A good deal of money earmarked for high speed rail was sacrificed in the 2011 appropriations deal. Billions of federal dollars will not go toward constructing a networked of high speed rail lines across the country.

However, the Transportation Department has been able to award willing states with grants, mainly because of money turned down from the initial stimulus package by states with Tea Party governors like Florida and Wisconsin. Today, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood took Florida’s $2 billion and gave it to 15 states and Amtrak.

I noted yesterday that Rick Scott returned $2.4 billion in high speed rail money to the federal government, which would halt a planned project for an intercity link between Tampa and Orlando. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has dealt with this before with respect to Ohio and Wisconsin (there are those two states again), and he simply redistributed the money to states who wanted it. However, in this case, Florida Congressional leaders, Democrats and Republicans, are scheming to get the deal done anyway.

We’ve seen this game of chicken play out over the past two years, with governors who appear far more ideologically committed than Walker and Ohio Governor-elect John Kasich. Rick Perry, Mark Sanford and even Sarah Palin all made rumblings about not accepting stimulus funds, and they all buckled in the end. Walker and Kasich appear sincere about killing the rail projects, but now that LaHood has told them that the money is “use it or lose it,” let’s watch and enjoy.