033 – a full 25 years after voters approved the project.
Governor Gavin Newsom quickly pushed back against the funding cut, claiming Trump “wants to hand China the future and abandon the Central Valley.”
“We’re now in the track-laying phase and building America’s only high-speed rail,” Newsom insisted, though no actual high-speed track has been installed.
“To the law-abiding, tax-paying, hardworking citizens of the United States of America, I am thrilled to announce that I have officially freed you from funding California’s disastrously overpriced, ‘HIGH SPEED TRAIN TO NOWHERE.'”
Trump’s Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, backed up the president’s decision, saying bluntly: “Federal dollars are not a blank check – they come with a promise to deliver results.”
The high-speed rail project has been a poster child for government waste. California voters approved it way back in 2008 with the promise of a sleek bullet train connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours. The price tag? A hefty $33 billion.
Fast forward to 2025, and not a single mile of high-speed track has been laid. The cost has exploded to an estimated $128 billion – nearly four times the original budget. That’s enough money to build about 640,000 average American homes. And instead of a statewide system, the project has shrunk to a 119-mile segment connecting Bakersfield and Merced – two Central Valley cities that few Californians were clamoring to travel between quickly.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority has spent $15 billion so far with shockingly little to show for it. The current timeline doesn’t call for even the scaled-back Central Valley segment to be operational until 2033 – a full 25 years after voters approved the project.
Governor Gavin Newsom quickly pushed back against the funding cut, claiming Trump “wants to hand China the future and abandon the Central Valley.”
“We’re now in the track-laying phase and building America’s only high-speed rail,” Newsom insisted, though no actual high-speed track has been installed.