Title: High-Speed Refund Act
Policy area: Transportation and Public Works

Summary:
High-Speed Refund Act
This bill (1) requires the Department of Transportation to refund to the Treasury any discretionary grant funds it provided to California for high-speed rail corridor development, and (2) amends the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act to authorize additional funding in FY2020 for nationally significant freight and highway projects.


[Congressional Bills 116th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 1515 Introduced in House (IH)]

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116th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                H. R. 1515

     To direct the Secretary of Transportation to require that any 
discretionary grant funds provided by the Department of Transportation 
  for high-speed rail development in California be reimbursed to the 
  Federal Government and to authorize additional funds for nationally 
               significant freight and highway projects.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                             March 5, 2019

 Mr. LaMalfa introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
             Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
     To direct the Secretary of Transportation to require that any 
discretionary grant funds provided by the Department of Transportation 
  for high-speed rail development in California be reimbursed to the 
  Federal Government and to authorize additional funds for nationally 
               significant freight and highway projects.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``High-Speed Refund Act''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds the following:
            (1) When presented to voters in 2008, California's high-
        speed rail system was projected to cost $33.6 billion for a 
        line from San Francisco to Anaheim, increasing $40 billion to 
        add lines to Sacramento and San Diego.
            (2) The expanded project's cost swelled to more than $100 
        billion, with the San Francisco to Anaheim 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, California 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 updated 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.
            (6) No significant private companies have invested in the 
        California high-speed rail project.
            (7) The grant creation and award process for the California 
        high-speed rail project did not incorporate 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 minimum 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 inappropriately 
        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 underestimated costs.
            (13) On March 5, 2019, the Federal Rail Administration, 
        having recognized the failure of California 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 designed, 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 requirements 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 for high-speed rail corridor development be reimbursed 
to the general fund of the Treasury.
    (b) Authorization of Appropriations for Nationally 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''.
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