[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 74 (Thursday, May 14, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H3207-H3208]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                                 AMTRAK

  (Ms. BROWN of Florida asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, as a member for 22 years on the 
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and supporter of 
rail, my heart goes out to the families and individuals who suffered in 
the wake of the Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia.
  The Republican leadership in Washington continues its long-term 
failure to adequately fund transportation infrastructure in this 
country, and starving Amtrak from the funds that it truly needs to 
operate a national system is one example of the failure of this House. 
It is sad that the Republicans, on the day that seven or eight people 
died and 200 were injured, voted to cut funding for Amtrak.
  It is a shame that in the people's House--the people's House--that 
the people who represent the people are stuck on stupid. We need a 
comprehensive transportation system, and we need to stop starving 
Amtrak.
  It is amazing that this House voted the day of the accident to cut 
Amtrak. It is unacceptable. This is the people's House, and the people 
should be in charge. To whom God has given much, much is expected, and 
they expect more from the people's House than what happened yesterday 
in this House of Representatives.

                [From the New York Times, May 13, 2015]

       Amtrak Crash and America's Declining Construction Spending

                          (By David Leonhardt)

       Investigators into the Amtrak crash in Philadelphia are 
     focusing on excess speed, but there is a related issue: the 
     overall condition of Amtrak and the nation's infrastructure. 
     One of the reasons that American trains should not travel 100 
     miles an hour in many places is that the state of our rail 
     system--like the state of our bridges, highways and 
     airports--is not good.
       Many airports here look dilapidated relative to those in 
     Asia and Europe. Roads are choked with traffic. The fastest 
     train from Boston to Washington takes about six and a half 
     hours. The fastest train from Paris to Marseille--a slightly 
     longer distance--takes just over three hours.
       The train that derailed on Tuesday was thought to be 
     traveling at least 100 miles an hour--twice the speed limit 
     on that section of track. That is about half the French 
     train's average speed on the trip from Paris to Marseille. 
     (Reuters has also reported that the section of the track 
     where the crash occurred lacked advanced braking technology 
     designed to prevent derailments.)
       Much of the problem of crumbling infrastructure has existed 
     for years. There is, however, a new development that has made 
     things worse. The combined money that federal, state and 
     local governments spend on construction has dropped 
     significantly, relative to the size of the economy, in the 
     last five years. And only part of the decline stems from the 
     end of the stimulus program, which temporarily lifted 
     infrastructure spending.
       Such spending now represents about 1.5 percent of total 
     economic activity, down from about 1.8 percent on average 
     from 1993 through 2008. It's at its lowest level in at least 
     22 years. (A hat-tip to Joe Weisenthal, of Business Insider, 
     who calculated this statistic in 2013, after the collapse of 
     a bridge near Seattle.)
       Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury secretary and Harvard 
     president, sent an email to us today making an argument 
     similar to Mr. Weisenthal's. More infrastructure spending 
     would both make accidents less likely and bring economic 
     benefits.
       ``Projections for the first half of this year now almost 
     universally suggest the U.S. economy will have grown at an 
     annual rate of well under 1 percent,'' Mr. Summers wrote. 
     ``If this isn't stagnation, I wonder what would be.''
       He added: ``A major infrastructure investment program would 
     reduce long-run deferred maintenance liabilities, raise 
     demand and G.D.P., put construction workers back to work and 
     raise investment. Interest rates may not always be as low as 
     they are now, so it's high time to get started.''
       Other Democrats have begun making similar arguments today. 
     Many congressional Republicans have historically supported 
     infrastructure spending as well, but have been more reluctant 
     recently.
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                [From the New York Times, May 13, 2015]

  One Day After Wreck, Increased Funding for Amtrak Fails in a House 
                                 Panel

                 (By Michael D. Shear and Jad Mouawad)

       Washington.--The bodies had not yet been fully recovered 
     from the Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia before Capitol 
     Hill erupted hours later into its usual partisan clash over 
     how much money to spend on the long-struggling national rail 
     service.
       As investigators picked through the rubble on Wednesday 
     morning, Democratic lawmakers in Washington angrily demanded 
     an increase in Amtrak funding, calling Tuesday night's 
     accident a result of congressional failure to support the 
     rail system. Republicans refused, defeating the request in a 
     morning committee hearing and accusing Democrats of using a 
     tragedy for political reasons.
        ``It was beneath you,'' Representative Mike Simpson, 
     Republican of Idaho, snapped at a Democratic colleague after 
     the funding increase was defeated in a 30-to-21 vote.
       The scene in the hearing room was a replay of the swirling 
     politics that have threatened to consume Amtrak in the four 
     decades since it was nationalized by the United States 
     government. Like the rest of the country's crumbling public 
     infrastructure, its aging rail beds and decades-old trains 
     are sagging under increased use, especially in the Northeast, 
     where nearly three-quarters of all travel takes place on the 
     trains, not on planes.
       And the immediate political rancor foreshadowed another 
     fight to come soon: whether Congress will delay a mandate to 
     install equipment that would have automatically reduced the 
     speed of Northeast Regional train No. 188. The deadline for 
     installing the system, called positive train control, is the 
     end of 2015, but Congress is considering extending the 
     deadline to 2020 at the urging of

[[Page H3208]]

     freight, and passenger rail systems that say the costs could 
     rise to $10 billion.
       Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said 
     in a statement on Wednesday that delaying the technology 
     ``only leads to preventable and predictable tragedy.''
       Investigators said they were examining the speed of the 
     derailed Amtrak train, which they said was going 106 miles an 
     hour on a stretch of track where the speed limit was half 
     that. But they said no firm conclusion had been reached on 
     what caused the derailment.
       Edward G. Rendell, the Democratic former governor of 
     Pennsylvania, lashed out at Republican lawmakers on Wednesday 
     for refusing to increase Amtrak funding. He said the 
     requested increase of $251 million over the Republican budget 
     of $1.14 billion could significantly improve safety by 
     upgrading tracks and installing positive train control 
     systems in the busiest part of the system. ``It is absolutely 
     stunning to me,'' Mr. Rendell said of the funding vote. ``It 
     shows that ideology trumps reality, and it shows that 
     cowardice reigns in Washington. The callousness and disregard 
     was shockingly contemporaneous.''
       Representative Steve Israel, Democrat of New York, also 
     criticized his Republican colleagues, saying they should have 
     used the aftermath of the Amtrak accident ``as an opportunity 
     to do the right thing, instead of sticking to their 
     ideology.''
       The Northeast Corridor is the nation's busiest rail 
     corridor and accounts for more than a third of Amtrak's 
     ridership. It is also the most profitable part of its 
     national network. But some bridges, like the Portal Bridge 
     near New York, for instance, are more than a century old and 
     in desperate need of replacement. Trains come to a crawl when 
     they travel through Baltimore's 100-year-old tunnel. Some 
     parts of the tracks still have wooden ties.
       Meanwhile, the Acela--Amtrak's high-speed train that runs 
     between Washington and Boston--can reach its top speed only 
     in a handful of places. On a 30-mile stretch near Cranston, 
     R.I., for example, the Acela speeds up to 150 m.p.h. About 
     five minutes later, it needs to slow down.
       ``These trains have to be thought of as a national asset,'' 
     said Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at the Harvard 
     Business School. ``Amtrak is a political whipping boy for 
     Congress. But how much is it going to take to wake up 
     Congress that this stuff has to be invested in? It is aging, 
     it is not properly maintained.''
       Amtrak has its passionate supporters, including Vice 
     President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who often joins many lawmakers 
     who race to Union Station for a quick trip home. But the rail 
     system also has many detractors, who say its annual losses 
     are a drain on the public treasury. Many argue that 
     privatization of the rail lines would improve service, cut 
     costs and create innovation that could rival the gleaming 
     train systems in Japan, China and across Europe.
       Representative John L. Mica, Republican of Florida, is 
     pushing a plan to privatize the improvement of Amtrak's 
     system in the Northeast region. He said that the rail system 
     needed money for improvements, but that lawmakers did not 
     trust Amtrak to spend it well.
       ``What they own is poorly maintained and outdated 
     infrastructure,'' Mr. Mica said. But he added, ``They don't 
     have the trust of Congress to get substantial money because 
     they've not spent the money well that they've gotten.''
       ``When you give them money, they squander it,'' he said.
       In the meantime, however, Amtrak's funding is failing to 
     catch up to its ridership, which peaked at 32 million last 
     year, up nearly 50 percent since 2000. In 2014, its latest 
     fiscal year, Amtrak lost $1 billion with revenue of $3.2 
     billion.
       ``Amtrak has really suffered from congressional 
     schizophrenia over funding levels,'' said Ray LaHood, the 
     Republican former member of Congress who served as President 
     Obama's first secretary of transportation.
       Mr. LaHood said much of the blame rested with lawmakers who 
     came to Washington from states where Amtrak does not run. 
     ``They think Amtrak is just the easy place to cut,'' he said, 
     adding that he had little optimism that anything would change 
     without pressure from voters during election time.
       ``All Americans should be concerned that there is no 
     vision,'' Mr. LaHood said. ``There is no plan. There is no 
     courage for taking up what needs to be done in terms of fully 
     funding infrastructure. We are limping along.''
       Since the passage of the Rail Passenger Service Act of 
     1970, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, as Amtrak 
     is officially called, is the only provider of national 
     passenger rail service in the country.
       Successive Amtrak chief executives--there have been six 
     since 2002--contend with a dual mandate: to provide a public 
     service while also trying to make money, which has proved an 
     impossible task, Ms. Kanter said. Her latest book, ``Move: 
     Putting America's Infrastructure Back in the Lead,'' 
     addresses the importance of investing in transportation 
     infrastructure.
       ``We have to do something big instead of just repairing. We 
     need to repair, of course, but we have to reinvent, too, 
     because the whole model is broken,'' she said. ``We don't 
     want to be stuck with the same crummy, shabby system after we 
     fix Philadelphia. We have to do something more, and better.''

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