Republicans in Congress are shining oversight attention on federal funds flowing to California’s high-speed rail project, questioning whether the Biden administration has a bias toward this and other pet projects when awarding infrastructure dollars.
The top Republicans on the House and Senate transportation committees, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, are demanding answers on more than $3 billion in 2021 infrastructure law funding awarded to the project in December, on top of other federal grants awarded last year.
“Despite evidence that continues to show that the California High Speed Rail project has critical issues indicating there is no reasonable path forward for successful completion of the project . . . the Biden administration continues to allocate substantial federal taxpayer dollars to this highly questionable endeavor,” Graves and Cruz wrote in a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “As such, many other cost effective and worthy projects may have lost out on this funding in favor of [the California High-Speed Rail Authority.]”
