Boy that $810 million dollars from the Federal Government for high-speed rail sure would look good in WI right now wouldn’t it. Sure even if the state is actually short the $3.6 billion that Walker claims (which is an exaggeration and political grandstanding at best and an outright lie at worst), that wouldn’t make up the deficit, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt things either. I mean $810 million would create an awful lot of jobs and circulate an awful lot of money around the state; money that would be taxed several times though income taxes and sales taxes.
Instead of that, we get an extra item in the budget, $60 million in spending for upkeep to rail lines. This $60 million would have been fully paid for by the Federal grant money for the high-speed rail line. Now however we get to add that cost to our state budget.
Put another way, if Mr. Walker had taken a different track, we could have had a regional rail connection that form the first link in connecting the Twin Cities to Madison to Milwaukee to Chicago and points east for about $600,000 a year. Instead, we are sent a bill by Mr. Walker for $60 million.
That $60 million could have paid for the operating costs of the system for the next 100 years.
Next time you hear someone talking about how Walker is concerned about the budget and is doing everything he can to keep Wisconsin out of debt, let them know how he cost the state $60 million and hundreds of jobs before he even set foot into the Governor’s mansion.