Elmont Online

WASHINGTON -- The House on Friday voted to rescind more than $1 billion in high-speed rail funding -- potentially including most of the money New York has received -- in order to fund flood relief efforts in the Midwest.

The changes were included in a $31 billion spending bill providing money for federal energy and water projects for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. And they prompted outrage from Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-Fairport, the foremost congressional backer of high-speed rail for New York State.

"This is the latest in the majority's agenda that can best be described as penny-wise and pound-foolish," said Slaughter, who heads the Bicameral High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail Caucus. "Using the tragedy of the national disasters in America's heartland as a political tool to try to eliminate a job-creation program, one of the very few we have, is just wrong."

The Democrat-controlled Senate is likely to take a far different approach to the bill and may well insist on restoring some if not all of the high-speed rail funding the House wants to pull back.

Nevertheless, the largely partisan 219-196 vote is a sure sign of the political difficulties facing high-speed rail in New York and elsewhere in the face of Republican control of the House.

The measure passed by the House would take back a yet-to-be determined amount of the $2.15 billion in "unobligated" high-speed rail money that was set to be spent under President Barack Obama's 2009 stimulus legislation.

Since more money is likely to be obligated -- that is, actually put to use -- by the time the spending bill is finalized, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that ultimately, only about $1 billion of high-speed rail money would go for flood recovery under the House bill.

Similarly, it is hard to predict exactly how much money New York would lose under the House legislation. But of the $511.6 million in high-speed rail the state was to receive under the stimulus bill, some $506.1 million remains unobligated -- and thus at risk.

The state also is set to receive $28.5 million in 2010 funding for high-speed rail projects, which would remain untouched by the House legislation.

House Republicans, who repeatedly have portrayed Obama's high-speed rail initiative as a waste of money, said during a debate on the issue that the money was much more critically needed to rebuild levees and other infrastructure in the flood-ravaged Midwest.

The $31 billion energy and water spending bill is $6 billion lower than what Obama requested for such programs.

And while emergency programs such as flood relief usually are paid for without offsets from other parts of the budget, Republicans insisted that cutting high-speed rail was the best and most fiscally responsible way to pay for flood damages at a time when the deficit is a huge concern.

"The question is: Are we going to start living within our means and truly setting priorities in this country or just continue going down this spending binge acting as if nobody is going to pay the tab?" asked Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La.

But a series of Democrats from states that would benefit from high-speed rail angrily took to the House floor to denounce the Republican move as one that would cheat the future.

And Ross Capon, president and CEO of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, said he hoped the Senate wouldn't stand for what the House had done.

"I don't think the Senate is going to do something this foolish," Capon said.