The House passed the Amtrak funding bill rule to bring the Amtrak funding bill to the floor, 227-187. That’s not enough to override a Bush veto, if the votes stay as they are.

As commenters point out, the vote on the rule won’t necessarily match the vote on the bill itself, so we can’t say anything about the possilbiity of overriding a veto.

Here’s the roll call. Every Democrat voted for the bill rule except Indiana’s extremely conservative Baron Hill. Tom Davis (unsurprisingly) also voted for it, while Frank Wolf did not. Cantor, Forbes, and Goode all voted no, despite the value of the existing rail to Richmond and the benefits high-speed rail in the DC-Richmond-Charlotte corridor would bring to the region. which is standard procedure for the minority party.

Both of Maryland’s and Virginia’s Senators (including John Warner) cosponsored the Senate version, by the way (as did all of Delaware’s, New York’s, Connecticut’s, and Massachusetts’s, but only Menendez and not Lautenberg from New Jersey, though Lautenberg did vote for it). Obama cosponsored; McCain skipped the vote.

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Tagged: amtrak, politics, transit

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.