President Donald Trump said Tuesday that his administration will launch an investigation into California’s high-speed rail project, citing cost overruns.
What happened: Trump told reporters during an executive order signing in the Oval Office that he wants to investigate the $128 billion project, which has been beset by cost overruns and construction delays since the project first received funding in 2008.
“We’re going to start a big investigation on that, because it’s, I’ve never seen anything like it. Nobody has ever seen anything like it,” Trump said of the project. “The worst overruns that there have ever been in the history of our country. And it wasn’t even necessary. I would have said, you don’t buy it. You take an airplane.”
Why it matters: Trump’s rhetoric is the latest ratcheting of conservative opposition against a project that has long drawn the ire of Republican lawmakers, who’ve authored multiple bills in recent years to pull federal funding away from the rail line. Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) introduced a bill last month that would make the project ineligible for future federal funding.
