Mr. McCain has said at least a few times that he wants to shut Amtrak down, and I wonder what the effects of that would be.

-Greyhound suddenly experiences rise in bus demand
-Railfags come up and call for reinstatement of the lines
-All of a sudden, a lot of double deck Superliners on the market with nowhere to go. Scrapyard? Museum? Some stupid visitor's office?
-The whining about airline overcrowding gets louder than it already is
-The government theoretically saves money, but it might be offset by lost tourist revenues and goodwill
-Tourist railroads, however, might spring up to fill the gap. Grandluxe and other companies might take full advantage of this.
-MAJOR transportation headache in NE Corridor and California (and Michigan and near Chicago)
-Quite a bit of ammo to Democrats to call the Amtrak shutdown an "example of failed Republican government", particularly if it throws people out of work in a recession
-Some wags pointing out that the Interstate system is also a boondoggle in some ways (it's heavily spent on)