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‘Green disaster!’ Trump puts California on notice after train project fail, says Feds want that money back…now

February 14, 2019 | | Print Article
(Image: screenshot)

President Donald Trump wants a refund and California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom effectively told him not hold his breath.

The president and the Democratic governor fired shots at one another on Twitter Wednesday over the change in plans on the state’s high-speed rail.

Calling the project a “green disaster” on Twitter, Trump demanded California return $3.5 billion in tax dollars that subsidized the behind-schedule rail that would run from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

“We want that money back now,” Trump tweeted Wednesday following Newsom’s announcement at his State of the State Address on Tuesday.

The $77 billion high speed project, which was approved by voters in 2008, began with a projected completion date of 2020 at a cost of $33 billion but was pushed to 2033 as expenses continued to mount.

“For those who want to walk away from this whole endeavor, I offer you this: Abandoning high-speed rail entirely means we will have wasted billions of dollars with nothing but broken promises and lawsuits to show for it,” Newsom told lawmakers on Tuesday, according to The Sacramento Bee. “I am not interested in sending $3.5 billion in federal funding that was allocated to this project back to Donald Trump.”

(Image: screenshot)

He took to Twitter within an hour of Trump’s demand for a refund, telling the president, “We’re not giving it back.”

Newsom explained that a 171-mile segment of the rail line in the state’s Central Valley between Bakersfield and Merced, which is already under construction, would be completed even though the initial goal seemed out of reach.

(Image: screenshot)

“Let’s be real. The current project, as planned, would cost too much and respectfully take too long. There’s been too little oversight and not enough transparency,” Newsom said in his first State of the State Address, according to Reuters.

Syndicated columnist Phil Kerpen laid out the Federal Railroad Administration details on repayment of funds.

The non-profit group, Citizens Against Government Waste, slammed the “failed boondoggle” and warned lawmakers who support Democrats’ proposed “Green New Deal.”

“California’s high-speed rail fantasy quickly became a train to nowhere at taxpayer expense,” the groups’ president Tom Schatz said in a statement. “This failed boondoggle should be taken as a giant red stop sign for any politician who supports the ‘Green New Deal’ and its equally farcical promise of ending air travel by forcing taxpayers to pay for a California-style rail system across the entire nation.”

Twitter users weighed in on the wasteful project and stood with the president in demanding a refund.

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Frieda Powers
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