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Today, President Barack Obama unveiled a proposed fiscal-year 2012 federal budget that includes $8 billion for high-speed rail.

The funds would be included in a proposed $556 billion surface transportation reauthorization bill that calls for investing $53 billion in high-speed rail during the next six years. The president plans to work with Congress to ensure the plan does not increase the deficit, according to the budget summary.

In addition, the plan proposes to merge Amtrak’s subsidies into the high-speed rail program as part of a larger, competitive “system preservation” initiative, the summary said. Translation: the national intercity passenger railroad would have to compete for rail grants.

The budget also includes spending $30 billion over six years to develop a national infrastructure bank that would provide funding for projects of national and regional significance to the economy.

“While this transportation bill is a major investment of funds, it is also a major reform of how transportation funds have been invested in the past,” President Obama wrote in his budget message to Congress. “We are committing to paying for our surface transportation plan and making it subject to the Congress’ pay-as-you-go law; to consolidating duplicative, earmarked programs; and to making tens of billions of dollars of funds subject to a competitive ‘Race to the Top’ process.”

HSRupdates.com will relay budget-related details — as well as industry comments — as we receive them.