Wilson’s Plan to Cut Amtrak

It was reported in your paper Jan. 9 that when Congress convenes Feb. 1 to consider budget cuts relative to Gramm-Rudman, the top priority of Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) will be to abolish Amtrak. To quote him, he said: “I’d wipe it out.”

Amtrak’s budget constitutes .0032% of the deficit. Wiping out Amtrak would still leave you with a $220-billion deficit. Senator Wilson is not running for reelection until 1988. Apparently this is the new Republican “Litmus test,” and these attacks against Amtrak reveal pure spite.

Wilson charges that taxpayers subsidize every Amtrak passenger by about $35 per trip. They add a $639-million federal subsidy to the $46 million that business travelers could deduct from income taxes for rail travel and divide by 20 million passengers. By the same tricky arithmetic, the 221 million passengers who flew the airlines in 1984 cost the Treasury $33 each--the $7.4 billion that air business travelers deducted divided by 221 million, and that is not counting air traffic control and airports.

Actually, on Amtrak’s heavily used Los Angeles-to-San Diego corridor, more than 90% of the cost is coming out of the fare box. Does Sen. Wilson really want to put a million and a half people back on the Santa Ana Freeway?

LAWSON CHADWICK

Westminster