What we should do is try to sell Amtrak to investors who will make it profitable. We could split it up to add competition. If there is competition prices will go down and more people will ride. I would take the train from San Francisco to Milwaukee if it didn't take 70 hours in some cases. That is ridiculous.

Allow trains to go whatever speed they want, and the rails will improve.

Then I could spend all my extra money on services that I actually use and give to charities that are in accordance with my own views.

Just because the government subsidizes something doesn't mean it will cease to exist if there weren't subsidies.

If the consumer has a demand for a high speed train from NC to Boston or wherever then it should be the entrepreneur's job to make it happen and make it profitable while meeting that demand and pleasing the customer. The government should just get the hell out of the way.

The government keeps touching me everywhere. And it's starting to make me uncomfortable. Maybe I should sue for sexual harassment? Oh nevermind… given their track record they probably exempt themselves from such lawsuits.

Travelling from North Carolina to Boston, for every ton that a train weighs, only _ONE_ gallon of gasoline is used.

You may have also missed one of my criteria: namely, the constitutionality of Amtrak or any agency that I write about. The federal government has the authority to run the mail system, but that's about the only business venture they were authorized to engage in. If you think that a federally-run passenger rail system is vital to our national security or to interstate commerce, get the Constitution changed. At least then we will have the discussion out in the open, rather than our current process of having Congress pass new bureaucracies in fly-by-night, 2,000-page bills.

Yes, most forms of transportations are subsidized, but not at the national level. Roads are paid for by state budgets, with the exception of interstate highways. Also, while "subsidized," roads are DIRECTLY paid for by an excise tax on gasoline. There are those, like my parents, who have never taken an Amtrak train in their lives, and have been forced to bear the burden of paying for it.

As for Clark's comment, that the NYC-to-DC route on Amtrak makes money – good! Why not privatize it? I'll be willing to bet that it makes more money as a private entity than it does under the government's management. And yes, I understand that there are bigger fish to fry in the budget.

The problem I've found with many big-government types is that they decry conservatives for not having any specifics on where to cut, and for simply being the "Party of NO." Then, when a conservative begins to list details, they are up in arms about some indirect affect that the cut may or may not have. It can't be both things.

And that's before going down the road of discussion where it's pointed out that most any "public service" is usually unconstitutional and must be funded with money extorted/stolen from us in the form of taxes. (Yes, that's opening up a larger can of worms, but important nonetheless).