The House Appropriations Committee met today for about four hours, and Honolulu rail didn’t come up even once.

The committee advanced the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development funding bill for Fiscal Year 2013 without tweaking, or even considering tweaking, the level of New Starts money for rail projects financed by the Federal Transit Administration.

THUD Subcommittee Chair Tom Latham, a Republican of Iowa who had cut funding for Honolulu rail earlier this month, said he needed to make ”hard choices” on funding levels because of the “serious fiscal constraints the nation faces today.”

The full U.S. House of Representatives will now consider a bill with about $180 million less in New Starts money than the FY 2012 level and about $420 million less than President Barack Obama had requested.

Honolulu’s in line to get $100 million from the House, setting up a conflict with the U.S. Senate and Appropriations Chair Dan Inouye, who had approved $250 million.

Read my full story for the details on the cuts: U.S. House Subcommittee Slices Money for Rail

Honolulu rail didn’t come up at all in committee Tuesday, but Honolulu was mentioned once during an earlier debate about federal funding for agricultural programs.

Republican Jack Kingston of Georgia defended cuts to the funding for the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission despite concerns about lacking financial oversight in part because the agency once sent two employees to Honolulu and therefore couldn’t be too strapped for cash.