Romney: Amtrak a ‘classic example’ of unnecessary government spending

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Thursday that the federal government could rein in spending if the national passenger rail service, Amtrak, was not national anymore.

Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, penned an op-ed Thursday in the New Hampshire Union Leader laying out solutions for controlling federal spending, which he wrote “has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history” under President Obama. New Hampshire, of course, holds a crucial early primary that Romney hopes to win.

Among the solutions Romney laid out is privatizing Amtrak service, a plan that has been proposed by House Republicans.

{mosads}”A first step in reform is acknowledging that the federal government cannot be everything to everyone,” he wrote.

“There are many functions that the private sector can perform better than the public sector,” he continued. “Amtrak is a classic example.”

{mosads}Romney, who has sought often to burnish his conservative credentials in comparison to Texas Gov. Rick Perry and other GOP presidential candidates, argued in the paper that it was imperative that government spending be contained.

“This is the financial equivalent of speeding against traffic on a superhighway,” he wrote. “It’s dangerous. It has to stop. A household cannot become prosperous by spending all its money and running up a credit card bill. Neither can a government or a country.”

Other methods listed by Romney for controlling spending included implementing the “cut, cap and balance” constitutional amendment pushed for by House Republicans and repealing Obama’s health care overhaul.