Editorial: A billion here, a billion there...

The Editorial Board, Las Vegas Review-Journal on Aug 25, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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Public projects typically aren’t known for coming in on time and under budget. A report released last month highlights the extent to which delays and overruns are costing American taxpayers.

According to the Senate DOGE Caucus, more than a dozen federal infrastructure projects have bled a combined $162 billion. Fox News reports that this includes projects which are “either more than $1 billion over budget, five years past deadline or both.”

At the top of the list is California’s bullet train fiasco. Approved by voters hoodwinked by false cost estimates, the project was supposed to be operable by 2020 at a cost of $33 billion. To date, not a single mile of track has been completed and the price tag has soared to $180 billion, by some estimates.

The feds have contributed $7 billion to this monument to inefficiency and green preening.

“I am thrilled to have worked with the Trump administration to defund the California Crazy Train, but now it’s time for these other boondoggles to meet the same fate,” said Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican who chairs the caucus. “Including just five of these off the rails projects in a future rescissions package would save taxpayers billions more than the first rescissions package.”

Other disastrous taxpayer expenditures on the list include a $10 billion light rail project in Honolulu whose costs have doubled and are now expected to amount to “about half of the average annual budget for the entire state of Hawaii,” Fox reported, and a $2.75 billion rail project in Minneapolis that is the costliest public-works endeavor in Minnesota history.

Another project dripping red ink involves the Walt Whitman Bridge between Philadelphia and New Jersey, which began in 2013 and is yet to be completed despite having received more than $1 billion in federal money.

Sen. Ernst, along with Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, have introduced the Billion Dollar Boondoggle Act of 2025, which would require the Office of Management and Budget to direct federal agencies to submit annual reports regarding federal projects under their domain that are more than five years behind schedule or more than $1 billion over budget. A similar proposal passed Congress last year but hit a roadblock at the Biden White House.

Rooting out mismanagement and waste should be a bipartisan goal. Sen. Ernst deserves credit for spotlighting this issue, which provides another example of the usefulness of the Department of Government Efficiency. “If you’re receiving taxpayer dollars,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told Fox, “you should expect to be held accountable by the American people.”

Amen.

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