Ongoing construction of the California bullet train project is photographed in Corcoran, California, left, and Hanford, California, right. (Getty)
According to California Republicans, the overall high-speed rail project is nearly $100 billion over budget and decades behind schedule.
Trump’s DOGE duo of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy aren’t keen on the idea of continuing to fund what many Republicans consider a costly and unfruitful endeavor.
Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., said as much earlier this month in remarks on the House floor.
"I am very happy to report that the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency has honed-in on perhaps the single greatest example of government waste in United States history – and that is California’s high-speed-rail boondoggle," Kiley said.
The official DOGE X account also described both California’s high-speed rail expenditures and requested funding in a November tweet.
Earlier this month, Ramaswamy also called the plans a "wasteful vanity project" that burned "billions in taxpayer cash with little prospect of completion in the next decade."
He said Trump "correctly" rescinded $1 billion in federal funding for the project in 2019 and lamented President Biden’s reversal of that move.
"Time to end the waste," Ramaswamy said.
California’s top state Senate Republican echoed the DOGE leaders’ concerns.
Sen. Alex Padilla (Getty Images)
"California's 'train to nowhere' has already wasted billions of taxpayer dollars – now Biden wants all Americans to fund this boondoggle," State Sen. Brian W. Jones of San Diego told Fox News Digital.
"When President Trump returns to office in a few weeks, he must defund the high-speed rail. This wasteful government experiment must end once and for all," he added.
If approved, the federal funds will be bolstered by $134 million in state monies from California’s "cap & trade" program, according to the Sacramento Bee.
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At a 2013 conference, Musk floated the idea of a "hyperloop" which was also presented in a white paper. Though it has not yet come to fruition, Musk said at the time he had thought whether there is a better way to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco than what California has proposed.
"The high-speed rail that’s being proposed would actually be the slowest bullet train in the world and the most expensive per-mile," he said. "Isn’t there something better that we can come up with?"
The world’s richest man described Hyperloop at the time as a combination of a Concorde, a rail gun and an air-hockey table.
Charles Creitz is a reporter for Fox News Digital.
He joined Fox News in 2013 as a writer and production assistant.
Charles covers media, politics and culture for Fox News Digital.
Charles is a Pennsylvania native and graduated from Temple University with a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism. Story tips can be sent to charles.creitz@fox.com.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/california-democrats-urge-feds-approve-high-speed-rail-funding-before-doge-nixes-boondoggle