Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) announced a new push to rescind or redirect $14 billion in federal transportation funding from what she calls “boondoggle” rail projects that are years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, according to a letter sent this week to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy.
In the letter, Ernst commended Secretary Duffy for releasing a long-delayed audit of California’s high-speed rail project and for canceling $4 billion in federal funding for the effort. The Department of Transportation’s 315-page report, required by a provision Ernst authored in the bipartisan infrastructure law (Section 11319 of Public Law 117-58), outlined what Ernst called a “trail of project delays, mismanagement, waste, and skyrocketing costs.”
DOT found that the California high-speed rail project failed to meet the terms of its federal grant awards, citing missed deadlines, budget shortfalls, and exaggerated ridership projections. The project, originally pitched to voters in 2008 as a $33 billion rail line connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles by 2020, has since ballooned to $128 billion with no high-speed tracks laid.
Ernst praised DOT’s review as setting “a new gold standard in accountability” and urged Secretary Duffy to apply similar scrutiny to other federally funded projects identified under her boondoggle law. She listed four projects currently receiving a combined $4.5 billion from taxpayers: Honolulu Rail Transit in Hawaii at $1,941,400,000; the Purple Line Transit in Maryland at $1,006,000,000; the Transbay Corridor Core Capacity project in California at $1,335,730,000; and the Queens Railroad Project in New York at $294,781,579.
The letter also highlighted three additional projects that Ernst said were omitted from the official audit despite being over budget and behind schedule. These include the Subway Extension to Silicon Valley, California, receiving over $5 billion; the San Francisco Transit Center at $3.38 billion; and the Minneapolis Light Rail project in Minnesota at roughly $939 million. According to Ernst, the Department of Transportation has committed $9.4 billion to these three projects alone.
“If these can’t be salvaged with better management, they too should be canceled,” Ernst wrote. She suggested that the total $14 billion could be redirected to higher-priority infrastructure needs or used to help pay down the national debt, which she noted has surpassed $37 trillion.
Although the audit of California’s high-speed rail project was over 300 pages long, Ernst noted that the DOT’s summary of the other 14 projects required by her provision was condensed into a one-page chart. She called for greater detail in future “boondoggle reports,” including information on budget overruns, schedule delays, and additional DOD-supported transportation efforts.
Ernst has made opposition to progressive rail mandates a priority in recent months. In May, she introduced the LOCOMOTIVES Act to block states like California from using EPA waivers to require all new trains to be zero-emission by 2030. That proposal had included limits on train idling, restrictions on older railcars, and new spending mandates for rail operators. California later withdrew its waiver request.
Ernst concluded her letter by offering support for DOT’s ongoing efforts and stated that she looked forward to “getting the number of projects listed in future reports down to zero, by whatever means necessary.”
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