Subject: Amtrak/HNTB Info
From: "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
To: "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Joan Peugh" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2015 10:55:40 -0400

Below is info from Joe McHugh re: John Parola and Todd Schultz’s question on funding of Amtrak for your lunch tomorrow with Parola.

The House has passed their bill and funded Amtrak at $250m lower than Amtrak’s current baseline of $1.4b. 
Senate should come in around $1.39b and final bill will likely split the difference.
Amtrak is looking for another $1b infrastructure investment through the surface transportation bill or approps.   They think this is likely but this will only fund current needs/maintenance and won’t give them enough for new projects (e.g. Portal Bridge/Gateway).
They were hoping to recoup some money ($250-350m) from a lawsuit re: Hurricane Sandy that they could dedicate to infrastructure but it looks like that’s going to come in lower than they expected ($125-175m).  (THIS INFO IS ON A VERY CLOSE HOLD.)
The NEC Commission looks like it may be able to come up with $100m in matching funds.
At the end of the day, Amtrak expects that it may only have $100-150m in extra capital for new projects.
Highway bill needs to be extended at end of July - there is some possibility that it will be extended for longer than 2 years but this isn’t likely.
Also, note that as usual, there isn’t much hope that the individual Transportation Approps bill will passed by the Senate and the appropriations will all be done in an Omnibus with the threat of a government shutdown.  Same with Authorization.

Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC
1010 Wisconsin Ave., NW
Suite 705
Washington, DC 20007
(202) 333-1880
[email-masked] <x-msg://59/[email-masked]>
P Consider the environment before printing this email.