Trump demands California pay back federal government for failing bullet train project

State of California High-Speed Rail Authority

California High-Speed Rail project is under construction but indefinitely postponed due to cost overruns.

By Evie Fordham

President Donald Trump demanded that California pay back the federal government for its abandoned high-speed rail project, in a tweet Wednesday evening.

“California has been forced to cancel the massive bullet train project after having spent and wasted many billions of dollars,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “They owe the Federal Government three and a half billion dollars. We want that money back now. Whole project is a ‘green’ disaster!”

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom responded to Trump’s tweet Wednesday evening.

“Fake news,” Newsom wrote on Twitter. “We’re building high-speed rail, connecting the Central Valley and beyond. This is [California’s] money, allocated by Congress for this project. We’re not giving it back. The train is leaving the station — better get on board! (Also, desperately searching for some wall $$??)”

Newsom announced Tuesday he was abandoning the high-speed rail project that sought to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco.

“Let’s level about the high-speed rail,” Newsom said during his “State of the State” address. “Let’s be real, the current project as planned would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long. Right now, there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A. I wish there were.”

The governor’s office appeared to partially walk back the announcement Wednesday.

The multi-billion dollar project is not dead, Jesse Melgar, a spokesman in Newsom’s office, told The Daily Caller News Foundation Wednesday.

“We have to be realistic about the project — that means refocus and reprioritize to get a finished section from Bakersfield to Merced,” Melgar said, adding that the governor intends on “completing the bookend projects and finishing the environmental review for the San Francisco to Los Angeles leg.”

Former California state Assemblyman Chuck Devore appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Wednesday to discuss the fate of the high-speed rail project.

“The federal government has put $3.5 billion into it,” Devore said. “And now they are in material breach of their agreement with the federal government. I think the federal government should ask for that money back and use it to build the wall.”

Projected costs for the full train project had grown from $33 billion to $77 billion, leading to Newsom’s announcement Tuesday.

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Image courtesy of State of California High-Speed Rail Authority

5 thoughts on “Trump demands California pay back federal government for failing bullet train project

  1. I wish California would secede from the Union and fend for themselves. They wouldn’t last a month.
    Vermont is following in their footsteps.

  2. “If that does not work in California, where would it?”

    Only places I know of are China, because no regulation and authoritarian gov that does what it want’s and Japan because of no land area for all the cars needed. It would never pass muster in any US state because of EPA and land use Restrictions and too many palms need’n grease’n.

    So sad for AOCrazio’s “Green S☭rew Deal”

  3. So these fools In California have wasted years and $3.5 Billion dollars of taxpayer money on this
    boondoggle, I bet Pelosi & Feinstein had their hands all over it ??

    So these Liberal fools can waste $3.5 Billion on a train to Nowhere and they think $5.7 on securing
    the border is immoral I know what’s immoral……………

    Just wait until the Socialist DemocRATs and there Green New Deals gets going !!

  4. They should have given a turnkey contract to China, with eminent domain provisions, so China would have a no-hassle corridor, and finish on time, and within budget, as happens in China, which has about 60% of all the High-Speed train tracks and trains in the world.

    The fantasy Green New Deal aims to have much less cars, move people to urban complexes, connected by high speed rail.

    If that does not work in California, where would it?

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