Until you identify yourself, I hope people will treat your attempts to undermine me as they deserve.
The 2000 MOS planned about a billion dollars, total. Half of that is $500M, total. Half is what the Feds have been matching lately. The amount CM's spent so far by some more realistic estimates than yours, plus the amount they want to spend on commuter rail, plus the amount they rebated in 1/4 cent money, is getting awfully close to that $500M. Period. Really simple.
You went to an awful lot of trouble to make 2000 LRT look a lot less feasible than it really was, for such an avowed fan of light rail, Lyndon.
There is a vanishingly small number of people who will see any benefit at all from commuter rail, as I've shown by comparing travel times to existing express bus service in blog posts such as
this one.
To summarize that
category of posts, basically, nobody closer in than the Leander station boardees will benefit from the Red Line, unless you live at Crestview Station, work at Frost, and are a faster-than-typical walker.
This is not a case of "it doesn't benefit me so it sucks"; it's a case of "it benefits a trivial number of people, and a large fraction of the small number of possible beneficiaries don't even pay CM taxes (Cedar Park or people further out than Leander)". Oh, and, "it prevents us from building rail that will actually benefit Austin residents later on", to boot.
This is what happens, folks, when you care more about being friends, or maintaining access, than doing the right thing - you start to rationalize screwing Austin for a generation so you can say you sort of got a train running.