House Republicans late Thursday night adopted an amendment that would prohibit California from receiving any high speed rail money in a huge five-year transportation bill headed to the House floor next week. The $270 billion bill also eliminates bicycle and pedestrian programs and detaches urban mass transit funding from its traditional revenue source. The underlying bill did not include any high speed rail funding to begin with, and indeed would cut Amtrak by 25 percent, so the prohibition serves mainly as a stick in the eye to California’s plan for bullet trains.

The action is part of a continuing effort by Republicans to kill the entire project, which was a major element of President Obama’s 2009 stimulus. California’s $100 billion plan for bullet trains running from San Francisco to San Diego already has the stimulus money in hand to get started, but future federal funding on which the project depends is very much at risk if House Republicans maintain control of the chamber, not to mention take the White House.

The high speed rail prohibition came as an amendment, approved 31-22, by Rep. Jeff Dunham, R-Turlock, who said he wanted to make sure that all transportation funds for California to go to highways.

The House Transportation bill overall stands on shaky financial and political footing, relying as it does on yet-to-be seen revenues from potential off shore oil drilling that purportedly would materialize if areas off both U.S. coasts, including California’s, were opened to new oil leasing, as the bill envisions. Its chances of Senate passage in its current form are zero.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has put together a bipartisan transportation bill that has the full support of her ranking member, Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe. The two are still hoping that they can get something reasonable out of a House/Senate conference committee, although that is looking increasingly unlikely, given how many poison pills Republicans have put into their bill. The current transportation bill expires at the end of March, having been extended several times because Congress is unable to agree on a long-term transportation blueprint.

Although House Republicans are touting their success in keeping the bill free of earmarks, they are having problems with the bill within their own caucus. Rank-and-file member complained that it was hatched behind closed doors before landing in committee, and the conservative Club for Growth coming out against the bill. Its reliance on funding to materialize from oil drilling is considered somewhat magical.

Both bills are billions of dollars short of revenue because both parties refuse to raise gasoline taxes, depriving the Highway Trust Fund of adequate revenues to fund transportation programs.