With all the fuss that the politicians are doing about the cutbacks to critical and essential services, we read nothing about discussions about cutbacks to wasteful or unnecessary subsidized bigger government programs like the wholly unnecessary project that has driven 3 of the 5 EU PIIGS countries into huge debt, and, even driven China's state-owned Railway Corporation into a $300 Billion debt load, that is, High Speed Rail (HSR).  

US HSR would be nothing more than a land-based SupeSonic Transport ("SST", aka EU's Concorde, and the Soviet TU144) that was supposed to be the future of "fast, efficient transportation" "all" developed nations were pursuing in the 1970's.  It was uneconomic (even with $6,000 seat cost one-way, first-class), and so heavily subsidized such that all that were built were finally mothballed, put in museums, or have crashed.  Recall that the Democrat Congress in 1969 refused loans or guarantees for the SST because the aircraft manufacturers said they could not fund SST development and, correctly predicted that the SST aircraft could not be profitable for them.  Same with HSR.   

Obama and the Repub's ought to cancel the US HSR program, except perhaps the NE Acela Corridor. It is only being peddled out west by 30 year-long+ taxpayer funded gigolo-leech politicians, crony capitalists, and  specially created taxpayer-funded "advocates".  It is an invitation to Tammany Hall-like corruption and transit fraud. 

This must be stopped in the sequester funding cutbacks before California's Gov. Jerry Brown goes off to China in April to announce the contract award for the first phase construction that is scheduled to start near Fresno, CA in July 2013.  

Stop HSR featherbedding now!  

Create real US jobs, union jobs, and ancillary jobs x5 with housing construction! 

Omar