President Obama lambasted businesses that use taxpayer money to visit Las Vegas.

It’s okay, however, to use porkulus money to build pie-in-the-sky rail lines from Los Angeles to Vegas for Harry Reid’s benefit.

A Hill staffer points out this morning that Reid and Obama are pushing for an $8 billion earmark in the conference report (shhh! there are no earmarks, remember?) to “construct high-speed rail lines, quadrupling the amount in the bill that passed the Senate on Tuesday. Reid’s office issued a statement noting that a proposed Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas rail might get a big chunk of the money.”

The Hill staffer notes that Reid earmarked $45 million last year for the public magnetic levitation train project — which is in competition with a completely privately funded rail project being built along a similar route.

No wonder they won’t let us see the bill before they rush to cram it down our throats.

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Related: High-speed rail to nowhere