The Senate is apparently where rail-friendly stimulus packages go to die. Hiram Wurf covers most of the ground in this post, including the news that Sens. Barbara Boxer and James Inhofe are co-sponsoring a massive highway amendment, but this tidbit from the New York Times is worth pointing out:

Anxious over the ballooning size of the proposed economic stimulus package, now at more than $900 billion, lawmakers in both parties are working on a last-minute plan to strip tens of billions of dollars from the bill. [...]

Among the initiatives that could be cut are … $850 million for Amtrak.

That Sens. Ben Nelson and Olympia Snowe have Amtrak in their sights is absurd. The Senate Appropriations Committee draft only allocates $1.1 billion for Amtrak to begin with! And this is an agency that’s experiencing record ridership levels, is in desperate need of resources, and could provide jobs for almost 500,000 Americans if offered adequate assistance.

If this episode doesn’t prove the filibuster’s worthlessness, I don’t know what does.

UPDATE (1:15 PM): Via Cap Fax comes more bad news:

Meetings intensified Thursday among a bipartisan bloc of senators seeking to trim close to $90 billion from a massive economic recovery bill nearing final action in the chamber. […]

State fiscal aid and education funding will be among the most sensitive proposed cuts, and if $90 billion is the goal, it would represent an estimated 25% cut.

TPM has the full list of proposed cuts. If Nelson gets his way, states could lose just about all of the flexible aid available.