John Mica held a press event at a McDonald’s to talk about the Amtrack’s food service. | AP Photos Amtrak CEO bites back on burgers

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica is lovin’ it — but Amtrak sure isn’t.

Mica’s press event last week, held outside a Hill-area McDonald’s to highlight the railroad’s food and beverage service, “did damage our reputation,” Amtrak President and CEO Joe Boardman wrote to employees in a memo obtained by POLITICO.


With Mica combining the railroad’s money-losing, long-distance routes with its better-performing ones in the Northeast Corridor, the lawmaker painted an inaccurate picture, Boardman said. The long-distance routes account for most of the railroad’s labor and other costs, “so it skews the numbers and sets the stage for stunts like Mr. Mica’s and people do not really know what to believe,” Boardman wrote.

Mica’s McDonald’s appearance was the latest of his attempts to highlight government waste, from taxpayer subsidies on Amtrak food to commemorative drumsticks at a lavish GSA conference to vacant federal buildings.

But to Boardman, the numbers cited not only lacked context but the math is wrong. At both the Friday event and a hearing the day before, Mica cited a $9.50 hamburger that cost the taxpayer an extra $6.65 per burger.

Boardman’s memo says the $9.50 price includes not just a “dressed burger” but a drink and chips. Just a burger costs $6 in the Regional and Acela Express cars, he wrote. “That is comparable to the $7.00 for an ‘Original’ at Johnny Rockets in Union Station,” he wrote to POLITICO in an email.

But at the hearing, Boardman didn’t refute Mica when the chairman talked about the $9.50 burger. The memo explains why — he didn’t know. “I wished I had known that during the hearing,” Boardman wrote of the price discrepancies in the memo.

Amtrak is making progress on the issue, but Boardman admits it’s a long slog. “Food and beverage is important to our customers, and it’s very tough to make it profitable,” he wrote.

That said, Boardman notes that Amtrak would “lose more money” if it discontinued food and beverage service on long-distance routes. While it might be slow, progress is being made: food and beverage service reclaimed 49 percent of its cost in 2006, a figure that climbed to 59 percent in 2011, Boardman said.

But that progress isn’t quick enough for Mica and committee Republicans. “The bottom line is Amtrak is losing about $83 million every year — over $800 million over the last decade. McDonald's is famous for its ‘over 1 billion served’ style of marketing. Unfortunately Amtrak could claim ‘over 1 billion lost for the taxpayers’ just in food and beverage losses,” a GOP committee spokesman said.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 6:35 p.m. on August 8, 2012.

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