The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“CALIFORNIA'S HIGH-SPEED RAIL” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Transportation was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H215-H222 on Jan. 14, 2014.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
CALIFORNIA'S HIGH-SPEED RAIL
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, our subject here tonight is about California's high-speed rail project, a project that was voted in in 2008 by the voters of California with approximately $9 billion worth of bonds to help fund what would be a project that would seek outside private investment as well, a project that would link San Francisco to Los Angeles with possible additional spurs to Sacramento and San Diego. It has run into large funding problems and such. So the subject of our time tonight is that we see that there are huge problems with the funding and where will the funding come from.
I have my colleagues here from California, as well, who would like to speak on this subject. First of all, I would like to yield to my good friend and colleague from the north San Joaquin Valley, Congressman Jeff Denham, who has been a leader on this issue here in Congress as well as chairs the Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure, which deals directly with rail and this issue. So, Congressman Denham, I would love to hear from you tonight.
Mr. DENHAM. I thank the gentleman from California.
I, as many other Californians at one time, supported the California high-speed rail project. It was initially supposed to be a $33 billion project with equal amounts coming not only from the California taxpayers, in the form of a bond, but also private investors and the Federal Government.
Yet this $33 billion project has ballooned up to $100 billion. So what do they do for cost controls? They cut off the very legs that Mr. LaMalfa talked about, the section going to Sacramento, the section going to San Diego; but, still, it is a $68 billion project with a more than $26 billion hole just in the first initial operating segment alone.
Tomorrow, as chair of the Subcommittee on Railroads, we will be discussing a review of the challenges facing California's high-speed rail.
I want to reiterate I believe that high-speed rail is our future. I believe that as a growing economy, with more trucks and goods movement on the road, with more goods movement on rail that we have to look at alternative opportunities to move people. High-speed rail is one of those opportunities.
But in Florida, a project that is being done by private investors will have no ongoing subsidy. They need no Federal dollars. Texas will have its own high-speed rail system, again, with private dollars, no ongoing subsidy. Yet here in California, you have a $68 billion project with no private investor, with huge subsidies and overruns, and a project that cannot even get out of the initial gate.
So where we are today: California has no money to meet its Federal obligation. On November 14, we had a court decision that came back and said that they cannot spend the $9.95 billion that was approved by voters because they had failed to complete a full business plan. So with no dollars available, the Governor came out this week and said that we are going to use $250 million of the cap-and-trade dollars, cap-and-trade dollars that were supposed to be used for environmentally friendly projects. Yet this project is going to be a net polluter, a net polluter for at least the next 30 years. So how he could come up with a legality of using these cap-and-trade dollars I think is in question.
But I think a bigger issue is a timing issue: $180 million is due April 1. The Antideficiency Act says that the State has to have its first set of matches, and that 50/50 match is due April 1. Yet the legislature is not even going to vote on this new budget and this theoretical $250 million in funds until, at the earliest, late June. California budgets usually come in in August, and I think it is a real question on whether liberals and conservatives can agree on whether or not this environmental money will be used on high-speed rail.
But specifically on the operating segment, itself, the judge has said not only that they need to come up with the money on this initial construction segment, which stops in Bakersfield--so now we are going to have two sets of rail that stop in Bakersfield, and then you have to get on a bus to get across the Tehachapis. But they don't even have the funding for the initial operating section, which goes all the way to Palmdale. You won't be able to get the speed that they need going around, instead of through, the Tehachapis; and they have a $20 billion funding gap in that first segment.
So some real questions: Are they going to meet the timeline of April 1? Is using the cap-and-trade dollars actually legal? And, third, this huge funding gap, where does that money come from? I think the Federal taxpayers across the Nation need to be asking the question, If you are going to subsidize all of California's high-speed rail projects, where do the matching dollars come from? If they could use the $9.95 billion, it is still not enough money. So if California can't come up with the Federal match, what are the teeth that the Federal Government has to be able to hold California up to that Federal obligation?
We have some real questions that are going to be coming out tomorrow. The FRA has altered its approach. Once they realized that they couldn't do a 50/50 match, they went to a tapered match. That means that the Federal Government is going to come in with their money first, and then, hopefully, someday the State will come up with its matching dollars in a tapered manner. That tapered manner is coming through April 1. That is when that first $180 million is obligated.
But I think the real question is, Who is making these decisions? Did this go all the way up to the President? Was the past Department of Transportation Secretary or the new Department of Transportation Secretary involved in this decision? And if California can't come up with this tapered match, will they, once again, adjust this outside of Congress a second time?
So we have some real questions on what those legalities are. The next question would be the contingencies. What are the contingencies for the Federal Government to recoup its taxpayer dollars if California defaults on its obligations?
We have some real priorities in California. And as the Central Valley continues to suffer with a drought, as our schools continue to lag behind, as our public safety dollars continue to get robbed, is this the best use of our money? And should we be investing in something that, unlike Texas and Florida, has no private investors, has no State match, has a lot of funding questions that need to be answered before we move forward?
Mr. LaMALFA. Thank you, Congressman Denham.
Indeed, the more time that goes by on this issue, the more problems and flaws are exposed in this. This is a measure that passed in 2008, was put in front of the voters, known as ``Prop 1(a)'' at the time that passed by a 52-48 margin. I think the voters were sold something completely different than what we are actually seeing as Californians in the project.
Congressman Denham mentioned that the price has ballooned from approximately what people saw on the ballot, $33 billion for that initial San Francisco to L.A. segment; and just 1 year later, it was revised up after the voters had voted on it to $42 billion. And then we saw that the Sacramento segments, the San Diego segments were dropped off as even options.
Interestingly, we have all been in the State legislature--Congressman Denham and myself and another gentleman who will be speaking here in a moment--and we saw these numbers go past us at a time. And at a hearing that was held in the California State Senate in November of 2011, it was finally exposed that their numbers were way off, and they admitted that the project that voters expected would be right near $100 billion to do the San Francisco to Los Angeles segment if it was going to be truly a high-speed rail from port to port. And also during that time, in order to build up and say what an economic boom it would be, they were advertising that 1 million jobs would be created by this.
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We pinned them down in that Senate hearing that it wasn't really 1 million jobs. It was a term called 1 million job years, which really translates out to perhaps 20,000 jobs of building the entire system. So we have seen a lot of very creative--I would say phony--numbers on costs, on benefits, and even some of the very highly optimistic ridership numbers as well.
So, Congressman Denham, what does that mean in your district here as far as what you really think the jobs would translate out to? And then what are some of the impacts on the property involved, as well?
Mr. DENHAM. Well, certainly, one of the big concerns right now is where are these jobs? These were stimulus dollars that were supposed to be ready for shovel-ready projects 5 years ago--5 years ago--and still not one shovel is in the ground. Not one job is created. Now, unlike Texas and Florida that are creating jobs, that are putting the infrastructure in, certainly in California they could come up with a better plan. They could go along the I-5 corridor. They could use the existing rail corridor that has been abandoned. There are other opportunities if they truly want to cut costs. But if they don't want to change, they don't want to revise their budget and they have no private investor, the question still remains, what obligation do you have to go back to the California taxpayer? You are obligating the California taxpayer for nearly $10 billion, and you are not fulfilling the Prop 1A guarantee that they voted on.
So, at a certain point, I believe that we have to force the California High-Speed Rail Authority to go back to the voters and seek approval. Change your plans. Go back to the voters and let the voters decide.
Mr. LaMALFA. Indeed, I attempted that in 2012 with legislation at the time called SB 95 in California to place that back in front of the voters, give people the option, now that they have more information, to say do they really want to go through with this with California's other issues. You mentioned, Mr. Denham, the challenges we have had with water supply. Even our Governor is saying that this is a huge priority and a huge problem for California to face in 2014, and yet we have a very difficult time allocating a few billion dollars to enhance our water storage in California and instead are faced with this.
What would that mean for jobs in the valley if we are able to turn the water, turn the tap back on to agriculture at a fraction of the price of high-speed rail?
I yield to my friend.
Mr. DENHAM. It would be a fraction of the price, tens of thousands of jobs that would be lost of seeing farmland that goes by without being planted this year.
We have a huge drought. There are huge issues. And what everybody is trying to say is a high-speed rail--keep in mind, this initial segment, this initial operating segment which has a $20 billion funding gap, is not going to be electrified. It will not be high-speed. By their numbers, by their plan, this is another set of track that will not be electrified, that will run as it is being run today, with a $20 billion gap. So even if you came up with the entire $32 billion of this initial segment, we are still stuck in the same situation that we are. We are just that much further in the hole.
Now, I know some of my colleagues would say, well, just spend the money as quickly as you can. Let's just spend some of it, and like other projects, once you have started it, some day the money will come. I don't think we can deal with that type of pie-in-the-sky rhetoric. I believe we have got to have a full funding plan that makes sense, one that has a private investor that was promised to us.
We have heard several times that, if you just write the legislation, we will have a private investor; if you just put it on the ballot and approve it by the legislature before it actually goes to the voters, we will have private investors that will sign on to this. Then it was right after the ballot passed, we have nearly $10 billion committed to by the taxpayers, for sure we are going to have a private investor now.
Five years later, after the Federal Government has come up with several billion dollars, after the voters are now on the hook for $10 billion, and still today there is no private investor. You would be a fool to invest in this. This isn't Florida's project. This isn't Texas' project. This is a project with a huge funding gap that still is not going to be electrified--by their plan.
Mr. LaMALFA. Indeed, when we look at the project in totality here, what ended up being $100 billion to be legal under Proposition 1A, to have a true high-speed rail--which is required--to go from San Francisco to L.A. at a high speed, 2 hours and 40 minutes, a $100 billion project was revised now down to a $68 billion project, which does not include high-speed all the way to San Francisco in the north. It would stop at the San Jose area, and then you are required to use local transportation, local light rail, what have you, to get all the way up to San Francisco. And at the southern end, you have, in L.A. County, it doesn't go to downtown Los Angeles under the new plan. It would stop somewhere in the north, remote north L.A. County portion. So it isn't truly high-speed rail anymore.
As you mentioned, too, Mr. Denham, on that, if they take the Palmdale route, they probably can't even sustain those speeds. So it is illegal on that count that it probably can't make a 2-hour-and-40-minute ride. And with that, you have three different segments. So if you have to buy three different tickets, I don't know how the customers are being suited by three different stops like that, as well.
We were told back in the day that the price of a ticket would somehow be tied to 85 percent of what an airline ticket was to go from north to south or south to north; and a real estimate, if this were self-
sustaining, it would be somewhere maybe triple of that.
So the impacts of that, again, California agriculturally with water supply is struggling this year. So for a fraction of the amount of money it would take to bolster California's storage, we are going to spend perhaps what would have been $100 billion--in the revised number,
$68 billion--to do an illegal Prop 1A version from south San Jose to north Los Angeles. That is a $55 billion gap on the entire project right there.
We can only point to $13 billion worth of funding, the 9.9 from the bond. Bonds have consequences. They have to be paid back by an already financially strapped State. As well, the 3.5 billion or so that is promised from the Federal Government under the 2009 stimulus has strings, too. It has an expiration period.
Please embellish on that a little bit, Mr. Denham, because we know there are some very important deadlines coming on that as well, if we can.
Mr. DENHAM. There are important deadlines. Again, this is part of the Antideficiency Act that says the 50/50 match now is coming due for the State. So April 1, $180 million is due. The question for the Governor is: Where is that money going to come from? We can't just continue to change deadlines. And the question to the administration is: Are you going to continue to allow California not to guarantee its matching funds? It is going against the Antideficiency Act, the reason that is put into law.
Mr. LaMALFA. California just passed a recent tax known as Prop 30 last year, 2012, that was going to pay for a whole lot of things, go for a lot of different measures with perhaps schools and other infrastructure. We had talked about cap-and-trade. You can even point to truck fees, that they are all now trying to be shifted towards high-
speed rail instead of other priorities. I wonder if that is what the voters' intentions were on Prop 30 or on their truck fees or weight fees, et cetera.
So I think there has been a lot of deception around this, again, on cost and on ridership. As I mentioned a minute ago, if it has been revised down to a $68 billion plan, we can only point to, for sure, approximately $13 billion from Fed stimulus and the State bond. Where does the other $55 billion go to build what is really an illegal plan? Where is it going to come from?
Mr. Denham, you mentioned we haven't seen the private-sector money from anywhere, yet you can point to, recently, a proposal came out for an east coast plan to build a maglev, magnetic levitation train, that would link east coast urban centers, and there are already interested investors from Japan on that with much more modern technology. You can say that rail isn't new technology because it is wheels still running on a steel rail. And in California, which is supposed to lead the way in technology and innovation, we are really not leading on this at all.
So what do you see as far as the problems with that bigger funding gap? And then, bringing that back, what is that going to do for our economy?
Mr. DENHAM. Well, certainly, we are falling way behind the rest of the world. Other technologies are starting to flourish in other parts of the world, yet here this project will take at least 30 years but, more likely, 50 to 60 based on where they are currently standing on the project. So this is something that will be far outdated technology if it ever gets completed.
But the real question is on the funding. Where is the commitment? This President certainly could look for or come up with other money. He could propose other money to fulfill this project. Not even Democrats will support that. That is not a Republican issue. This is an issue across the Nation saying, why would we come up with money, when we are starved across the Nation, to throw at a project in California that is being mismanaged?
I think that there are real questions there not only for the administration but private investors that are not willing to sink money into a failing project. They don't know what they are on the hook for. They don't know how long of a commute this will be or what the ridership numbers will ever be.
Even by this entire plan, there are too many stops. Whether you talk to the Rail Authority or whether you talk to investors around the world, with that many stops in those locations, you will never get to the 220-miles-per-hour speed, and you will never get to 2 hours and 40 minutes.
This thing is full of holes. It makes no sense for voters, and voters should have a say-so on whether or not they are going to commit any initial money or any further money as we move forward. This is about our future, not yours and mine, but our kids, our grandkids, and the type of debt that we saddle them with. At a certain point, I think that not only Californians, but Americans, need to wake up and say whether or not this is a project that deserves an investment.
Can we do things smarter? Can we do things like Florida and Texas? I don't think Florida and Texas are going to be alone. I think there will be other States that step up and find ways to do high-speed rail and find ways to make a commonsense solution in their States.
But in this State, this project is flawed. It is initially flawed by
$20 billion, but certainly by more than $55 billion if we decide to move forward. At a certain point, you have to ask, how much is enough? I would say that now is enough.
Mr. LaMALFA. Indeed, when the stimulus money first started coming available, there were other States that applied for high-speed rail money, such as Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin. I believe that after they looked at their numbers, ran the figures on projects that were eligible for that stimulus money, they turned that money back and went back into this pool. Of course, California said it wants it; but interestingly, it would have been a much smaller portion had California been sharing with those other States what Federal money would have come to the State. So the other ones said, We have looked at the numbers, and we are turning that money back in.
I think we ought to apply some of the same logic as the other States looked at when they had Federal money available, eligible funds, that they indeed turned back.
So I really appreciate your leadership on this, Congressman Denham, and we will be doing a lot more to make sure this is held accountable to the public here. I look forward to your hearing tomorrow on this matter.
Mr. DENHAM. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. LaMALFA. We are also joined by a colleague from the lower San Joaquin Valley area of the State for whom this issue is very important, very key to his district as well, on the impact of the rail route as well as the economy, as well as what it means for the taxpayers of the State and the entire country. Indeed, this has an effect on national taxpayers and the budget as well. So people in other 49 States are looking at what is going on here and saying, Why is our Federal money going into something that can't possibly work out?
And so I know we are all willing to help people in other States with sensible infrastructure projects. That is the way it works in this country with our interstate system that President Eisenhower had the vision for back in the day. And yes, there might have been naysayers there, but you could actually point to positive results in something that works long term and other infrastructure projects that were invested in, but this one here, the numbers just don't run.
So my colleague, David Valadao from the valley, has got very great concerns and has been very strong in leading in his area too, as well, on what are the impacts going to be, what are the costs.
I would like to yield to Congressman David Valadao.
Mr. VALADAO. I thank the gentleman rice farmer from northern California for the opportunity to speak here today.
Where do you start with something like this? I grew up a dairy farmer in Kings County and continue to be a dairy farmer in Kings County to this day. I spent my first 2 years in elected office in the California State Legislature on a budget subcommittee and watched as this project moved along; and right before election when this was passed back in '08 and up until my election in 2010, the project didn't seem that bad. It seemed like something that was just voted on and put on the shelf and they would continue to build on it. Then, at the last minute, some money showed up and it basically put this project in high gear, and the project wasn't ready for it.
As the Congressman from the northern part of the valley mentioned earlier, there is no real plan. When you show up at the last minute and say, ``Here. Here is some money. Start building right away,'' as if it is shovel ready, it set this project up for a really, really tough time.
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What we are facing now today, we see a train system being built, a high-speed rail, and like was mentioned earlier, older technology. Forty years ago, rail with wheels was the technology. Now maglev is the new technology. So to see a project that is starting today with technology that is already 40 years old that probably won't be running for another 30 years, I think we are setting ourselves up for failure.
When you look at what else has been going on with this project, as far as what the opportunities are, when you look at my district specifically, California District 21, you have got communities like Hanford, Corcoran, Wasco, who all rely on a system that we have today, Amtrak. Amtrak doesn't really pay its bills, but it gets people from A to B, and it serves its purpose. You have got a system there where people who live in those communities are able to get to the doctor in Fresno or get to the doctor in Bakersfield or get to work, but a small, commuter train that gets them where they need to be for relatively low cost.
You look at high-speed rail, and as the map that was up on the screen earlier showed, what we have there is a track that will basically pass from Hanford, if Hanford ever gets built, but for sure Fresno to Bakersfield, and it leaves all of the people in California 21 basically out to dry. That is sad. I mean, when you see a project that was supposed to help those less fortunate, or those people who need it the most, you have a project now that is actually going to hurt them and put potentially at risk what they have today, Amtrak, their mode of transportation.
Because this project lacks so much money, that is why it puts us in that position. We have a system in place that is built on someone else's train tracks. It is on Burlington Northern's train tracks in my area, and I am sure it is on other tracks in other parts of the State, but if the project that they have today starts to move forward and they run out of money like we expect them to do, part of the plan is to move Amtrak over there. So what happens to those stations in my district? That is just one of the issues I see.
In California 21, like I mentioned earlier, and a good portion of the valley, we face a water shortage, a drought. Some of that is natural, but a lot of that is regulatory. We have also got a severe lack of infrastructure to deliver water. We have Tempered Flats and we have Pikes Reservoir, we have a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built, and that is infrastructure that would benefit not just California but the whole State in general.
When you look at a project like high-speed rail, if that project was to go forward and be built, you would have a high-speed rail that most people couldn't afford to ride.
If you build water infrastructure, you now have water to grow products, water to feed families, water for our communities, and once you have that, you start to grow crops and produce product. You start to improve an economy and produce a product that you actually can sell and bring dollars back into your community. That, in my opinion, makes a lot more sense.
Education. California has struggled with funding for education for years. We have seen plenty of programs that were cut out or cut back or just flat out gotten rid of. If you have a project like high-speed rail spending money when they are not prepared for it, when we should be investing in our future, education, making sure our kids have the best opportunities, the best foundation to bring, to improve our economy, to be good, productive members of our society and to make a real difference--I think education should be our first priority.
You look at everything we could be spending money on. Right now in California, we have been letting prisoners out of prisons because we don't have enough money to build facilities for them and to keep some of the community correctional facilities open. There is a lot going on, and we have to be spending money on a project like this when we should be focusing on something that helps keep our communities safe.
Those are all things that we should be paying attention to that we are not because of this project. They are in a hurry to build this project right now because they say it creates jobs, but, like was pointed out earlier, those numbers are all bogus. They were pushed up. They were not honest numbers. We are starting to see this project that will put our children and grandchildren into debt for a long time for a small amount of jobs that we really can't account for and we can't ensure will be our own community jobs.
So this is something that has had me concerned my whole time in the legislature, and I have talked about it for a long time. It is something that I am going to continue to fight. It needs to be talked about and pushed out there.
The more people who get involved--you take groups like my Kings County group of residents who have sued the State and sued the Federal Government over this project. When they first got involved, they looked at this project and said this is going to affect our families and homes, let's fight it. Once they started getting into the details and saw where the funding was coming from, or the lack of funding, the amount of deceit that goes into this project just to get it rammed down our throats, they decided to keep fighting no matter what, even though the alignment was moved off their property across town to another part of town. The high-speed rail people thought all of these people will back off now because it doesn't affect them personally, but once they knew what was really in this project, they thought there is no way we can let this fight go. So the group actually grew.
Now that the new constituents were affected by the new alignment, the new guys joined with the old guys and the group grew. Now they have moved the alignment back. The first group is continuing to fight, and the second group is in it as well. It is just amazing how the more you get to know about this project and how it is being pushed and how it is being run, the more you want to fight it, and the more you want to shut this thing down.
Just to close, California high-speed rail comes at a tremendous cost to taxpayers while delivering no benefit to my constituents. This project will destroy homes and businesses throughout California's 21st Congressional District and divert precious tax dollars away from water infrastructure, public safety, and education.
I will continue to uphold my promise to my constituents and do whatever I have in my power to stop this project as fast as possible.
Mr. LaMALFA. One question: a commission, a board in California, recently moved to the three-person board to authorize the rail authority to start condemning property under eminent domain. Of course, there is going to be a lot of resistance. Kings County is a hot bed of resistance to this project. The eminent domain procedures are not easy or cheap to get through a court process. They are already moved to condemn two pieces of property, I believe, in Fresno County, and I believe there are at least 380 that may have to go through this process. How do your constituents feel about the forced taking of land and an alignment that doesn't make a lot of sense and some of the infrastructure that might be lost in these communities?
Mr. VALADAO. Over the years, there have been a lot of things built in the valley--freeways, just different things that obviously needed to be built for the good of the State. Farmers, and constituents in general, if they understand why it is being taken and it makes sense for the State, usually it is an easy deal.
But once they get involved in the details of this project and start to see how they are being treated themselves and how the project is going to end up looking, because it is pretty apparent with the lack of funding and with the rest of the Federal Government looking at this project and understanding that it is pretty much ruined now because of the management, they are not happy. They are fighting this thing tooth and nail.
When it comes down to their own personal property, obviously they are offended with some of the prices and some of the numbers they are seeing. If they owned the property or if their family owned it, if it is a generational thing, or just in general an eyesore running alongside their home, affecting how they drive to work or how they move around the district in general, it is just offensive to many of them, depending on the different route or how you want to approach it.
Mr. LaMALFA. Indeed. Let me ask you, too: How easy is to relocate a rendering plant? A rendering plant, that is a facility that processes dead agricultural animals, which happens, and so they need to be taken to be processed, and one of those is right in your district, I understand.
Mr. VALADAO. We have a rendering plant that is right in the middle of the alignment as the alignment is today. Obviously, the alignment moves on a weekly basis, but the rendering plant has been in the alignment twice now. The first time, and we are back in there again.
As far as permitting for a new rendering plant, back in 2006 during the heat wave, we struggled in the Central Valley to handle the amount of animals that were needing to be processed at that time. Permitting for a new facility was nearly impossible, and we were never able to upgrade or expand the facilities. So to actually build a new one today I would say is nearly impossible.
Mr. LaMALFA. Is the high-speed rail authority guaranteeing to help or see through as part of the environmental documents to help make sure this is replaced or other infrastructure is replaced? There are dairies in line. Again, in California, securing a permit for a new dairy has become nearly an impossibility, as my colleague in the dairy industry would probably report. So there are a lot of people weighing in on that. Relocating the dairy, these are facilities and lands that have been for generations of families that have been there. Is anything being taken into account on the authority helping with these processes as part of the impact they are having?
Mr. VALADAO. We have no guarantees on any of that. Some of the things that affect some of our constituents, somebody that has a restaurant and the high-speed rail goes through their property, they go in and give them what they assume is the value of that, but no one takes into account replacement value. Or they bought their first home when prices were high, and now prices have come down, and now it is an opportunity for high-speed rail to come in and offer them market price, which basically leaves that person homeless and in debt. So there are a lot of situations.
We have farmers with long-term leases on property who do not own the property, but own the permanent crop on top of that. High-speed rail hasn't taken into account the value of that crop on top. People will invest $10,000 to $15,000 an acre to get trees planted, and if they are only buying the land for the value of the land but not what is on top of that land, that obviously will put a lot of people upside down in a really bad position and affect a lot of jobs.
One of the biggest economic drivers in the valley, and in California, we export a lot of agricultural products. That brings a lot of dollars in. That will have an impact on our economy as well.
Mr. LaMALFA. Indeed. We are both from long time farming families. I think when you are a farmer, or any business that is multi-
generational, but especially on the land, you develop a bond. You develop a love of the land that you don't really put a price on. I think most farmers will farm until they can't farm any more, either due to age or regulations taking it away from them, or whatever. So how do you put a price on my family, raising the fifth generation, and you and your neighbors, you have multi-generations as well. How do you put a market price on your legacy? Someone is coming in from Sacramento or Washington saying we think it is worth that. It may be worth infinitely more to you and your family and the generations behind you. How do you quantify that?
Mr. VALADAO. Well, you can't. When it is a project necessary for the benefit of the country, benefit of the State, one that actually makes sense with a good plan behind it, it is a little easier to swallow, but when you see this project in general and how big of a disaster it has been and how little information has been out to the public, how they plan on funding it, how they plan on moving forward, if people are going to be able to actually afford to ride this thing, it makes it that much worse. This is important. I mean, when you look at how hard some people have worked to build their homes and build their farms and companies, we have restaurants and we have a little bit of everything that is being affected by this. When you see their blood, sweat and tears, you can't put a price on that.
Mr. LaMALFA. Certainly. Eminent domain is something that governments should use very reluctantly, very rarely, and only when there is no other option available. My farm has been affected by that as well with the large towers, the power lines that move basically from hydroelectric projects in the northeast part of the State down to the San Francisco Bay area. It is something that affects our fields, but it is part of the greater good. Our tractors have to drive around those now and figure out how to still keep straight lines going through towers running at an angle, and you have ag aircraft that have to tangle with avoiding wires and flying over the towers at 200 feet and trying to drop seed or fertilizer, things like that. So we get some pretty strange streaks in our fields because of that infrastructure, but it is important. We want the folks in the Bay area to have that.
Eminent domain isn't always very fair. What I am seeing here is the promises, if there are any promises made by the high-speed rail authority, to truly keep people whole on this and give them options, and as you mentioned, the alignment changes frequently. We are not even sure if they have a full 520-mile alignment decided yet. They could have gone for a more low-impact route, perhaps putting it down the middle of Interstate 5 or adjacent to it, using parts of 99, perhaps.
Mr. VALADAO. Or maybe fill in gaps where Amtrak doesn't serve today. Currently, if you want to go from Bakersfield to L.A., you get on a bus. There is no connection there. That would have been a great place to start this project.
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That is one of the arguments we have. When you have got a project of this size and such a percentage of the money that is needed to build this project, you can see the failure coming. But you have to make sure that whatever resources are spent are spent in a way that benefits the overall majority of the people.
Right now, if you are riding Amtrak from Fresno to L.A. and you get off at Bakersfield and you get on that Greyhound bus and ride over the hill, I am sure Greyhound does a great job, but that would be a great place to fill in the hole and build a rail, and build it up to today's standards and put something in place that we can build on in the future that makes sense.
Mr. LaMALFA. Certainly you can make an argument that the first places you should look are the urban areas where you can have the potential ridership. Here on the east coast, you have a lot of ridership between Washington, D.C., on up all the way to Boston. I don't know about the financial viability of that, but at least you can make a case there. Here, as was reported just a couple of years ago, they wanted to start in the Valley because, as was quoted, they had the least amount of resistance to building the rail starting in the rural Valley as opposed to what it was going to take to run through the South Bay area, places like Palo Alto and others, that some people are feverishly opposed to what that would do and what that infrastructure tends to bring to high-
value communities like that as well.
But, again, the promise lies in the Central Valley for us in what we do well already. My portion in northern Sacramento Valley, San Joaquin Valley, these are strong agricultural areas.
I am wondering--and maybe you can touch on this as well--we have had different ideas for water projects that for a fraction of the money we are talking about with the high-speed rail system, how far could we go to do one or two water storage projects and what would that mean for especially communities like you have down there that have seen a huge economic impact with the cutoff of water due to the delta smelt and those other problems? What would that mean in real jobs for the people that have the skills and education level that likely aren't going to be working on a high-speed rail project, but have a strong background in agriculture? What do you see that doing to help your area?
Mr. VALADAO. Well, when we look at a company that wants to invest in the Valley, if they are in agriculture, obviously they are attracted to the area for those reasons. But if they are looking for an affordable place that makes sense between L.A. and San Francisco because of access to larger populations, they look at the Central Valley, but they also want to make sure that there is security there. If you are going to build a company, you are going to make sure it is in a great place for your employees.
I think the focus should be right now making sure that people have affordable energy to live there because obviously it gets hot in the summer, and the water situation. Are you going to move your family into an area where the water isn't safe to drink, which is commonplace in some of those communities that we have been fighting for funding for some of the water treatment facilities that are so necessary.
Then when you get into the infrastructure itself, if you are going to build a plant or anything or a processing facility for the type of commodities we grow, water is a necessity. It starts from growing the crop, to cleaning the crop, to making sure that the facilities are up to code and that we've got some treatment in place and that we have a product that we can sell and bring dollars to those communities.
That is how you create jobs, that is the right way to do it, and that is something that we should be focusing on and investing our limited resources on today. Obviously, we have been making some really tough decisions in the last few months over spending and budgets and everything else that we have got going on. Not just on the national level, but at the State level there are going to be some tough decisions as well.
Those decisions should be based on priorities, and those priorities should be making sure we have the resources, and resources today means water. Water is the number one priority, and that is where it should be focused at.
Mr. LaMALFA. I think everybody in California in the midst of this drought probably find agreement with that. Our own Governor was underlying that in a speech the other day, and yet still so wedded to this high-speed rail project, which the funding for is highly questionable. Indeed, a judge handed down a decision the other day ordering California not to spend any of the State bond money because it wouldn't be legal to do so under the lack of a plan they have.
We both served in the State legislature. And is California's financial situation such that it can get out there on its own somehow with new funding? If the Federal money falls short or no private investment comes out, where will it come from?
Mr. VALADAO. Well, we have got a lot of priorities here in Washington, D.C. The different Members from different parts of the State are not looking at California's high-speed rail project the way it is being rolled out today and thinking that is a good place to invest the resources that the taxpayers in their district want to see them spend the money on.
It is not going to be an easy lift. As this project seems to move forward and the press gets worse and worse, and when you've got judges involved saying that they are not following the letter of the law, what was asked of the voters when they voted for it, it just makes it that much harder to come up with the rest of the money they are going to need to finish this project.
So to get it started, just to build a big berm, or maybe even a berm with some metal on top to hopefully throw some older-style Amtrak trains on top, doesn't make a lot of sense, especially when you are going to cut off communities that need it today, need what we have got in place today and not put that in jeopardy.
Mr. LaMALFA. What doesn't get talked about much are different impacts like the high-speed rail. In order to sustain a high-speed, you have got to build a very long elliptical form in order to make turns with a train going 220 miles per hour. It is kind of like the angled towers running at angled lines on my property that we farm. It doesn't fit in real well with a grid that is set up on straight lines and squares like that.
So when an elliptical-shaped rail comes through your community through agricultural zones, as well as high-speed rail having to cut off all the crossings, can you build enough overpasses to not stop the flow of traffic, whether that is cars or trucks or even a farmer on a tractor who now may have to drive his tractor instead of just across 6 miles down the road and back up to get around. I mean, there are a lot of impacts that are really not meeting the eye here when you line them out.
Mr. VALADAO. Like I mentioned earlier, when this project was started, it was started as a long-term project; but then $3 billion showed up from the Federal Government and the project managers basically said put this thing in high gear, start breaking ground.
You have got a project of this type that affects so many people in so many different communities--how they travel around their homes to work, around their farms, around their businesses, transporting products between warehouses and processing facilities. You have so much going on, and you have got this project now that is going to disrupt all of that just because they have got a timeline that they have got to spend.
The timeline is really on a small portion of it. We are talking a couple percentages of the total cost of the project. It is not worth risking a project of this size over such a small amount of money.
That is probably one of the worst things that has happened to this project since its inception. It could have been something great. It could have been a project that could have made a big difference if it was given the time to be designed and planned in a way that benefited the State, didn't burden the State with debt forever, and actually helped the constituents of that State.
It is too bad this project has gone down the path it has; but, again, we are going to try to stop this thing so that this doesn't happen and doesn't affect our communities.
Mr. LaMALFA. Well, indeed, it does appear that they are hell-bent on spending that approximately $3.5 billion that has Federal deadlines on it in order to get the project started; and then at that point, well, we are invested in the project, we can't stop now, even though the judge ruled it is illegal to spend the State dollars because it is not fulfilling the plan. So, indeed, big impact on the Valley and on taxpayers.
Mr. Valadao, I really appreciate your time and your leadership on this here tonight. Let's keep putting the message out that there are better ways. Most anything might be better than investing in this at this point. So I thank you for your help here tonight.
Mr. VALADAO. Thank you.
Mr. LaMALFA. So, indeed, the investors that were supposed to come in, private investment for what had been billed to voters as a $33 billion project, up to $45 billion if you built the San Diego and Sacramento link, they have not materialized. When you see that the price for a time went up to $98.5 billion--hence California's Senate bill 985--it scared everybody away from this.
You see, in a Baltimore to Washington proposal to do a maglev project here locally that has outside investors that want to come in on that, nobody is touching California's high-speed rail.
So in the absence of this outside investment, California has moved in many different ways to try and find other pots of money. The Governor plans on diverting truck weight fees that are collected from commercial truckers away from repairing California's aging roads.
Just try and drive in the right-hand lane of any freeway--I get to enjoy Interstate 5 a lot--and see what the condition of that road is. Some areas have been repaired. Caltrans had a pretty good year last year. Other areas it is still pretty rough. Interstate 80, near Sacramento, they are doing repairs now; but the potholes on that were pretty bad.
Yet we are seeing the effort by the State to shift funding away from repairing roads that everybody uses versus a project that maybe few can afford to actually use. My colleagues from the Valley here would probably tell you that there is not going to be a whole lot of people that jump on high-speed rail to ride from Bakersfield to Fresno because it doesn't make any sense for them.
The promise of a low-cost ticket being 85 percent initially of an airline ticket from L.A. to San Francisco or vice versa, how can that be met without having the tickets subsidized at these costs? $85 we were told, $90. It was revised later maybe $120 when we had a hearing about it. Try $300 if it is not going to be underwritten by the taxpayers for ridership on this.
How many people are going to spend $300 on that trip? Other than those that might do it for the novelty of the train ride from north to south or south to north. We saw pie-in-the-sky numbers on what the amount of ridership would be, numbers that at one time were greater than the entirety of Amtrak across the 48 continental States. They have had to revise them down to some other vague number.
So there is not a lot of trust in anything being put forward by the California High-Speed Rail Authority on costs, on ridership, on impact, promises made or not made to those that are impacted in the line of many different proposals of where the route is. Yet they are still trying to move forward and start condemning people's property, at who-
knows-what price of reimbursement, in order to spend as quickly as they can this $3 billion-plus of Federal stimulus money put in place almost 5 years ago.
It is really looking more like a fraudulent enterprise from what the voters saw in 2008 to now. Indeed, polling out there shows that now that people have heard about this the last couple of years and what it really means and the other choices they have to make on schools, on water, on their actual highways, that they have a whole lot of different opinion on it. A lot of editorial pages around the State are saying at the very least if you are not going to stop it, you should put it back on the ballot.
I attempted that in 2012. The mood wasn't there in the State legislature to do that. My former colleague there that I served with, Assemblyman Jeff Gorell from the Santa Barbara area, he is putting forward legislation to put it back on the ballot and re-vote the rail. So I hope that catches fire and that the legislature will look at this project and decide maybe that would be worth a vote of the people of California to decide if this is still a priority at these prices.
So Assemblyman Gorell has got a pretty big task to put that in front of the legislature and achieve the votes. But interestingly--still talking State politics here--but in the State Senate, to put forward the first segment of funding in late 2012, it received the bare majority of votes to fund that. In our California State Senate, there are 40 Members. They have got a vote of 21-19. All the Republicans voted ``no'' and four of the Democrats, who up to that point had been pretty favorable on high-speed rail. It barely got out of the State Senate floor.
I think that is saying a lot, that the opinions have changed, certainly amongst the voters. Now we just have to put the State legislature in a figurative headlock and get them to think about it and do that.
So I hope Assemblyman Gorell is successful in this measure because it would be proper to put this back in front of the voters and ask them again: would you rather have this or water projects, highway projects, school projects, any number of things that could be done to help move California forward instead of this boondoggle that has no way of paying for itself or sustaining itself?
We see, again, with the court handing down a ruling, that the plan is diverted so far from what was initially voted on and approved by the voters that it is now illegal. Why should State government be doing things that are illegal? Because they are right now in such a hurry to get the money spent, the Federal money. If the Federal money was to stop, the State money also has to. They both have to have a match with each other; but if there is not the match happening, then there are giant legal problems.
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Congressman Denham mentioned a while ago: What is the payback procedure if Federal money is misspent, improperly spent? Because California had the capacity to do that if it doesn't meet its timelines, it doesn't meet the goals, it doesn't meet the tenets laid out in proposition 1(a). It would be in a true high-speed rail system all the way from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which so far that plan is not. You have to ride three different train types to accomplish that under this current plan.
Now we know the folks in the Bay Area and parts of Los Angeles are interested in seeing some of their tracks electrified as beneficiaries of some of the money that will be coming from this. I get that, I understand that. That probably would be a benefit for them, some upgrades in their local infrastructure. I don't know why you could not support that separately from this. If it helps to get Caltrain in the Bay Area electrified, then that should be a separate question, a separate set of funding, because right now this is illegal.
The people in the Bay Area do not want to be part of an illegal project, likely, and maybe perhaps lose that funding they are depending on to electrify and upgrade their system. I don't think so. That is a lot of money when it gets around to doing that above what is going on in the valley, with the condemnation of the land, and building in an area where they said would have the least amount of resistance for the project, let alone the Bay Area and perhaps parts of north L.A. County.
So it is very problematic. It is really time, as I proposed back in my senate days, to slow down the project and really get some real numbers. That was my first bill in the State Senate, SB 22. It was a no spending, no doing anything, until we have fully vetted and thought out a plan.
Honestly, this reminds me of ObamaCare. I have been calling this around my neighbors ObamaCare, Jr., because it is so poorly thought out; and the plan for funding it looks largely the same, pie in the sky. Investors won't touch it. Federal Government, are they going to come in and bridge the gap of the other $55 billion that is missing, if we believe a $68 billion plan, or on up to the approximately 100, let alone the inflation things that might drive a real project all the way to $150 billion? All for what?
What could really be seen as an outdated technology and something that a lot of people can't afford to assess, nor even make sense for them to use in short segments within the valley. Yes, it may make sense possibly if you had a fast train that could go all the way from San Francisco to L.A. and complete that.
One of the things brought up is that in order for the project to be technically legal, they would only have to send one train per day in each direction at full, nonstop length. They would have other trains perhaps that are making all these stops, stopping at every little burg along the way. That is not high-speed rail. That is glorified Amtrak, glorified local commuters. That is not the intent of voters or anybody on this measure, or for that funding which is scarce money these days in California. The huge problems we have in trying to get a budget done and move eventually towards the balance in our Federal budget, it isn't a priority that we should be doing.
So, Mr. Speaker, I just want to note that again Congressman Denham will be having a hearing tomorrow in his Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on rail that will be at 10 a.m. in Washington time, developing more on this situation. So I would invite you to participate, or watch that, and expose what really needs to happen with Federal funding as well as maybe perhaps the people in California have an opportunity to weigh in on Assemblyman Gorell's proposal to have this back on the ballot and maybe perhaps shift our scarce funds to other things.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the time here tonight, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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