Judging from the polls I’ve been reading, the American people are generally optimistic about what the next four years will bring. If DOGE ever gets around to looking at Amtrak, it’s quite possible that we might get some answers as to how the money has been and is being spent and what steps need to be taken to make it operate in a more cost effective, passenger friendly manner. I, for one, refuse to join the chorus of Cassandras who say that long-distance Amtrak trains in general and the Southwest Chief in particular will soon cease to exist.
DOGE, a falsely (departments are created by Congress) and childishly (Dogecoin, Musk's cryptocurrency with a meme dog as its logo) named creature of Elon Musk?
The same Elon Musk who:
1) fired most of Twitter's workforce immediately upon buying it, on the ASSumption they were redundant,
2) expected the harried remainder to work insane hours out of sheer loyalty to him,
These two alone give me no confidence Musk and his lapDOGE can tell the difference between cutting fat, muscle, or bone! That is, actual inefficiency,
vs. things that are there for a reason he personally can't discern or doesn't agree with, but can recover from his cuts,
vs. things there for a reason (etc.) that will be so drained they won't recover!
But Musk's hits don't end there, he:
3) made Twitter's blue-check confirmation of public figures useless by allowing anyone to buy a blue check and impersonate any celebrity, business leader, or official they wished,
4) admitted he promoted the Hyperloop gadgetbahn to steal attention and support from California High Speed Rail.
5) promotes his Boring Company tunnels as an alternative to transit (little pods or your own car on a sled, not trains) but ends up with one operating project: the people-mover at the Las Vegas Convention Center, which uses chauffeured Teslas (can't trust his own autopilot in sealed tunnels!).
6) has already announced his first DOGE targets: $500 billion from various agencies including NASA, Veterans Affairs, the State Department, and NOAA, on the
sole basis that Congress hasn't renewed their authorizations, not any actual evaluation of their efficiency. Even though Congress has clearly voted for years to keep them running with annual appropriations.
Cite. Another cite.
7) has said from his position as a billionaire that Americans will have to suffer "some temporary hardship" to "ensure long term prosperity".
How much hardship, how temporary, and for whose prosperity?
Musk and DOGE aren't there to seek actual efficiency but to implement his personal greed-fueled belief of what efficiently makes money for him, and his personal political beliefs of what "should" exist. Why target NASA? To make way for SpaceX!
Musk has made it clear over the years that he doesn't like passenger rail. With all due respect, he's as likely to "get some answers as to how the money has been and is being spent" as Dr. No was to make James Bond talk, and about as much interest in "what steps need to be taken to make [Amtrak] operate in a more cost effective, passenger friendly manner" as a Thanksgiving diner has in a turkey's welfare.
While I agree that Amtrak isn't necessarily doomed, it will be
not be saved by DOGE but wholly in spite of DOGE. If it's saved, it will be by passenger rail supporters in
Congress on both sides of the aisle.
