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Amtrak, political realities and the future (PRRIA 2015)

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As of February 10th, per TreasuryDirect.gov, total federal debt was $18.1 trillion.  The public debt was $13 trillion, and the intergovernmental debt, i.e. debt held by a variety of government agencies, i.e. Social Security, Medicare, etc., was $5.1 trillion. According to The Financial Report of the U.S. Government for the Fiscal Year2013, which is issued by the U.S. Treasury Department and audited by the GAO, the U.S. had assets of $2,968.3 billion and liabilities of $19,877.6 billion.  The debt to asset ratio was 670 per cent.  The median debt to asset ratios for the Class 1s at the end of 2014 was 28.24 per cent. The public debt was 72 per cent of total debt.  A U.S. default on it probably would roll world financial markets.  On the other hand, failure to service the intergovernmental debt could be offset by reducing entitlement benefits, i.e. Social Security, Medicare, etc. Foreign sources held 47 per cent of the public debt as of the end of November 2014 as per the U.S. Treasury’s Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities.  China held 20.4 per cent and Japan held 20.3 per cent.   At the end of 2014 the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the United States, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, was $17.7 trillion.  The public debt was 74 per cent of GDP; the total federal debt was 102 per cent of GDP.  At the end of 2014 state and local government debt was approximately $3 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve’s Level Table 104.  The combined federal, state, and local debt totaled $21.2 trillion, which put government debt at 119 per of GDP. The actual federal deficit in 2013 was $680 billion as per the CBO’s Summary Table 1.  It was projected to continuing falling to $539 billion in 2016 but to rise thereafter to $581 billion in 2017 and $1.074 trillion by 2024.  The deficit in 2013, according to the CBO, was 4.1 per cent of GDP.  It projects a decline to 2.6 per cent in 2018; therafter CBO estimates the deficit will climb to 3.0 per cent of GDP in 2019 and remain at or near that level through 2024.   U.S. debt is a serious issue.  How the country will manage it is debated vigorously.  But Amtrak’s annual deficits are just a blip in the deficit and debt pictures. In 2014 Amtrak’s net operating loss was $1,023 million, which was down from $1,309 million in 2010.  According to the IRS Table 1.1, for 2011, which is the latest complete IRS statistical data, there were 91.7 million tax filers in 2011 with taxable income.  Using the average rate of growth in filers with taxable income from 2009 to 2011, the estimated number of filers in 2014 with taxable income would be approximately 99.2 million.  Their average portion of Amtrak’s 2014 deficit would be approximately $10.31 per taxpayer.   Personal income taxes are not the only source of revenue for the U.S.  If the other sources were taken into consideration, the average Amtrak deficit per taxpayer would shrink more although by how much is unknown.
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