SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds the following: 
(1) When presented to voters in 2008, Califor-
nia’s high-speed rail system was projected to cost 
$33.6 billion for a line from San Francisco to Ana-
heim, increasing $40 billion to add lines to Sac-
ramento and San Diego. 
(2) The expanded project’s cost swelled to more 
than $100 billion, with the San Francisco to Ana-
heim line costing more than $77 billion, and now the 
State of California’s high-speed rail plan no longer 
includes any stops in Sacramento, San Francisco, 
Los Angeles, Anaheim, or San Diego. 
(3) When presented to voters in 2008, Cali-
fornia claimed the Federal Government would pay 
between a quarter and a third of the cost of the rail 
system. 
(4) The Federal Government had no such grant 
program at the time, and the $4 billion invested in 
the project represents less than 5 percent of the up-
dated cost projections. 
(5) At the current level of project employment 
it would take nearly 400 years to accomplish the 
1,000,000 job-years promised by the California 
High-Speed Rail Authority. 
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(6) No significant private companies have in-
vested in the California high-speed rail project. 
(7) The grant creation and award process for 
the California high-speed rail project did not incor-
porate the best practices of Government funding. 
(8) The grant agreement between the Federal 
Government and California did not require a feasible 
funding package to be prepared before awarding 
funds, which similar mass transit programs require. 
(9) The grant agreement between the Federal 
Government and California did not require a min-
imum operable segment before awarding funds, 
which similar mass transit programs require. 
(10) The grant agreement between the Federal 
Government and California did not require new 
high-speed trains to run on the new high-speed rail 
system. 
(11) The Department of Transportation inap-
propriately allowed the State of California to spend 
Federal money without a required State funding 
match. 
(12) The California High-Speed Rail Authority 
repeatedly failed to meet deadlines and underesti-
mated costs. 
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(13) On March 5, 2019, the Federal Rail Ad-
ministration, having recognized the failure of Cali-
fornia to build even a small fraction of the originally 
approved high-speed rail system, deobligated nearly 
$1 billion in Federal funding. 
(14) No passenger rail system in the world has 
ever been fully self-sufficient. 
(15) There are dozens of worthy infrastructure 
projects that would improve the quality of life for 
every day Americans and could easily have been de-
signed, approved, built, and have benefitted local 
economies in the time it took for California’s high- 
speed rail proposal to fail. 
SEC. 3. SENSE OF CONGRESS. 
It is the Sense of Congress that any future high- 
speed rail grant programs that are awarded funds by the 
Federal Government should have similar or higher re-
quirements than existing mass transit programs. 
SEC. 4. TREATMENT OF FUNDS PROVIDED FOR HIGH- 
SPEED RAIL DEVELOPMENT IN CALIFORNIA. 
(a) REIMBURSEMENT OF FUNDS.—The Secretary of 
Transportation shall take such action as is necessary to 
require that any discretionary grant funds provided to the 
State of California by the Department of Transportation 
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for high-speed rail corridor development be reimbursed to 
the general fund of the Treasury. 
(b) AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS FOR NA-
TIONALLY
SIGNIFICANT
FREIGHT
AND
HIGHWAY 
PROJECTS.—Section 1101(a)(5)(E) of the FAST Act (23 
U.S.C. 101 note) is amended by striking ‘‘$1,000,000,000 
for fiscal year 2020’’ and inserting ‘‘$4,500,000,000 for 
fiscal year 2020’’. 
Æ 
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