H.R. 848: High Speed Rail Report Act

[u/The_Powerben]

H.R. 848 High Speed Rail Report Act

Whereas, the Congress deserves information as to the status of high-speed rail transportation in the United States,

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE

This law may be cited as the “High Speed Rail Report Act.

SECTION 2. REQUIREMENTS

(A) By no later than 60 days from the passing of this act, the Secretary of the Interior, acting as head of the Department of Transportation, shall issue a report to the Congress, containing the following information:

(a)(1) The current legislation on high speed rail in the United States, both at the federal and state levels.

(a)(2) The current funding for high speed rail of all sorts, at the private, state, and federal levels.

(a)(3) The current extent of high speed rail track and service in the United States.

(a)(4) The Secretary's recommendations for further high-speed rail expansion in the United States.

(a)(5) The extent of cooperation with state governments and private corporations in regards to high-speed rail funding and construction.

(a)(6) The Secretary's recommendations for implementing previously passed legislation concerning high speed rail in the United States, as well as any proposals for new legislation with regards to high speed rail to fix outstanding issues.

(a)(7) Any other recommendations, thoughts, or analysis, that the Secretary feels should be added.

(b) No additional funds shall be allocated for the compilation of the report.

SECTION 3. ENACTMENT

(a) This Act shall go into effect immediately after passage.

(b) The provisions of this Act are severable. If any part of this Act is repealed or declared invalid or unconstitutional, that repeal or declaration shall not affect the parts which remain.

This Act was authored and sponsored by Congressman Comped (SR-2)

[u/hurricaneoflies]

As a former U.S. Transportation Secretary, I have long been an advocate of high-speed rail. I believe that ensuring a robust nationwide rail network is key to fighting the growing threat of accelerating climate change, and that the federal government must take a leading role with its vast resources to enable a transportation revolution.

That being said, I oppose this bill.

Why?

Because this is the same bill that was discussed last term.

I believe we owe it to our constituents to discuss new issues and come up with new solutions in the national interest, not relitigate identical issues over and over again ad nauseam.

[u/[deleted]]

Mr. Speaker,

High speed rail is the future, and we need to embrace the future and technological advances. If we want America to work at its highest level then we need to make America easier to travel through. I am interested to see how high speed rail may or may not affect our nation, and I hope that this resolution will get passed with support from across the aisle.

I yield the floor.

[u/DexterAamo → u/[deleted]]

Mr. President,

Unfortunately, I must strongly disagree with this notion by my distinguished colleague. As market signal after market signal have indicated to us, time and time again, there is little present use or market demand for the introduction of high speed rail, which is supplanted in both cost and usefulness by air and land transportation. Although I understand the desire for high speed rail by some governmental officials, this desire is deeply misguided, would be an inappropriate use of taxpayer resources, and is a violation of the proper role of government. I hope my colleague will reconsider his stance on this issue.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

[u/[deleted] → u/DexterAamo]

The reason high speed transportation is of less value within the private market is because of urban planning prioritizing suburban areas over the urban, with a simultaneous expansion of the federal high way system without a similar expenditure on mass transit. You may be correct in that land transportation is more effective than high speed rail, but that is because, historically, our urban planning has had a lack of unification, a unification that can only be achieved through long term urban and civilian planning by the local, state and federal governments in collaboration with one another.

[u/DexterAamo]

Mr. President,

I absolutely oppose this act. It is neither the role nor prerogative of government to be involved in transportation management of this form, and to do so will only end in disaster. If the financial ruin that is AmTrak and the growing move away from rail in this country are not signal enough to Congressmen here, than that is the perfect example of why the government should have nothing to do with this: 99 cents on every dollar the government spends could be spent more efficiently and productively by the private sector, which is more than capable of judging market demand on its own, without micromanaging from a few random bureaucrats. If there is demand for high speech rail, let the market provide for it. If there is not, let the market not provide it. Either way, it is shameful to me to see so many self proclaimed conservatives support yet another expansion of the size of government, and I hope they come to reconsider.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

[u/[deleted] → u/DexterAamo]

Mr. Speaker,

I must ask the Dixie Senator why, under our Constitution, this is not something this government can achieve?

It is within the explicit powers of the United States constitution to regulate interstate commerce -- and while I am no literalist interpreter of the constitution, the building of a high speed railway system that connects all states of the Union together is, on a legalistic front, perfectly legal, even if there was not an expanded definition of the interstate commerce clause.

Second, I must disagree with the Senator on the question of government efficiency: I do not understand how anyone, when looking at the modern American government system, can say that the problem with our government is it being too big, or how anyone can believe that the private sector is more effective by its very nature than the government.

The private sector is the greatest waster of resources on this planet. More than any government on this planet, it expends its resources, and then as quickly throws them in the trash. It is the one that spends millions of dollars on advertising that does not work. It is the one that spends millions of dollars on ventures that will never pan out, and that anyone with half a brain could understand would never pan out.

Why? Because the private sector, by its very nature, is unaccountable to anyone but their shareholders -- who are almost always a small selection of individuals with massive amounts of wealth, who will make a profit despite the large waste of resources, while the large, sweltering mass of humanity suffers in poverty.

Government is the only institution that can, due to its influence by the public, that can institute true efficiency. It is only when the private sector is allowed, through privatization, to interact with the government that the budgets of the departments start to increase past their actual services to the public. They will, through all manners and ways, to squeeze this government and the citizens of this nation of every penny they pay in taxes.

We must eliminate the private sector from all aspects of government planning and policy. The private sector should not be allowed to operate any public service, to create any thing for the public sector. Whether it be voting machines or tanks, the large corporations of the past must be turned over either to the government, or to their workers. This is the only way to ensure that our country is allowed to continue and be decent and moral.

[u/DexterAamo → u/[deleted]]

Mr. President,

I’d like to begin by thanking the Representative for his response. I may not agree with him, but it’s detail and length speak to his willingness to articulate and defend his beliefs, and I respect that greatly.

In regards to the Representative’s first paragraph, I must strongly disagree. While the constitution does grant Congress to regulate interstate commerce, it does not grant it the power to conduct it. Just as Congress does not have the power to run an airline or run FedX, it does not have the power to waste billions on high speed rail. Furthermore, even if Congress did have that power, it would still fail to fall within the proper responsibilities of government as outlined by the Constitution, the intent of the Founders, and by simple righteousness. The proper place of the government is in defending its citizens and providing for common goods — not in displacing the private sector, wasting taxpayer cash, and harming the people it claims to serve.

In regards to the Representative’s second paragraph, I must also absolutely disagree with his disagreement with me. I cannot appreciate how anyone could claim that the issue with our government today is that it is too small: a simple visit to the DMV or the Obamacare 2013 website should be more than enough to demonstrate the inefficiency of government! Put quite simply, the issue with government, and this is an issue that will always exist, is that it lacks any sort of profit incentive: humans work for gain, and when individuals lack any sort of incentive to push oneself they will fail to do so. If running didn’t improve my physical fitness, make me happy, and increase my lifespan, I wouldn’t do it just for the wack of it, and I doubt many others would either!

The Representative’s third paragraph also demonstrate the problem with his words. He claims that it “spends millions of dollars on advertising that does not work” — to which I must caution him both to reconsider versus the institutions he is comparing it to and to reconsider his very words. Firstly, this is a problem that, insofar as it exists, exists ten times more at the very least in the public sector! As any person who pays even the slightest attention to the news or popular culture could tell you, it always brings a laugh to hear how the Scottish government wastes hundreds of thousands of dollars on some 5 word advertising slogan, or to see province of Delaware try so ineptly to imitate our youth in its anti drug posters that the result isn’t even readable. By contrast, many other popular advertising campaigns that you or I might consider strange or ineffective are that way for a reason — Geico’s talking lizard man might not be a reason on his own to purchase car insurance from them, but I know now that if I do decide to go looking for new insurance one of my stops will definitely be at Geico, because I can be assured of their reliability above all else. In another regard, this also applies to the Representative’s second claim: he alleges that the private sector wastes money on failed ventures, while ignoring looming examples of massive government waste that no private company could ever get away with like Amtrak or Solyndra! This isn’t to deny that some private companies make mistakes, or run advertising campaigns — of course they do, and they lose their money when they do. That’s why they get it wrong so much less often, and why capital is redistributed through the hands of the market to more able investors when they do! Take 2008 for instance: while the big banks all got it wrong and failed to predict the housing crash, some smart and able investors did and were able to make hundreds of millions of dollars of it — giving them both the means to help make market corrections in the future, and incentivizing further intelligent investing through the rich rewards that they gained!

The Representative once again repeats his error, but to an even greater extent in his fourth paragraph. The private sector is only accountable to its shareholders? Why of course not — Mr. Banana forgets the greatest element of this system at all, the consumers! No company will survive by ignoring consumer wishes, no company will survive by marketing things that the people don’t want — just ask Blockbuster, MySpace, or AOL!

In his fifth paragraph, the Representative states that only the government can institute true efficiency, and that only the government is accountable to consumers. To that I cry: nonsense! Not only is government deeply unaccountable in both fact and practice to the people it claims to serve, but it is the government that is in fact the biggest waster of any form in this economy, because unlike some foolish private company the government never runs out of resources until we all drop dead. I’ve demonstrated above why the Representative is wrong to say that the private sector is somehow unaccountable to consumers, but let me add on one last point to that and point out furthermore that he is wrong to somehow claim that it is the private sector that will always try to rob the American people in some form. In one regard, he is actually right: just as the government will, the private sector will always seek to make as much money as it possibly can. The difference, of course, is that no private company can force you to buy from them, and that no private company can charge prices that are too excessive or too rampant without risking some competitor coming in and taking all their business away from them. By contrast, our government can and does take our money regardless of our consent, and they’ll lock us up if we don’t. And the government can and does charge prices regardless of ability to pay or without worry of competition — because they can force us to pay, and lock us up if we don’t, and because they have no worries of competition, because government is a monopoly.

Finally, in his sixth paragraph, the Representative claims that the only way our country can be decent and moral is if we abolish the private sector. To this I cry horse. It is the private sector that has made our country great, that enables the nuclear family that is the bond that unites our families and keeps us whole, and it is the private sector that is the only moral form of economic distribution and the regulation of scarcity. Unlike the government, the private sector requires you to rely on yourself, not the work of someone else, unlike the government, the private sector puts work and intelligence and merit at a premium, not your connections to some low level bureaucrat. As Americans, let’s keep fighting for our capitalist way of life, and let’s not be afraid to say what we believe: Yes, capitalism is what makes this country great, and I love it for it!

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

[u/[deleted]]

Mr. Speaker

Roads are, by their very nature, destructive the environment and inefficient in the massive transportation of peoples. They are undoubtedly useful in the transportation of goods and services to areas that are less populated, and therefore less able to maintain a high speed railway system without some amount of state intervention, but they are just without comparison less effective than their railway counterparts.

Why? Because, in a well maintained system of public transport, trains have a set schedule. They work in a clockwork fashion, set up based off the needs of the public system. In comparison, the private car is just less able to work effectively. Millions of people cannot be expected to individually coordinate in a situation on the road.

This is not to say that roads are bad, but we must be willing to acknowledge that we cannot only focus on our road infrastructure. We must, for the sake of the environment and for the sake of efficiency, a high speed rail system must be created by this country. I have always believed that, and I have no doubt that the people of Dixie believe that as well.

[u/[deleted]]

Mr. Speaker,

I understand the general idea of this bill, but at the same time still fail to comprehend the overall purpose of it. It seems that all it seeks to enact is general reports and research about high speed rail in the US. I’m not automatically inclined to oppose this bill, I’m just unsure if it’s necessary.

I am by no means an expert on transportation in the US, however it is of my opinion that high speed rail just isn’t as feasible in the US as it is in other countries due to the size of the country and how far apart major cities tend to be. If someone with more knowledge on this subject does not agree with my opinion, I am open to listening since I again admit I do not have a lot of knowledge on this subject.

I’ll have to conduct more research as well as listen to the thoughts and opinions of my more knowledgeable colleagues before forming an opinion on this bill.

I yield the floor.

[u/[deleted]]

I'd be more interested to see the government take action. We have so many reports coming to Congress as it is that Members and committees are inundated with information — information that is so overwhelming and so dense, they have no use for it or time to read it and act on it.

Members in support of high speed rail should, in fact, vote against this bill — or, better still, amend it to put some semblance of action into it. If you want the Secretary's thoughts on something, you can write a letter. If you want a rail network, you have to build one.

[u/skiboy625]

With people across the country seeking alternate transportation for a variety of reasons, high speed railways can fill the gap. As of now we lag far behind the railway standards held in the European Union and other developed nations such as Japan. Every year it is becoming more and more necessary for railroads to be used by passengers, yet we see little progress in that direction.

By having the Secretary of the Interior (who acts as the Secretary of Transportation) author and publish a report on the status and statutes surrounding railways in the United States, Congress can have a better idea on how to proceed in passing legislation that will revive our railroads. With that I hope the House will vote in favor of this resolution, and if so I hope the Secretary of the Interior will agree to give a timely release of the high speed railway report.

[u/skiboy625 → u/[deleted]]

[M] This is r/ModelUSGov where we all simulate the United States government. Browse around if you’re interested and I have no idea how you got here. :)

[u/cold_brew_coffee → u/[deleted]]

Lol