Quote:
Originally Posted by numble
The budget plan is to eliminate $95 billion from the Highway Trust Fund over 20 years, $50 billion from the Department of Transportation over 20 years, $10 billion from TIGER, elimination of New Starts ($50 billion over 20 years), $12.6 billion for Amtrak, etc.
It doesn't seem like the proposal of $200 billion is more than enough to replace these cuts for transit, especially since it would only be for capital projects, while much of the cuts are non-capital expenditures.
Under New Starts, LA could compete for a matching grant from the federal government (50% federal funding). Under the proposed $200 billion program, the most LA could get for a program is 20% federal funding.
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Let's do some math:
95 + 50 + 10 + 50 + 12 = 217
So 200 would be less by less than 8%.
That 8% over 20 years.
FY 2017 President's Budget request for the Department of Transportation was $98.1 billion. Some more math:
217/20 =10.85 per year
98.1 x 20 = 1962 over 20 years at least.
(200/1962) x 100 = 10.2%, where do you think the remaining 89.8% will be going to fund?
10.85 / 98.1 x 100 = 11%, what do you think the remaining 89% will be spent on?
17/1962 x 100 = 0.86%.
Do you really believe there will not be funding increases for the other 89% of the USDOT budget over 20 years?
At best, we're discussing cuts or alternate funding for the next 20 years for 11% of the total USDOT budget.
Worse yet, cuts that amount to just 0.86% of the total budget over 20 years.
Even a slight decrease in budget funding gets overblown into a massive cut, no wonder Federal spending and deficits creeps upward every year.