July 9, 2024
The Honorable Tom Cole, Chair
The Honorable Rosa DeLauro, Ranking Member
U.S. House Committee on Appropriations
Dear Chair Cole and Ranking Member DeLauro,
On behalf of more than 155,000 members of the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU), I am writing to strongly oppose the appropriations bills for both FY25 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) and FY25 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (LHHS). Both of these bills, up for consideration this week in your committee, would devaste transportation workers’ well-being and undermine labor standards. We urge you to reject these bills as introduced in order to ensure hard-working Americans do not lose their jobs or their retirement.
The LHHS bill would gut the Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) – the agency responsible for implementing railroad workers’ social security programs. The bill before your committee would cut more than 20% of the agency’s funding ($26m decline from FY24); this in addition to $2m in budget cuts imposed on the agency in FY24. Railroad workers are not eligible for traditional social security, state-based unemployment programs, or long-term sickness benefits. These workers rely on the RRB to provide these services during the most difficult times. Importantly, these benefits are 100% paid for by railroad workers and their employers – the federal outlay for the RRB is limited to implementhing the programs. The inhumane cuts to the RRB in this bill would create an 18-month processing time for applications, expected phone wait times of more than 2 hours, and an indefinite delays for annuity corrections.
The THUD bill, similarly, would make unjustifiable cuts to Amtrak and the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Capitol Investment Grants (CIG) Program which would immediately harm TWU members. Amtrak would receive nearly $1.9b less than its budget request and take a 12% cut from its FY24 funding. If this level of funding were enacted, the railroad would have to either cut service, eliminating jobs and harming communities along its routes, or halt accesbility improvements at its stations, eliminating jobs and harming disabled riders. Both options are unacceptable and unnecessary.
CIG funds new public transportation projects across the country. The program is oversubscribed and its list of applicants is growing. The proposed 66% cut ($1.3b less funding than FY24) in this bill would immediately halt progress on projects under construction in Florida, New York, North Carolina, and Texas, as well as prevent the FTA from making future investments in transformational transit projects.
Taken together, these cuts would undermine labor standards across the railroad and transit sectors. They would devaste working families and stall our economic growth. The TWU strongly opposes these bills as introduced and we urge you to reject these harmful cuts.
Sincerely,
John Samuelsen
International President
CC: Members of the U.S. House Approprations Committee