WASHINGTON - With Congress fresh from its August recess, one of the most raucous battles during the next several weeks and months likely will be over the future of Amtrak.
The Bush Administration has decided that the federal government should get out of the passenger rail business, while a powerful group of Senate Republicans is pushing a multi-year capital and operating plan for Amtrak that would give the railroad even more money than its managers have requested.
There are, in fact, so many Amtrak spending plans floating around Congress that an Access database and Excel spreadsheet are needed just to keep track them.
Just before Congress left for its summer respite, President Bush sent along a bill that calls for largely dismantling Amtrak and selling the passenger rail service to private bidders.
It would force states that want passenger rail service to help subsidize it, thereby reducing federal subsidies; end Amtrak's monopoly on intercity passenger rail service, and promote competition among railroad operators.
Under the plan, Amtrak would become three companies over six years: a private passenger rail company that runs trains under contract to states, a company that operates and maintains the Northeast Corridor, and a government corporation that retains Amtrak's rights to use freight railroad tracks and its corporate name.
USDOT officials say the Bush administration is only willing to give the railroad $900 million for fiscal 2004 if it's restructured. Amtrak says it needs at least twice that amount to keep its trains running.
The administration plan, say critics, would force states to pick up more of Amtrak's costs and ignore short-term problems that could shut down the railroad.
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona appears to be the de facto point man for the Senate version of the president's plan (S 1501). While McCain and the president are often pointed in different directions on domestic legislation, they appear to be on the same track as far as Amtrak is concerned. McCain is no fan of the railroad even though a couple Amtrak lines traverse Arizona.
One of those routes, the Sunset Limited, is the biggest money loser operated by Amtrak. The train, which operates from Orlando to Los Angeles with four stops in Arizona, lost $413.62 per passenger last year.
McCain also doesn't like the fact Amtrak has gobbled up $26 billion in federal subsidies since 1971.
Significantly, McCain's antipathy for Amtrak puts him at odds with other powerful Republican senators on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, which McCain happens to chair.
Just days before the president dropped his Amtrak plan on Congress, four of McCain's Republican colleagues announced a six-year, $60 billion bailout for Amtrak.
The plan by Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, Trent Lott of Mississippi, Conrad Burns of Montana and Olympia Snowe of Maine would give Amtrak $2 billion in annual operating subsidies and underwrite $48 billion in bonds to create a national passenger rail system from Amtrak's current routes.
Hutchison, Lott and their colleagues have ridiculed the president's plan, with Lott saying that "if after 2.5 years that's all they can come up with they ought to be ashamed. It's a total nonstarter and for the most part will get almost no consideration in the Senate, which is what it richly deserves."
Hutchison says the president's idea of "turning (Amtrak) over to the states . . . will doom it to failure."
On the other side of the Capitol, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has approved $2 billion annually for Amtrak, while the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury and Independent Agencies adopted a budget bill that cuts Amtrak's fiscal 2004 request.
Given these and other competing bills and funding levels, and the backlog of appropriations measures with an Oct. 1 deadline, it's uncertain any Amtrak reauthorization legislation will move this year. Short-term extensions of Amtrak in its current form, the usual solution, seem likely.
Big picture: There is little evidence Congress will actually be able to break from its patten of keeping Amtrak alive on starvation rations.
Meanwhile, Hutchison laments that the 30-year-old Amtrak continues to be treated as the "stepchild in the national transportation system."
Someone needs to inform the woman that she has it wrong. That distinction clearly belongs to the nation's bus industry.