[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 26 (Wednesday, February 12, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H396]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         DERAIL AMTRAK FUNDING

  (Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KENNEDY of Minnesota. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring to the 
attention of my colleagues a grave error I feel is being made in the 
negotiations of the Omnibus Appropriations Act.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to go to their computers, check a 
travel Web site or call their travel agent and find out how much it 
would cost to fly from Orlando to Los Angeles. When I did this last 
night, I found nine different flights that cost less than the average 
per-passenger loss the Federal Government subsidizes on the Amtrak 
Sunset long-haul route. To put it simply, the government would save 
money if we bought a plane ticket for every person taking the Sunset 
Limited from Orlando to Los Angeles.
  Mr. Speaker, our country is at war with terrorism and may soon have 
to go to war with Iraq. Our economy is slowly recovering from the 
double whammy of recession and the 9/11 attacks. There are tough 
choices to be made and scarce resources available from which to fund 
our key priorities. We cannot continue to provide unaccountable and 
never-ending sums of money for Amtrak, a system which refuses to reform 
itself.

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