A $1.5 billion cut in high-speed rail funding, highlighted by Republican leaders in their budget deal with the White House, won’t affect existing projects, said Brie Sachse, a Federal Railroad Administration spokeswoman….

That means high-speed rail projects are still allotted $2.5 billion, as in 2010, even though President Barack Obama had asked for $1 billion for the program in the 2011 fiscal year ending Sept. 30. In the 2011 budget agreed to April 8, the high- speed rail program will receive $1 billion, $1.5 billion less than in fiscal 2010.

Which confirms what we believed to be the case on Saturday morning. And Eric Young of the San Francisco Business Journal confirms that the California HSR project isn’t going to lose any of the funding it has been awarded. Huzzah!

So that’s the good news. The bad news is that, as feared, that $1.5 billion in cuts could just be the start. According to Sam Stein at the Huffington Post, the cuts might actually grow:

Multiple Hill sources from both parties confirm that the final continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government through the end of September will include a $1.5 billion cut in funds for the planned national high-speed rail system. Jennifer Hing, communications director for the House Appropriations Committee, said that the reduction could actually grow larger as lawmakers negotiate the final language.

“The final agreement will reflect” the $1.5 billion of high-speed rail funds slashed from the temporary CR, Hing wrote in an email to HuffPost, “but that is not to say that it couldn’t be more.”

While this apparently indicates the CR will last until September, it’s very troubling that the HSR cuts could grow. Several rail advocacy groups immediately got to work to ensure that doesn’t happen, including Californians For High Speed Rail. We sent out this email to our list earlier today, in support of an action by Midwest High Speed Rail:

Please take action today to ensure no more cuts are made to high-speed rail in the ongoing budget negtotiations.

As part of the one-week temporary budget extension signed last Friday, $1.5 billion was cut from high-speed rail funding. However, sources in Washington are also warning that more high-speed rail funds may be cut as part of the final 6-month funding deal (through the remainder of FY 2011). Any more cuts could really impact the future of high-speed rail, including California’s project.

Our friends at the Midwest High Speed Rail Association have created a great tool for taking quick action. Please send both a message and call your representatives and President Obama and urge them to reject any further cuts.

Click here to send a message.

A strong pushback now could help stiffen the spines of our Senators – and the president – against any further cuts. This is important not just for the present, but for the looming fight this summer over the debt ceiling, and over the FY 2012 budget in the fall. Congressional Republicans are likely to use both fights as an opportunity to attack high speed rail. We must be ready to stop them.

Some items for a welcome sunny Saturday:

• Californians For High Speed Rail and yours truly were featured in a San Mateo County Times article on the launch of our organization. It’s a fantastic article, and has already gotten a lot of attention on the Peninsula – as have the complementary efforts of the Alliance for Sustainable Transit and Jobs. I know some of you have already donated to help CA4HSR get our work under way – if any of you would like to join them, we’d really appreciate it. Click here to support CA4HSR.
• Plenty of rumors flying that President Obama and VP Biden will be in Florida next week to announce the HSR stimulus grants. It looks virtually certain that Florida will indeed get some, if not all, of its $2.5 billion request, especially after the Florida legislature did what Ray LaHood asked of them in terms of funding commuter rail in the state.
• Indiana residents rally for HSR in Fort Wayne, in hopes of winning money for one leg of the Midwest Hub HSR plan.
• Taiwan HSR has rejected private sector lending offers in favor of refinancing with a consortium of state-owned banks. “We wanted to keep it simple,” one of the bankers involved said. While I am no expert in Taiwan politics (hopefully wu ming will offer some thoughts on this in the comments), generally speaking I’m all in favor of public sector financing over private sector financing. Interest should be flowed back into public coffers instead of into investors’ pockets.
• Will the delay of health care reform and the Republican victory in the Massachusetts US Senate election damage high speed rail? No, says the American Public Transportation Association, which points out that HSR has growing bipartisan support. Some conservatives oppose this spending, true, but there are a lot of Republicans who also want to see high speed trains get built, such as John Mica and Arnold Schwarzenegger. And with so many states submitting HSR stimulus funding requests, more members of Congress have a stake in providing ongoing federal funding for HSR.