It’s been almost 200 days since President Trump took office, and he continues to root out wasteful spending with an endorsed audit of federal transportation funding.
Breitbart reported that Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) has commended Secretary Duffy for releasing a long-delayed audit of California’s high-speed rail project. The report, which was 315 pages long, found that the California high-speed rail project failed to meet the terms of its federal grant awards.
The project was floated to voters back in 2008 to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco. The project was initially pitched as a $33 billion rail line, but by 2020, the amount had jumped to $128 billion, yet no tracks were ever laid.
In July, Politico had reported that President Trump slammed the project on Truth Social, writing, “This project was Severely Overpriced, Overregulated, and NEVER DELIVERED,” He added, “Thanks to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, not a SINGLE penny in Federal Dollars will go towards this Newscum SCAM ever again.”
According to Breitbart, the report had found that because of missed deadlines and budget issues, the rail project no longer met the terms of federal funding grants. As a result, the Department of Transportation cancelled $4 billion in federal funding. In her letter, Ernst praised the report as setting “a new gold standard in accountability.”
Breitbart reported that Ernst encouraged Secretary Duffy to thoroughly scrutinize other federally funded projects. Ernst wrote, “If these can’t be salvaged with better management, they too should be canceled.”
Ernst shared the letter on her X account with the caption, “I am working with @SecDuffy to return $14 billion to taxpayers – money slated to fund similar boondoggles that are years behind schedule and billions over budget.”
But this is only the start, according to the Iowa Republican, and has suggested that the money could be redirected to higher priority infrastructure projects or to pay down the national debt. In the meantime, Ernst calls for greater detail in the future federal funding reports and that she looked forward to “getting the number of projects listed in future reports down to zero, by whatever means necessary.”