Senator Charles E. Schumer is recommending that Amtrak take much of the Farley Post Office building on Eighth Avenue between 31st and 33rd Streets rather New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road.

He has called for $100 million in federal stimulus funds to help convert the post office building and called up the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to take over the project and invest about $1 billion in it in an effort to relieve congestion and improve conditions at the existing Penn Station beneath Madison Square Garden on the east side of Eighth Avenue across from the Farley Post Office Building.

Mr. Schumer's proposal recognizes the inability of private developers in the current economic environment to advance the six office towers they had wanted to build as part of the train station project. At the same time, Mr. Schumer is trying to navigate roiling fiscal waters in which city, state and Port Authority officials are facing declining revenues and widening budget gaps.

The project is named after Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who first suggested in the 1990s using the Farley building to create a grand transit entrance to New York to replace the monumental and very impressive former Penn Station whose demolition in the 1960s led to the belated creation of the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission.

An article in yesterday's edition of The New York Times by Charles V. Bagli said that in an interview Mr. Schumer said that "we want Amtrak to play the major role in the station," adding that "there is new funding that could help them do that." "The focus," it continued, "is now on the station, letting private development follow rather than the other way around."

"A redeveloped Penn Station would have enormous benefits for the entire region and would absolutely be a terrific use of federal transportation funds," said Andrew Brent, a spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in Mr. Bagli's article.

The project is named after Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who first suggested in the 1990s using the Farley building to create a grand transit entrance to New York, something he said had been missing since the demolition of the above-ground Penn Station in 1968.

The state spent $230 million buying the Farley building, which has an imposing colonnade atop its very broad and steep staircase on Eighth Avenue but which compares poorly with the former architecture masterpiece by McKim Mead & White that was Penn Station.

State officials selected two developers nearly four years ago for a grand project to transform the James A. Farley Post Office into a transit hub that would serve as an annex to Pennsylvania Station, the country's busiest train station.

The developers involved in the Moynihan project - Stephen M. Ross, chief executive of Related Companies, and Steven Roth, chairman of Vornado Realty Trust - also seemed to back the Schumer proposal, according to Mr. Bagli's article, which said that Mr. Ross said "This kind of transit project is a much greater stimulus than anything else that could be done in the city."

In 2005, the developers won the rights to create a train annex at the Farley and to develop a nearby office tower. But the project quickly swelled, with the developers proposing a $14 billion development, which involved demolishing Madison Square Garden to make way for a new train station and a half-dozen office towers, while erecting a new Garden inside the Farley building. That plan, however, called for Amtrak remaining in its present location and for Madison Square Garden to relocate. The owners of the garden have since stated their intention to stay put and renovate.