Daily Caller News Foundation

Amtrak: ‘Fraud, waste, and abuse are long-standing problems’

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Betsi Fores The Daily Caller News Foundation
Font Size:

The government-subsidized transportation service Amtrak has consumed $40 billion in subsidies over the last four decades, according to Tad DeHaven of the Cato Institute. He writes: “The system has never earned a profit and most of its routes lose money. Amtrak’s on-time record is very poor, and the system as a whole only accounts for 0.1 percent of America’s passenger travel.”

Besides sucking more and more money from the U.S. government, there are many documented cases of fraud.

In a report released last year, the Office of the Inspector General documents the fraudulent sales schemes in the food and beverage service on Amtrak trains by Amtrak employees, costing the government-assisted corporation, and taxpayers, up to $7 million.

As Junket Sleuth reports, the study found that Amtrak employees routinely add “food items to the meal checks of first class passengers, who eat free, and then sold the same food to other passengers,” in effect counting food items twice.

Other schemes involve selling non-Amtrak items, shorting cash register sales, stealing inventory and even providing items at no cost.

The report concludes “fraud, waste, and abuse are long-standing problem[s]” for Amtrak and lays out measures to correct this.

“Correcting these problems would increase revenues, improve customer service and help reduce Amtrak’s reliance on federal subsidies,” the report says. “Further, the damage to Amtrak’s reputation and the morale of honest employees demands an end to the present culture of abuse.”

More employee fraud on Amtrak

The possible $7 million of waste from the food and beverage service is merely a drop in the bucket when considering Amtrak fraud on a whole.

In October 2011, U.S. prosecutors charged “11 people in connection with an alleged $1 billion fraud involving hundreds of railroad workers filing false disability claims,” reported Reuters.

Former Long Island railroad workers would file disability claims just before retirement, allowing them to collect both disability and pensions.

Employees  allegedly claimed between $800 and $1200 in medical expenses to hire one of several disability doctors in on the scheme. These doctors would then conduct unnecessary tests and diagnose unnecessary ailments that would allow the workers to go on disability.

The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office estimates that the Long Island Railroad Board paid roughly $1 billion in these fraudulent claims.

Amtrak’s history of waste

For fiscal year 2013, Amtrak requested $2.17 billion, most of which is to be spent on capital projects, and less on operation costs.

study by the Cato Institute notes:

“During the 2000s, Amtrak averaged annual losses in excess of $1 billion. In 2010, Amtrak received $563 million in operating subsidies and $1 billion in capital and debt service grants. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 pumped an additional $1.3 billion in capital grants into Amtrak.”
According to Ted Alves, the Inspector General of the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, the money would “move [Amtrak] toward its long-term goal of providing efficient, high quality passenger rail service that is cost and trip time competitive with other modes.”

In 2005 the Government Accountability Office wrote in a report, “Amtrak’s basic business systems need to be strengthened to help achieve financial stability and meet future operating challenges,” calling for improvements in improve efficiency, effectiveness and accountability.

Amtrak’s request for over $2 billion from the government is indicative that these improvements have not been made in the last seven years.

However, DeHaven notes that, “congressional micromanagement has prevented Amtrak from cutting routes and reducing other costs” meaning improved efficiency, effectiveness, accountability are unlikely under continued government management.

Follow Betsi on Twitter

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Betsi Fores

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel